Welcome to this MAD issue of LYF!
The madness that we are referring to here is not necessarily the meaning attributed to the term in mental pathology. Here, we are interested in the madness that leads to creative genius, tied to a sensitivity that is out of the ordinary, one that sees beyond reason and logic, and is separated from what norms defi ne as “acceptable”.
Art, history, and literature have always depicted madness and its different forms and meanings; from ancient street performers, to Dostoevskij and Pirandello novels, from Erasmus of Rotterdam and Cervantes to cursed poets, and still, from Leonardo da Vinci to Van Gogh, where madness points its fi nger at the ego and desires, and the purest expressions of the individual.
Art shows us the existence of something that is beyond the conventional norm, raising its voice against “compliance at all costs” and rejection of the perfectly integrated fearing transgressive creativity and solitary originality whose desires are conditioned by collective misery and limited by the deceptions of appearance.
Madness is therefore an exaltation that reveals the deeper nature of the individual, a glimpse of consciousness and an escape to a fantasy world where anything is possible. What is the act of a madman but a clear expression of the mind and desires, without much pre-meditation?
We wanted to capture the fascinating nature of a delirious vision of reality, we wore the clothes of Don Chisciotte in his fi ght against the windmills, of Henry IV who pretends to be crazy to escape a disappointing world, Orlando Furioso who loses his judgement for love, Vitangelo Moscarda in Pirandello’s novel Uno, Nessuno, Centomila who discovers that the personality of men is not one, but multiple, and that each person is not one, but a hundred thousand; as many as the images that others make of him.
Once again, our designer friends have given us a wonderful glimpse into their mad visions and their private life, and for this, we thank them.
As Marcel Proust wrote: “All the greatest things we know have come to us from neurotics. It is they and they only who have founded religions and created great works of art. Never will the world be conscious of how much it owes to them, nor above all of what they have suffered in order to bestow their gifts upon it.”
Happy reading!
