Provides Both Equilibrium and Aesthetics to a Piece of Art

The question of what fine art is has occupied humanity since the dawn of recorded history. For Tolstoy, the purpose of fine art was to provide a bridge of empathy between us and others, and for Anaïs Nin, a mode to exorcise our emotional excess. Just the highest achievement of fine art might exist something that reconciles the two: a channel of empathy into our ain psychology that lets us both bewitch and better understand our emotions — in other words, a form of therapy.

In

Art as Therapy

(public library), philosopher
Alain de Botton
— who has previously examined such diverse and provocative subjects as why piece of work doesn’t work, what education and the arts tin can learn from organized religion, and how to remember more than most sex — teams upwards with fine art historian
John Armstrong
to examine art’s almost intimate purpose: its ability to mediate our psychological shortcomings and assuage our anxieties nearly imperfection. Their basic proposition is that, far more than than mere aesthetic indulgence, art is a tool — a tool that serves a rather complex nonetheless straightforwardly important purpose in our existence:

Similar other tools, fine art has the ability to extend our capacities across those that nature has originally endowed u.s. with. Art compensates us for sure inborn weaknesses, in this case of the listen rather than the body, weaknesses that nosotros tin refer to as psychological frailties.

De Botton and Armstrong proceed to outline the seven cadre psychological functions of fine art:

1. REMEMBERING

Given the profound flaws of our memory and the unreliability of its self-revision, it’s unsurprising that the fear of forgetting — forgetting specific details about people and places, but too forgetting all the minute, mundane building blocks that fuse together into the general wholeness of who nosotros are — would exist an enormous source of distress for us. Since both memory and fine art are equally much about what is being left out as almost what is existence spotlighted, de Botton and Armstrong argue that fine art offers an antidote to this unease:

What we’re worried almost forgetting … tends to be quite particular. It isn’t just anything about a person or scene that’southward at stake; we desire to remember what actually matters, and the people we call good artists are, in part, the ones who appear to have made the right choices nearly what to communicate and what to get out out. … We might say that adept artwork pins downwardly the cadre of significance, while its bad analogue, although undeniably reminding us of something, lets an essence skid away. Information technology is an empty souvenir.

Art, and so, is not only what rests in the frame, simply is itself a frame for experience:

Art is a way of preserving experiences, of which there are many transient and beautiful examples, and that we need aid containing.

2. Promise

Our conflicted relationship with beauty presents a peculiar paradox: The most universally admired art is of the “pretty” kind — depictions of cheerful and pleasant scenes, faces, objects, and situations — however “serious” art critics and connoisseurs see information technology equally a failure of gustation and of intelligence. (Per Susan Sontag’south memorable definition, the ii are inextricably intertwined anyway:
“Intelligence … is really a kind of sense of taste: taste in ideas.”) De Botton and Armstrong consider the implications:

The love of prettiness is oftentimes deemed a low, even a “bad” response, just because it is so dominant and widespread it deserves attention, and may concur of import clues about a central office of art. … The worries about prettiness are twofold. Firstly, pretty pictures are declared to feed sentimentality. Sentimentality is a symptom of bereft engagement with complexity, by which 1 really means issues. The pretty picture seems to suggest that in order to brand life overnice, i merely has to brighten upwards the apartment with a depiction of some flowers. If we were to enquire the motion picture what is wrong with the world, it might exist taken as proverb ‘you lot don’t have enough Japanese water gardens’ — a response that appears to ignore all the more urgent problems that confront humanity. . . . . The very innocence and simplicity of the flick seems to militate confronting whatsoever attempt to improve life as a whole. Secondly, there is the related fear that prettiness will numb us and leave us insufficiently critical and alert to the injustices surrounding united states.

Just these worries, they argue, are misguided. Optimism, rather than a failure of intelligence, is a disquisitional cerebral and psychoemotional skill in our quest to alive well — something fifty-fifty neuroscience has indicated — and hope, its chariot, is something to cherish, not condemn:

Cheerfulness is an accomplishment, and hope is something to celebrate. If optimism is of import, it’s considering many outcomes are determined past how much of it we bring to the task. It is an important ingredient of success. This flies in the confront of the aristocracy view that talent is the primary requirement of a good life, but in many cases the difference between success and failure is adamant by nothing more than than our sense of what is possible and the energy we can muster to convince others of our due. We might exist doomed not by a lack of skill, but by an absenteeism of hope.

Put only and poignantly, information technology pays to “imagine immensities.”

They offer an example:

The dancers in Matisse’s painting are not in denial of the troubles of this planet, but from the standpoint of our imperfect and conflicted — but ordinary — relationship with reality, nosotros can look to their attitude for encouragement. They put usa in affect with a blithe, carefree office of ourselves that can aid us cope with inevitable rejections and humiliations. The moving-picture show does not suggest that all is well, whatever more than it suggests that women ever please in each other’s existence and bond together in mutually supportive networks.

Then nosotros return to why prettiness sings to us:

The more hard our lives, the more a svelte depiction of a flower might move us. The tears — if they come — are in response not to how distressing the prototype is, only how pretty.

[…]

We should exist able to enjoy an ideal epitome without regarding it equally a false movie of how things usually are. A cute, though partial, vision can be all the more precious to us considering we are and then aware of how rarely life satisfies our desires.

3. SORROW

Since we’re creatures of infinite inner contradiction, art can help us exist more whole not but by expanding our capacity for positive emotions just as well by helping usa to fully inhabit and metabolize the negative — and by doing so with dignity and by reminding us “of the legitimate place of sorrow in a expert life”:

I of the unexpectedly important things that art tin can do for u.s.a. is teach us how to suffer more successfully. … We tin can come across a great deal of artistic achievement as “sublimated” sorrow on the role of the artist, and in turn, in its reception, on the part of the audience. The term sublimation derives from chemistry. It names the process by which a solid substance is directly transformed into a gas, without first becoming liquid. In art, sublimation refers to the psychological processes of transformation, in which base and unimpressive experiences are converted into something noble and fine — exactly what may happen when sorrow meets art.

To a higher place all, de Botton and Armstrong argue, fine art helps us experience less lonely in our suffering, to which the social expression of our private sorrows lends a kind of affirmative dignity. They offering an example in the work of lensman Nan Goldin, who explored the lives of the queer community with equal parts curiosity and respect long before champions like Andrew Sullivan first pulled the politics of homosexuality into the limelight of mainstream cultural discourse:

Until far likewise recently, homosexuality lay largely exterior the province of art. In Nan Goldin’s work, it is, redemptively, one of its central themes. Goldin’s fine art is filled with a generous considerateness towards the lives of its subjects. Although we might not exist conscious of it at first, her photo of a immature and, as we discern, lesbian woman examining herself in the mirror is equanimous with utmost intendance. The device of reflection is fundamental. In the room itself the woman is out of focus; nosotros don’t see her straight, just the side of her face up an and the blur or a hand. The accent is on the make-up she has just been using. It is in the mirror that we meet her as she wants to be seen: striking and fashionable, her hand suave and eloquent. The piece of work of art functions like a kindly vocalisation that says, “I meet you every bit you promise to be seen, I run across you lot as worthy of dear.” The photograph understands the longing to become a more polished and elegant version of oneself. Information technology sounds, of course, an entirely obvious wish; only for centuries, partly because there were no Goldins, information technology was anything but.

Therein, they contend, lies 1 of fine art’southward greatest gifts:

Art can offering a thou and serious vantage point from which to survey the travails of our status.

4. REBALANCING

With our fluid selves, clusters of tormenting contradictions, and culture of prioritizing productivity over presence, no wonder we find ourselves in demand of recentering. That’s precisely what art tin can offer:

Few of us are entirely well balanced. Our psychological histories, relationships and working routines mean that our emotions tin can incline grievously in i direction or another. We may, for example, take a tendency to exist as well complacent, or too insecure; too trusting, or too suspicious; too serious, or too low-cal-hearted. Art can put usa in touch with concentrated doses of our missing dispositions, and thereby restore a measure of equilibrium to our list inner selves.

This role of art too helps explain the vast diversity of our aesthetic preferences — because our individual imbalances differ, and then do the artworks we seek out to soothe them:

Why are some people drawn to minimalist compages and others to Baroque? Why are some people excited past bare concrete walls and others by William Morris’s floral patterns? Our tastes will depend on what spectrum of our emotional brand-up lies in shadow and is hence in need of stimulation and emphasis. Every work of art is imbued with a detail psychological and moral atmosphere: a painting may exist either serene or restless, courageous or conscientious, modest or confident, masculine or feminine, conservative or aristocratic, and our preferences for one kind over another reflect our varied psychological gaps. We hunger for artworks that will compensate for our inner fragilities and help render usa to a feasible mean. We call a work beautiful when it supplies the virtues we are missing, and we dismiss every bit ugly one that forces on united states of america moods or motifs that we feel either threatened or already overwhelmed by. Art holds out the hope of inner wholeness.

Viewing art from this perspective, de Botton and Armstrong argue, also affords us the necessary cocky-awareness to understand why we might respond negatively to a piece of fine art — an insight that might foreclose us from reactive disparagement. Being able to recognize what someone lacks in lodge to detect an artwork beautiful allows us to embody that essential practice of prioritizing understanding over cocky-righteousness. In this respect, fine art is also a tuning — and apologetic — mechanism for our moral virtues. In fact, some of history’due south most celebrated art is anchored on moralistic missions — what de Botton and Armstrong call “an effort to encourage our better selves through coded messages of exhortation and admonition” — to which we oft reply with resistance and indignation. But such reactions miss the bigger point:

Nosotros might remember of works of art that exhort as both bossy and unnecessary, only this would assume an encouragement of virtue would e’er be reverse to our ain desires. However, in reality, when we are at-home and not under burn, most of us long to be good and wouldn’t listen the odd reminder to be so; nosotros only can’t detect the motivation day to day. In relation to our aspirations to goodness, we suffer from what Aristotle called
akrasia, or weakness of volition. Nosotros want to behave well in our relationships, but slip upward under force per unit area. We want to make more of ourselves, but lose motivation at a critical juncture. In these circumstances, we can derive enormous do good from works of art that encourage us to exist the best versions of ourselves, something that we would only resent if nosotros had a manic fearfulness of outside intervention, or thought of ourselves as perfect already.

The all-time kind of cautionary fine art — art that is moral without being “moralistic” — understands how like shooting fish in a barrel information technology is to be attracted to the incorrect things.

[…]

The task for artists, therefore, is to observe new ways of prying open our eyes to tiresomely familiar, simply critically important, ideas well-nigh how to lead a balanced and practiced life.

They summarize this role of art beautifully:

Art tin can save u.s.a. time — and save our lives — through opportune and visceral reminders of balance and goodness that we should never presume nosotros know enough nearly already.

5. SELF-Agreement

Despite our all-time efforts at self-sensation, we’re all as well often partial or complete mysteries to ourselves. Art, de Botton and Armstrong advise, tin help shed low-cal on those least explored nooks of our psyche and brand palpable the hunches of intuition we tin can only sense but not articulate:

We are not transparent to ourselves. Nosotros accept intuitions, suspicions, hunches, vague musings, and strangely mixed emotions, all of which resist uncomplicated definition. We accept moods, but we don’t really know them. Then, from time to time, we encounter works of art that seem to latch on to something we have felt but never recognized clearly before. Alexander Pope identified a central function of verse every bit taking thoughts we feel half-formed and giving them clear expression: “what was ofttimes thought, merely ne’er then well expressed.” In other words, a avoiding and elusive office of our ain thinking, our own experience, is taken upward, edited, and returned to us ameliorate than it was earlier, so that we feel, at last, that we know ourselves more than clearly.

More than than that, they debate, the self-knowledge art bequeaths gives us a linguistic communication for communicating that to others — something that explains why we are then particular about the kinds of art with which we surroundings ourselves publicly, a sort of self-packaging we all do as much on the walls of our homes as we practise on our Facebook walls and fine art Tumblrs. While the cynic might interpret this equally mere showing off, however, de Botton and Armstrong peel away this superficial interpretation to reveal the deeper psychological motive — our desire to communicate to others the subtleties of who nosotros are and what nosotros believe in a fashion that words might never fully capture.

6. GROWTH

Besides inviting deeper knowledge of our own selves, fine art as well allows the states to expand the boundaries of who we are by helping us overcome our chronic fear of the unfamiliar and living more richly past inviting the unknown:

Engagement with art is useful considering it presents the states with powerful examples of the kind of alien material that provokes defensive boredom and fearfulness, and allows us time and privacy to learn to deal more than strategically with information technology. An important first step in overcoming defensiveness effectually art is to become more open near the strangeness that we feel in certain contexts.

De Botton and Armstrong propose three disquisitional steps to overcoming our defensiveness around art: First, acknowledging the strangeness nosotros feel and being gentle on ourselves for feeling information technology, recognizing that it’s completely natural — after all, then much art comes from people with worldviews radically different from, and often contradictory to, our own; 2nd, making ourselves familiar and thus more at home with the very minds who created that alien art; finally, looking for points of connexion with the artist, “nevertheless fragile and initially tenuous,” and so nosotros can relate to the piece of work that sprang from the context of their life with the personal reality of our own context.

seven. APPRECIATION

Our attending, as we know, is “an intentional, unapologetic discriminator” that blinds the states to so much of what is around us and to the magic in our familiar surroundings. Art, de Botton and Armstrong contend, can lift these blinders and so we tin can truly absorb not but simply what we’re expecting to see, but also what nosotros aren’t:

One of our major flaws, and causes of unhappiness, is that we find it hard to take note of what is always around us. Nosotros endure because we lose sight of the value of what is before us and yearn, frequently unfairly, for the imagined attraction elsewhere.

While addiction tin can be a remarkable life-centering force, it is also a double-edged sword that tin piece off a whole range of experiences every bit we fall into autopilot mode. Fine art can decondition our habituation to what is wonderful and worthy of rejoicing:

Art is one resource that tin can lead us back to a more authentic assessment of what is valuable past working against addiction and inviting us to recalibrate what we admire or love.

Ane example they offer comes from Jasper Johns’s famous bronze-cast beer cans, which nudge united states to look at a mundane and familiar object with new eyes:

The heavy, costly material they are fabricated of makes us newly enlightened of their separateness and oddity: we come across them as though we had never laid eyes on cans before, acknowledging their intriguing identifies as a child or a Martian, both gratuitous of addiction in this area, might naturally do.

Johns is instruction united states a lesson: how to wait with kinder and more than alert eyes at the world around us.

Such is the ability of art: It is both witness to and celebrator of the value of the ordinary, which we so frequently abdicate in our quests for artificial greatness, a kind of resensitization tool that awakens the states to the richness of our daily lives:

[Art] tin can teach us to be more but towards ourselves as nosotros endeavor to make the best of our circumstances: a job we exercise non always love, the imperfections of middle age, our frustrated ambitions and our attempts to stay loyal to irritable only loved spouses. Art tin can exercise the opposite of glamorizing the unattainable; information technology can reawaken united states of america to the genuine merit of life equally we’re forced to lead it.

The balance of

Art as Therapy

goes on to examine such eternal questions every bit what makes good art, what kind of art one should brand, how art should exist displayed, studied, bought and sold, and a heartening wealth more than. Complement it with 100 ideas that changed fine art.