The Neurology of Creativity

William Utermohlen (1933-2007) was a prolific, American artist who was based in London for the majority of his career, he primarily had a romantic figurative focus that was often at odds with the burgeoning of Pop Art, hard edged Abstraction and the recession of Abstract Expressionism of the 1960's.

His oeuvre is characterised by rich symbolic narratives working with his love of (and amazing abilities with) the human figure. Along with this - as seems typical with all the 'great' artists - was a fascination with self portraits. Think Rembrandt and his 90+ self portraits and more contemporary to Utermohlen, the Pop Art guru himself Andy Warhol who used himself often as a subject. (This is obviously just a couple of well known examples and self-portraiture is a VAST topic).

It is within Utermohlen's self portraits that neurologists have found evidence of the degeneration associated with his diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, specifically its effects on his artistic abilities (he was diagnosed at 60 years old). Alzheimer's disease can be referred to as a 'global dementia', it is a brain disorder that is progressive, aggressive and eventually fatal. The disease does effect mostly people over 65 but sadly it does occur under this age. The progress of the disease results in anatomical atrophy and death of neurons and white matter, the brain becomes riddle with what are termed 'plaques and tangles' which are basically malfunctioning proteins that we all have - but in these individuals they begin to destroy the neurons and consequently their function. Apart from this anatomical atrophy and death there are distinct  and marked cognitive and behavioural changes that affect the individual and consequently all they do and those aroudn them.

The disease is notable for its distinct memory impairments, attention and executive impairments (crudely explained as the 'control' and coordinating functions of the brain) and most relevant here, visuospatial and constructional abilities.  Patients with AD start to develop difficulty with tasks with any constructional components (so things like trying to copy a shape/object and even worse trying to draw from memory) and with visual perceptual abilities. So object recognition (and understanding their function) can fail - there are cases of individuals who can know what they are looking for e.g. their keys and not only can they not remember where they put them but even if they see them cannot recognise them for what they are - their keys - and they can lose touch with what they do too - open the door.  The constructional deficits result in drawings that lack spatial awareness or accurate relationships within themselves and with other objects, 3 dimensional space becomes harder to understand and represent for these patients. 

These degenerations  (and many others - this is just touching the murky and sad surface) in visuospatial and constructions have been measured in the progress of Utermohlen's disorder within his art practice. The interesting and brilliant thing, maybe the glimmer of something beautiful within something so devastating - is that his drive to create and to express himself artistically did not fade away - even towards the latter stages of his disease, when his technical abilities had declined to almost nil - his drive to be creative seemed to be intact. 

His self portraits seem to show the steady decline in his artistic abilities and skills that were such measures of his work prior to his diagnosis - his realist figurative depictions demanded a finely tuned awareness of intricate details and their relations to each other as well as to the 'whole'.

And although it would be easy to say that these changes could have been artistically motivated and could be a change in style (keeping in mind this period did see forms of abstraction become key and a decline in attempts to represent objects and subjects in the 'real world') - sadly the artist himself and his wife were well aware that these changes were not within his control. He was trying as hard as he always had - but just could not depict his world in the same way.

Keeping this in mind there did become a time where the artist consciously moved into these abstractions of form - a move that is claimed to be him realising the restrictions of his abilities (but this can also fit within concepts and changes of this art period. A period that saw the decline and (allegedly) the 'death' of painting - especially figurative and representative works.) The focus becomes reduced colour and shape and its ability to evoke and express concepts, . Think Rothko - who interestingly suffered from depression and has had his works and style interpreted as an expression and maybe even a symptom of this and Mondrian. Utermohlen's later works become noticably disjointed and took several attempts to 'get right', with him rubbing out and trying to erase his earlier 'incorrect' attempts - until eventually he gave up in a sense; realising that he would not be able to correct what was necessary to improve it - because sadly he wasn't able to know what was wrong anymore.

Amongst his declining technical abilities was also of course the emotional experience he endured throughout this time (an artistic period of around 5 years). Depression and other mood disorders are commonly found within individuals diagnosed with AD - as a result of changes caused by the disorder as well as because of it. And Utermohlen still strove to (and clearly managed) to use his symbolism and expressiveness within his art to convey his emotive states and experience with AD. According to his Art Historian wife this was a consequence of his degeneration and his struggle with losing something of such value to him - something that defined him as a person.

The neural changes that were found within his disease and decline were common degenerations and correlate with his specific symptoms and their declines - atrophy in the hippocampal regions and reduced matter in the higher cortical functions through into the temporal and frontal regions. 

What is interesting and paramount here is that his artistic drive and spontaneous attempts to create art was (for the most part)spared - despite the decline in his technical ability to create like he had - his drive and motivation to express his creativity and his experiences and emotions did not fail him. (In a 'sciencey' sense this is interesting because it seems to show some 'cognitive reserve' within these regions, some flexibility and individual variation within the disorder). This seems to imply that their is a region or network or collaboration of both that drives ones drive and motivation to be creative that is quite separate from ones ability to techinically do so (see my last blog as to why I'm looking in to this.)
This is something I find incredibly interesting and beautiful - the idea that there is a part of our brain that drives us and motivates us to draw and paint and photograph and craft and all the other million ways to express oneself. A part of us that is innately separate from and not defined by our technical virtuosity - may be we don't all have this part - but those of us that do can take heart. Not being great at the 'final product' of creativity does not have to define whether or not you are creative!

Some readings and further info!
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11445128
http://www.williamutermohlen.org