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Frida Kahlo (2023), Kosta Morr, Acrylic on Canvas, 60x60 cm
Can art heal? What may have seemed poetic or marginal is now a fact shared by many scientists, health professionals, and cultural figures.
In November 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) unequivocally confirmed in a report that art can be beneficial for both physical and mental health. European member states thus recognize the important role of culture in the development of health and well-being throughout life.
For more than three decades, neuroscience studies have demonstrated the positive effects of the arts on the brain. Neurobiologist Jean-Pierre Changeux, the father of the neuroscience of art, notes: "Beauty is essential to human beings because it makes us feel good." Neurologist Pierre Lamarquis, author of the book "The Art That Heals Memory," states: "The arts provide psychological, but also physiological, social, and behavioral , by providing a feeling of well-being. They activate the senses, stimulate the imagination, emotions, and intellectual functions, improve social interactions, and even, in some cases, physical activity." Clinical studies using magnetic resonance imaging have proven the effects of contemplating a work of art on the brain. Pierre Lamarquis explains: "When faced with a work of art that we appreciate, the brain will begin to secrete several hormones. ... Dopamine, involved in movement, ... Serotonin, the famous happiness hormone, has antidepressant properties. As for endorphins, they relieve our pain. Finally, when we come into with artistic contemplation, we secrete oxytocin, the molecule of attachment and love.
Create, contemplate: a gentle medicine for the mind 3j675l
keith_haring_2, Keith Haring, limited edition
The arts awaken intellectual functions, stir emotions, and stimulate the imagination. Singing, dancing, modeling, writing, cutting, painting, etc. Engaging in a creative act, whatever it may be, is already taking care of oneself. From the lullaby whispered to a child to the theater performance, including the latest concert we attend or visits to an exhibition, each artistic form in which we participate has a beneficial effect on our mental health. It allows us to better inhabit our world.
Beyond the personal well-being that arts attendance provides in reducing stress, anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder, culture helps us escape isolation. Art enriches social interactions, builds connections, encourages dialogue, and has benefits for social cohesion and the reduction of inequalities: "Racism, feminism, democracy, freedom, the role of a museum is to bring us, in a very peaceful, very empathetic, and unifying way, to question ourselves and meet on delicate, sometimes difficult subjects," explains Nathalie Bondil, director of the museum of the Arab World Institute and a pioneering voice in the role that cultural institutions have to play in mental health.
During the pandemic, while at the helm of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Nathalie Bondil initiated the first "museum prescriptions" in partnership with the Association of French-speaking Doctors. The concept of museum therapy was born. In , the "Louvre-Lens-Thérapie" program invites participants to "experience a moment of introspection with works of art." In Montpellier, psychiatrist Philippe Courget established "Art on Prescription," now accessible to of the Dépression association. In Paris, psychotherapist Marjan Abadie developed Mindful Art, a meditative practice for approaching works in a way that is both personal and universal, with serenity and openness. Initiatives are flourishing everywhere. Isabelle Sentis, founder of Fabric'Art Thérapie, invites everyone to explore their creative potential to help patients resolve disorders or pathologies through art.
When artists transform pain into beauty 4r2c2i
The Nudes: Blue Nude IV (2007) Henri Matisse, limited edition
Suffering from polio, the famous Mexican artist Frida Kahlo turned her suffering into the driving force behind her creativity. Her torso crushed in a tram accident, she painted her self-portraits lying down, a mirror suspended above her.
The young Frenchman Henri Matisse, who had never visited a museum, discovered painting while ill and bedridden. He abandoned his notary studies to become an artist. Later, bedridden and convalescing, he created his famous cut-out works and chose to celebrate life through color. He confided in 1954: "I want an art of balance, of purity, which neither worries nor disturbs; I want the tired, exhausted man to experience calm and rest in front of my painting."
French artist Louise Bourgeois overcomes the trauma of her childhood spent with a toxic and adulterous father by producing a monumental and exorcistic work that questions the place of women in the domestic sphere.
Hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital with a diagnosis of severe depression and schizophrenia, French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle later revealed the causes were linked to the rape she suffered at the age of 11 at the hands of her father. Her entire body of work is haunted by this trauma. Self-taught, she uses the creative act as a source of resilience. Creating becomes liberating.
Bedridden following a motorcycle accident, Japanese producer, director and actor Takeshi Kitano paints captivating creatures, half animal, half flower, on his hospital bed.
Many artists find in the artistic act a way to be reborn. Their works are cries, songs, testimonies. Bridges built between themselves and the world.
Art, a mirror to see ourselves better 3r1r3h
Images are mirrors that help us see more clearly within ourselves. From the enigma of the rock art discovered in the Lascaux caves, to the Ex Voto created to sublimate and endure pain, to the visionary and geometric images produced under the influence of hallucinogenic beverages by the shamans of the Americas, to the Tibetan mandalas believed to promote awakening and enlightenment, or the colored sand paintings of the Navajo Medicine Man, Man pursues his ambition to restore and maintain his inner balance.
From Hieronymus Bosch to Albrecht Dürer, from Michelangelo to Leonardo da Vinci, from Paul Verlaine to Charles Baudelaire, artists use their creative talent to bear witness to their time, stimulate reflection, and be reborn. Humanity has never ceased to create to give form to its fears, its hopes, its pain. Art has always been a means of inhabiting the invisible, of engaging in dialogue with oneself and others.
Psychiatrist Jean-Pierre Klein summarizes the approach of art therapy, also known as "cultural mediation": "Art therapy is a for people experiencing difficulties (psychological, physical, social or existential) through their artistic productions: plastic, sound, theatrical, literary, physical and dance works." Art becomes language when words are no longer enough.
Niki de Saint Phalle, Marie Pascale Martins, Acrylic on Canvas, 100x50 cm
Art in the hospital 2m1g6f
Visual artist Jean Dubuffet created the sculpture "The Welcoming Man," commissioned by the Robert Debré Hospital in Paris, which welcomes sick children upon their arrival. The artist was also a major collector of outsider art, particularly that of the self-taught Swiss artist Aloïse Corbaz, who produced a prolific body of work during her time in a psychiatric hospital.
Keith Haring, a New York graffiti artist committed to helping disadvantaged children and fighting AIDS, volunteered to create the colorful fresco that adorns the fire escape of Necker Hospital in Paris. Like Matisse, who believed that colors have a positive effect on the psyche, Keith Haring uses red to encourage action and energy, sunny yellow to inspire joy, and blue to relax and encourage reflection.
The virtues of art on health 1k732a
This feeling of well-being in front of a work of art, this peace felt when creating with one's own hands—is now demonstrated by science. Works of art enter into us, blending into our memories, reviving our recollections; like mirrors, they resonate and create an aesthetic empathy that Aristotle and Sigmund Freud called "catharsis."
Neuroscience affirms the virtues of art on health, and what if the most beautiful prescription was simply to frequent art, without moderation? Visit a museum, listen to a concert, create with your hands... It is perhaps there, in this sensitive and free space, that one of the most powerful remedies is hidden: one that heals the body while taking care of the soul.
Sonia Perrin
