I await your philosophicalism with great anticipation. Where is the line between insanity and creativity?

There's a line?

It's a very fine but crooked line that's always changing.

Fine line here with Louis Wain who suffered schizophrenia, as to me it is still art, then the following topples over this line with.....

Damien Hurst, although he may just be an attention seeker, and likes the shock value.

Interesting paradox there. Creative is often what insane people have called themselves; insane is what those who don't understand call creative people. Maybe each is a degree of the other.

At what point then, is one a mad genius? Thinking too far outside the box? This is the stuff I traffic in my head, even before the cocktails start coming. . .

Whatever they are, their ranks have had an immeasurable effect on our history, what a boring world it would be without them.

Creative people may be insane and insane people may be creative but I think the difference lies in the eye of the beholder.

I used to work in a building that covered a full city block with a central aisle that passed straight down the middle with open work-spaces on either side. One day I stood watching as one of our people walked down that aisle having a loud argument with himself in two voices. One had a snarling, guttural German accent, the othee was a whining Liverpool (England) accent. His German voice was shredding his apologetic Scouse voice.

The guy alongside me said, "He's insane." And I said, "No, he's brilliant." And so he was.

To me it seems that insanity and creativity are aspects of two parallel lines running side by side, and are by no means part of the same line, so that at one end you are normal and at the other you are bonkers.

They aren't always connected. For those that it is, is when they hurt themselves or others.

It's not a line, it's a region in which the signal to noise ratio varies.

And it's the ration which determines our evaluation---the signal is clearer as the ration grows larger.

But, if you consider the nature of a ration: S / N = Creative / Insanity = C / I  as the Creative increases, the ratio increases.

But the ratio also increases as the insanity increases and the creative remains the same.

So I have given you a possible concept to quantify the issue, but you will have to develop your own reference scale.

Just a mirror thought away.