Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Lili is the laziest gal in town - list of famous synesthetes

I've been thinking about adding a couple of new names to my list of famous synaesthetes for months now, but thinking and doing are two different things. An interesting pair they are for sure: novelist and mirror-touch synaesthete Siri Hustvedt and the Swiss/German painter and all-round odd duck Paul Klee, a possible case of personification-type synaesthesia. "Degenerate" and "schizophrenic" are two labels that have been attached to Klee, (the latter not a clinical diagnosis but a disputed speculation). Geniuses always get more than their fair share of flack. Review of autobiographical book by Hustvedt from The Observer Feb 2010 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/07/shaking-woman-siri-hustvedt-review Book that includes chapters about 2 synaesthete artists, Kandinsky and Klee: Weber, Nicholas Fox (2009) The Bauhaus group: six masters of modernism. Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.

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