Artistic imperative and epilepsy of Van Gogh

An examination of the work process of the artist Vincent Van Gogh from a cultural- and medical-historical perspective, this article looks at the role of temporal lobe epilepsy in shaping of the painter's impulse to create, his methodology, and characteristics of his work product. All artists employ disparate methodologies to merge the landscapes of internal and external experience, and the drivers of an individual artist's creativity are multi-fold. In the case of Van Gogh, synthetic aspects of the artistic process, data of personal history and the exigencies of an illness contribute to a dynamic interplay. Previous research has investigated how epileptic activity of right temporal and temporooccipital origin affects the prolongation of dream states. The global repercussions of non-convulsive seizures on self-world relations with respect to the artist and the act of aesthetic creation merit further study.