What Happened to Nadia? Cave Art, Autism and the Creative Process

In 1999 Nicholas Humphreys published an article where he put forward his hypothesis that “language was absent in the general population of human beings living in Europe 30,000 years ago”[1]. He cites the remarkable drawings of an autistic savant called Nadia Chomyn from Nottingham, England, born in 1967 who was unable to speak or otherwise communicate (she is described as being “mentally defective” and “severely retarded)  but despite this, or inspite of this, could draw extraordinary representations of animals and humans from memory, from the age of 3 to 9, a skill which supposedly became less profound as she learnt to speak. His conclusion was that language was not vital for artistic ability and indeed perhaps language inhibited those skills, and that therefore, the cave paintings did not have to be the result of a modern mind as had been previously thought. The skills of Nadia are pivotal in his argument.

I came across the story of Nadia when studying for my M.A. World Art History in 2005 from my then supervisor John Onians who would often refer to the child Nadia, who was in some ways, famous; there had been articles written about her, a book published on her, and even a documentary film made. Artists too had seen the brilliance in her work, Graham Sutherland said “The drawings strike me as being very remarkable indeed from many points of view ... not least for the extraordinary precision displayed.”.

From what I remember from our conversations, John Onians, saw the connection of a child who could automatically and spontaneously draw without being taught, and without having language and other neurotypical brains functions, with the prehistoric artist who walked into a cave and (according to his thesis) spontaneously produced extraordinary art, again without being tutored or taught, and also without the modern mind of language, syntax etc. It implies a more neurological, even animal-like process rather than the sophisticated processes we would normally associate with the production of “art”. I have to say that I rather liked the neatness of the neurological explanation.

Twenty years later, I find myself still intrigued in this paper, and the possible neurological basis of the creative process. For me, the paper inspires in me a line of thought, even though it argues against it, the possibility that autism played a part in the origins of art in prehistory. This to me is an interesting window into the creative process, with this process being a neurological pathway which is inherently neurodiverse, rather than saying that a lack of language could predispose a high level of art.

It brings me back to the statement by the Neurobiologist Semir Zeki, that:

“Artists [and musicians] are neurologists, studying the brain with techniques that are unique to them”[2]

Are artists and musicians’ brains wired differently? They cannot all be autistic of course…or can they? It is a spectrum after all…

In my mind there must be some sort of neurodiversity at play with the great artists and musicians and I can’t help thinking that Leonardo’s inability to finish many of the projects that he worked on, and his apparent loathing of certain aspects of humanity, and his love of animals puts him in the autistic spectrum, perhaps with attention deficit.

Leonardo’s creative ability worked on the same process of the cave paintings, Leonardo would sketch over and over again on the same piece of paper, and in the jumbled incoherent mess, pick out a composition to refine; whilst the prehistoric artist may well have seen animals in the convoluted shadowy walls of the caves which helped to inspire them.

Then again Leonardo may be the exception rather than the rule, just as Nadia was the exception rather than the rule, and maybe the artist of Chauvet Cave was too. Perhaps they were just all unique individuals in which we glimpse in a sort snap-shot of history. 

In terms of the cave paintings and Humphrey’s paper, I don’t think we can categorically disprove the existence of language in prehistory at the time of the cave paintings, but I think the link between neurodiversity and creative genius compelling – not just for academic research into the origins of art and for art history, but how we teach and support the neurodiverse children in our neurotypical world.

Getting back to Nadia and what happened to her. Despite the international interest, Nadia’s extraordinary drawing abilities declined as she grew older and she lived the rest of her life quietly in residential accommodation, supervised and supported, unable to live independently. She died in 2015 at the age of 48. Her drawings, perhaps valued more for their scientific worth rather then their value as art, are kept in a Hospital Museum and Archive in London [3]. And that, for some reason, makes me sad.

But perhaps my own autistic brain function and my sensitivity to neurodiversity makes me feel somewhat protective of her, she is part of the same spectrum that I exist in after-all, and perhaps I feel somewhat guilty too, that I used her as an example in a blog, as a scientific subject, and only at the end of writing this remembered her humanity and asked myself the important question: what actually happened to Nadia?

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[1] Humphrey N (1999) Cave Art, Autism, and the Human Mind in the Journal of Consciousness Studies Vol.6 (1999) Ed. By Joseph Goguen, Imprint Academic

[2] Zeki S (1999) Art and the Brain in the Journal of Consciousness Studies Vol.6 (1999) Ed. By Joseph Goguen, Imprint Academic. [The addition of “musicians” is from a personal communication in 2005]

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/dec/09/nadia-chomyn