Does a traumatic life/pain really lead to greater art, or art that cannot be reproduced by wholesome people...

Does a traumatic life/pain really lead to greater art, or art that cannot be reproduced by wholesome people? or is it entirely a meme? something in between?

My life sucks and I am wholly without inspiration.

You also have to actually write.
Also having a shitty life is not the same as pain and trauma.

I'm not sure, but, to take a single hypothetical -- if you start with two people who are talented, and one of them has a traumatic/painful life -- it seems possible that as between the two, the tormented one might produce more interesting, hence more notable and memorable art.

Trauma creates internal conflict, and moderate conflict seems to greatly assist creation
Can help, but not necessary

good post

I have depression and i have great ideas to write about but my depression is stopping me from writing them

this post sums it up, but I've always found people who have a chip on their shoulder over some sort of perceived trauma/abuse/exclusion type thing to be some of the most irritating and entitled people

That's a separate issue relating to the glorification of mental illness and victim-status. Pay them no mind.

People who believe in God make greater art to the degree that they have had to justify this belief to the world and to themselves resulting in their becoming incomprehensible to normal people, this incomprehensible element is the magic ingredient for good art. It has to be just beyond the boundaries of contemporary understanding yet symbolically coherent and instrumental with the framework currently in dissolution.
If simple pain made good art then we would be steeped in it by now but all it has produced so far is melancholic social media posts. Our pain is hollow pain because it is understandable at the most base level.
The exception, I think, is when in the art is expressed a lack of meaning, or overwhelming multiplicity of meaning. I think pink noise expresses this, and if I were to sum up our current age I would probably employ pink noise in some way or another. Though this kind of art, to me, is art of the age. It is beautiful only because it is relevant and says what cannot be said. In the end it is not real art in the ultimate sense.

Adversity builds character.

That said, most of the acclaimed authors of the 1700s-early 1900s were elites who basically coasted through life compared to a lot of people. I'm sure they had emotional struggles, but most of them weren't starving and they generally lived pretty well.

Its entertainment and commercial exceptionalism.

You can write a hyper patrician book on otokus masturbating but it wont be popular.

Well considering all the great artists throughout history who didn't have traumatic lives I would said that no, it isn't necessary.

Pain is relative. Everyone has pain.
This argument is rooted in classism / egoism and nothing more.

Pain is experience and trauma. People who have lived hard and have the scars to show it are going to be far more interesting than mopey basement dwellers upset that the world doesn't cater to their desires.

I think OP is talking about people that "have everything" good looks, money, etc. Not basement dwellers.
I'd put basement dwellers into the category of ones in pain in what I'm assuming is OP's framework.

My point is that pain is relative to your normal life. For instance most children of divorced parents don't realize they are different or conceptualize divorce until well into their teens or even young adulthood. Regardless of the subconscious impact, pain is conscious. The way a baby cries in horror from a small cut versus an adult who has already experienced many small cuts.

The argument is woe is me bullshit. If it were true everyone in the third world would be masterful artists.

(which is why art can be related to by everyone regardless of class) because of relativism.

It's easier to bring forward beauty in painful times if you have experienced them yourself.

nah, you'd need to be pretty wrapped up in yourself to only be able to empathize through sympathy. that's either a buddha tier bubblewrapped childhood or basic human understanding deficits.
you should just write about whatever you think your mom did to you for that class of books instead of aiming at art.

I fucking hate all you that didn't post in my thread. (Is it a shitpost/Is it a shit-post.) Metamodernism flows from me honestly, friends. Doesn't mean I hate you or find you're opinions not worthy of scrutiny, nor would I turn down book suggestions.

So, yeah, basically, fuck you all for dismissing my call for books on pain. Fucking twats.

Duchamp had an idyllic upbringing in an upper middle class household and grew up to become a notorious womanizer and conversationalist. Still, he basically anticipated postmodernism by some four decades and was able to impact the art world so hard people are shook to this very day.

Picasso also was a turbonormie womanizer, however he did experience some poverty as a young artist and lost a great friend very early on

>art can be related to by everyone regardless of class
it literally can't

The repression of the super ego is probably a key factor in all great writers who valued character drawing.

>Does a traumatic life/pain really lead to greater art, or art that cannot be reproduced by wholesome people?
I think it might be supply and demand. People who have enough money to buy a lot of books are people who've lived or are at least currently living pretty good lives, so they go for more traumatic books.

well said. there's a reason many of the greatest writers were so fucked up

Fuck I just returned a Mishima collection that mentioned something about this.
I think it implied that to write beautifully (or about beauty) one must simply know beauty; suffering/happiness is an entirely different scale.