Why does it seem that most writers/artists/bands/etc have an extremely creative and productive period for a few years...

Why does it seem that most writers/artists/bands/etc have an extremely creative and productive period for a few years and then fade away into obscurity or mediocrity with later works?

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Thats just life.

If you got what you needed to say out there what more is there to do?
Joyce was very dignified in this manner, he dished out his three novels and was happy with that

sampling bias.

Name some artists who were influential and original throughout the entirety of their careers

Fuck creativity, how do I get to become an old man as Veeky Forums as that guy?

Shakespeare wrote all his best stuff towards the end of his life

Goethe, Tolstoy, Stendhal

>throughout
all had periods

Descartes didn't even start his career until he was old. Socrates too, and his best speech is his last. Goya's later work is his best known. Wilde's early work is shallow compared to his later works. Nabokov is constantly refining his story to the point reading his Russian works which he translated late in life is better than reading the Russian original. There's fucking loads.

That all sounds like they had periods not their entire lives

Be one of the selected few who keeps their hair...

Calvino?

Nice how you moved the goal-post fag

youre the one who tried to move the goal posts

Because you have shit taste and consume the sort of art this problem happens to.

name the right sort of art

not a real person at all
lol those all suck ass

Beethoven

Dostoevsky. Literally wrote his best novel before dying.

I remember a scene in Trainspotting where one character muses on this question and fancies he has come up with a profound and original insight, but is rightly mocked by his companion for saying something so dull and obvious.
I think he uses George Best as an example and the gist of his thesis is "Sometimes people have it... and then they lose it" :)

That said, I think different disciplines are affected differently.

POETRY
This, like mathematics, is a young man's game. The very good poets can go on longer, but most people have done their best work by 40.

MUSIC
Popular musicians tend to burn out early, partly because they live self-destructive lifestyles but also because they rely much more on pure sexual energy.
Serious composers in general seem to be able to work at a high level even into old age. Of course, many famous composers died young (Purcell, Mozart, Schubert, Chopin) or relatively young by today's standards (Beethoven) but those who did not didn't really "lose it; at worst they just lost some energy so they produced less. (J.S. Bach, Wagner, Faure, Shostakovich). It's rare for a top-class composer to "run dry", although a couple did.

PROSE
Ability to write prose (fiction or non-fiction) doesn't seem to fall off much with age. Again, the better a writer, the more profound his vision, and the less likely he will run out of things to say. Dickens, Johnson, Carlyle, Tolstoy were all turning it out quite happily in their dotage.

>Beethoven
emotional incontinence is not art

How? Saying that most artists get worse with later works and that most artists have better and worse periods of their careers is not the same thing.

My butthole has never failed to deliver magnificent turds.

well meme’d top kek here’s an upboat

Most of them.

name 3

Yeats famously wrote his best work after being awarded the Nobel Prize, not before

"Influential and original throughout their careers" is easy if they died young, obviously.

So Purcell, Schubert, Mozart, Chopin, etc, etc in music

Keats, Shelly, Rimbaud, etc in poetry

If you mean, people who lived to 100 and produced top-quality content right up until the day they wrote THE END and keeled over, ok, slightly fewer, but still:

Gabriel Fauré
J.S.Bach
Beethoven
Wagner

for musicians.

Many painters - e.g. Rembrandt, Picasso

Many writers - e.g. W.B.Yeats, Carlyle, Johnson, Dickens, Tolstoy, Robert Graves

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You're technically right. Beethoven is the first 'tortured genius'. Bach and Mozart were natural geniuses. Beethoven ached over every note. He is the first artist to create 'emotional' art. Ever since Beethoven, Art consists of making a statement. Just like everything else, it losts its meaning. I love the freudian interpretation of this. It stems from unresolved trauma during the anal stage, in which a child, discovering feces, will find a perverse joy smearing his shit everywhere, as his first statement against the Other, who will of course condemn his behavior. I love how vulgar and lewd it is, definitely good insights into the true nature of our society.

I actually like Beethoven I was kidding. But still Handel, Haydn, Bach, Mozart, etc. are way better than him. I'm pretty sure Beethoven was aware of this anyway, he has some quote about prostrating before Handel's grave

>That all sounds like they had periods not their entire lives
Which period of any of those do you find to be below genius and not increasing with their age? Sounds like you're having trouble abandoning your prejudices. You should read Nietzsche who follows a similar trajectory.

Hitchcock, Kubrick

>Hitchcock
>cock
lmao. agree Kubrick tho

Flaming Lips, Cronenberg, DeLillo.

nah

Because of momentum and just getting tired of this shit.

Tarkovsky

yeah, consistently shit

angry lanklet detected

>freud
lol

>projecting shortstack 'human'
heh

Goya is a bad example. His earlier work is technically superior to the black paintings, even if it isn't as influential. The black paintings were the product of a mind sinking into madness and disintegration.