Overview
The twentieth and twenty-first centuries have witnessed an unprecedented convergence of neuroscience, psychology, and art history. As medical understanding of migraine aura developed—particularly through the work of Oliver Sacks and contemporary neurology—the possibility of tracing direct connections between migraine phenomena and artistic innovation became conceptually possible in new ways.
The modern artists in this section represent several distinct relationships to migraine. Some, like Giorgio de Chirico, are the subjects of rigorous neurological analysis demonstrating how migraine aura likely shaped the fundamental characteristics of Metaphysical Art. Others, like Georgia O’Keeffe, explicitly documented their migraine experiences and their role in artistic creation. Still others, like Yayoi Kusama, have transformed the lived experience of migraine and related hallucinations into monumental artistic projects that invite viewers to inhabit migraine’s perceptual world.
These works demonstrate that migraine is not merely a historical curiosity or a marginal factor in artistic history, but a generative force that continues to shape contemporary visual culture.