Of course people can beleive what they wish. It's an interesting discussion nonetheless.
My point is that artists ( same as any other human ) need to learn from those around them and from who preceded them.
This is the only way you can ever become proficient at any art form. Once you have some basics learned then of course you can decide to rely on your own resources and stagnate in your own mind or you can continue to learn. If you decide to isolate then you are relying totally on the adequacy of what you’ve learned in the past to propel you and how much you’ve picked up will largely decide how far ahead from mediocrity you might be able to go.
I accept that, in this age with it’s emphasis on autodidacticism, and self-absorption some might find this uncomfortable to embrace and tend to romanticise the belief of an artist as an individual divorced from society. I find this preposterous.
I know a bit more about music than painting so to take the examples you give, I’d point out that even if you look at the exceptional talents of such men of genius this applies.
There was nothing wrong with Mozart’s hearing. He studied with Haydn and was exposed and worked with musical production via his father and the various courts of Europe during his lifetime. He was a gregarious and sociable man until his death.
Even though Beethoven was unfortunately deaf in later life, and this enforced some degree of social isolation, he wasn’t happy about it and didn’t see it as something to be desired. He railed against it and continued to try and conduct and perform despite it. In any case he had learned about music before that, and he didn’t learn to write music and hone his talents on his own.
His resume is that he was a singer in a choir in his youth, which is pretty colloborative, and he then studied formally under the court composer for the Emperor, Joseph II brother IIRC. He worked in the Bonn Opera, interacted with court musicians and played in the orchestra. During his entire lifetime he used the learning he’d acquired from other musicians who’d gone before him. Some of his influences included Mozart whom he admired greatly, Bach, Germanic folk music, and a style of the time, of using piano ( quiet ) and forte ( loud ) contrasts in music - it’s name currently escapes me but it was pretty popular at the time. Through all this time he played for patrons, and collaborated with other musicians.
I could go on, but you get the point.
I don’t know very much about painting but Van Gogh was heavily influenced by the impressionists whom he learned from and then reacted against. He met and interacted fully with artists in Paris who were part of the avant grade movement where he took many ideas and had a long friendship and artistic dialogue with Gauguin. He would never have produced anything if he hadn’t been exposed to other artists’ work and ideas.
Drunkenness and madness are handicaps but the people you mention overcame these and still were involved in dialogue with others. Just because you write something alone in your cellar at 2 am, drunk and mad, doesn’t mean you could have done it without having been inspired and educated through contact with others.
The point is we all need the influences of others and the dialogue of ideas to grow. None of them was born knowing how to make music or paint or relied on their own ideas. They all depended on ideas of others.
Lone workers are an impossibility and the extent to which they allow themselves to be exposed to influences other than their own egos largely determines the level to which they are able to rise above mediocrity. This idea of the “lone genius” fits pretty well with the tabloid romance of art but in reality it doesn’t fly at all.
Now I'm off to record some music I invented all by myself in my own world and without any help from anyone
