John Armstrong

Alain Botton

Two authorities on popular culture reveal the ways in which art can enhance mood and enrich lives - now available in paperback This passionate, thought-provoking, often funny, and always-accessible book proposes a new way of looking at art, suggesting that it can be useful, relevant, and therapeutic. Through practical examples, the world-renowned authors argue that certain great works of art have clues as to how to manage the tensions and confusions of modern life. Chapters on love, nature, money, and politics show how art can help with many common difficulties, from forging good relationships to coming to terms with mortality.

Art as Therapy

Thesa Terheyden

Claudine

The saying 'art for art's sake' specifically rejects the idea that art might be for the sake of anything in particular, and therefore leaves the high status of art mysterious and vulnerable. Despite the esteem art enjoys, its importance is too often assumed rather than explained. Its value is taken to be a matter of common sense. This is highly regrettable, as much for the viewers of art as for its guardians. What if art has a purpose that can be defined and discussed in plain terms? Art can be a tool, and we need to focus more clearly on what kind of tool it is and what good it can do for us.

What we're worried about forgetting, however, tends to be quite particular. It isn't just anything about a person or scene that's at stake; we want to remember what really matters, and the people we call good artists are, in part, the ones who appear to have made the right choices about what to commemorate and what to leave out. 

We might say that the good artwork pins down the core of significance, while its bad counterpart, although undeniably reminding us of something, lets an essence slip away. It is an empty souvenir. 

Today's problems are rarely created by people taking too sunny a view of things; it is because the troubles of the world are so continually brought to our attention that we need tools that can preserve our hopeful dispositions. 

The more difficult our lives, the more a graceful depiction of a Hower might move us. The tears ifthey come - are in response not to how sad the image is, but how pretty. The man who painted a picture of humble, beautiful chrysanthemums in a vase was, as his self-portrait suggests, intensely aware of the tragedy of existence (8,9). The self-portrait should put to rest any worry that the artist has presented us with a cheerful image out of misplaced innocence. Henri Fantin-Latour knew all about tragedy, but his acquaintance with it made him all the more alive to its opposites. Consider the difference between a child playing with an adult and an adult playing with a child. The child's joy is naive, and such joy is a lovely thing. But the adult's joy is placed within a recollection of the tribulations of existence, which makes it poignant. That's what 'moves' us, and sometimes makes us cry. t's a loss if we condemn all art that is gracious and sweet as sentimental and in denial. In fact, such work can only affect us because we know what reality is usually like.

We describe a work of art, which might include a family photograph, as successtul when it manages to foreground the elements that are valuable but hard to hold on to. We might say that the good artwork pins down the core of significance, while its bad counterpart, although undeniably reminding us of something, lets an essence slip away. It is an empty souvenir. 

We might be doomed not by a lack of skill, but by an absence of hope. Today's problems are rarely created by people taking too sunny a view of things; it is because the troubles of the world are so continually brought to our attention that we need tools that can preserve our hopeful dispositions. 

Idealization in art has a bad name because it seems to involve endowing something or someone (a profession, a person) with virtues more glowing than they actually possess, while disguising an, imperfections with polish and subterfuge. In modern use, the notion idealization carries a pejorative charge, as the idealizing artist strips away whatever is awkward or disturbing, leaving only the positive. T worry is that if we are attracted to such simplified objects, if we prais them and take pleasure in them, we will do an injustice to reality. 

Many sad things become worse because we feel we are alone in suffering them. We experience our trouble asa curse, or as revealing our wicked, depraved character. So our suffering has no dignity; it seems due only to our freakish nature. We need help in finding honour in some of our worst experiences, and art is there to lend them a social expression. 

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