How Famous Artists Overcame Creative Block

Although the artists we discuss in this article are considered highly prolific, it turns out the muses turned away from them too. Since creative block can affect not only painters, and sometimes even ordinary mortals find they can't bring themselves to do anything, we invite you to draw inspiration from these stories.

Jackson Pollock

In 1951 Jackson Pollock was at the height of his career, marked by an interview with Life magazine in which the journalist asked whether he was “the greatest living painter in the United States.” Unfortunately, fame also brought many hardships, and the artist sank into depression and alcohol. Out of that period came a new series, “Black Pourings,” which was a major departure from his earlier drip-technique works.

The concept of “creative block” is highly complex. From a psychoanalytic point of view, it means unsuccessful attempts to convey what is happening in the subconscious. It is now hard to say whether Pollock experienced exactly this kind of creative block, but it is clear that his emotional and professional life were deeply intertwined.

“Some say the stylistic changes arose because Pollock felt the need to renew himself and change his means of expression during a difficult period of his life,” says Stephanie Straine, assistant curator at Tate Liverpool, where the artist's works are now on display. “But I think it can be said that all creative people go through a crisis at one time or another.”

Claude Monet

This Impressionist destroyed a great many of his own works, and after the death of his wife Alice in 1911 he painted nothing for two years. The block was broken by a series of rose arches. This arch, in his home in northern France, led into a garden with water ponds. Twenty-two works make up the “Grandes Décorations” series, exhibited at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris. It is one of the most ambitious undertakings of the artist's entire career.

Pablo Picasso

1935 was an extraordinary year for the Cubist – he separated from his wife Olga, who was granted full custody of their son Paulo, while his mistress Marie-Thérèse gave birth to their daughter Maya. “He no longer went up to the studio,” writes Patrick O'Brian in his biography “Picasso.” “He would fly into a rage the moment he caught sight of his paintings and drawings.” The artist took up writing poetry instead, which was later published by the literary magazine “Les Cahiers d'Art.”

Georgia O'Keeffe

In 1933 the Wisconsin-born artist was taken to a hospital in New York. This came after a strenuous period spent painting a mural for Radio City Music Hall. Critics now believe the artist's health was undermined by a fear of public failure and anxiety over her difficult-tempered husband, the photographer Alfred Stieglitz. She then moved to Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, where the landscape, according to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, provided “fresh inspiration.”

Chuck Close

Close is the exception that proves the rule. In 1988, after suffering damage to the anterior spinal artery, he worked more productively than ever before. “Inspiration is for amateurs – the rest of us just show up and get to work,” the artist said in an interview in 2003. “I have never experienced any creative block in my life.”