Alain de Botton: Art as Therapy

art what's a good for well according to Alain de Botton plenty he says art can help us find happiness forge good relationships and come to terms with our own mortality but can we really find that peering into a painting here now to help us answer that we welcome back Alain de Botton philosopher and co-author of art as therapy he's also the co curator of the exhibition series of the same name that is currently taking place at the Art Gallery of Ontario welcome back thank you so much nice to have an exhibit at the AG Oh huh it's such a treat and they've been so nice okay we're going to be talking about the importance of art but I want to unpack the title of your book a little bit first why does art have a therapeutic value okay it's a little shocking to say that art has a therapeutic value because we've grown up with this world and it's very odd we're nice and intelligent people will tell you things like art has no purpose art is there just for art's sake and sometimes when you go into museums you think hmm what am I supposed to think what am I supposed to do because it's almost like no one's really telling you it's just arts very important but no one quite knows what it's for and I think that that's a real problem I think it's possible to say what it's for and the argument put forward in the book is that art is to be therapeutic now what does that mean therapeutic I don't mean like lying on the couch five days a week and spilling out your childhood I mean in the therapeutic in the loose sense like we would say a vacation was therapeutic or this book reading a book was therapeutic or seeing my mother was therapeutic so another's generally enhances life in a huge variety of ways anything from you know we'll deal with a little melancholy to make you deliriously happy to you know may lender some interesting thoughts so in other words it's it just what we wanted to do with the book was to draw attention to the way in which art can be made to answer for its purpose so even though people will often resist the idea that art is useful it is actually useful you can say actually that's a really useful picture for this or if you look at this sculpture imagine getting this out of it or that out of it and it sounds odd because we we've just allow ourselves to fall into this trap that arts kind of got no purpose for most of human history art was very closely identified with the purpose during the Christian era in the West the whole point of our doll is Beautiful altarpieces etcetera it was all made as propaganda for the church then there's lots of propaganda for governments then there's lots of propaganda for individuals and wealthy families etc and I think you can still look at a lot of art and say it's got an agenda it's got something it wants to teach you to show you to move you and that's not always a problem it's just that we stop talking about it that way we're going to look at some pieces a little later and talk about their therapeutic value if I can put it that way but you know a lot of people are resistant to go into museums because someone has told them what is and isn't good art or that is bad art and the pressure on the individual to have knowledge and information to know what good art is is overwhelming so who gets decide what is it isn't good art or bad art for that matter I mean I think you're actually right people often feel quite uncomfortable in in museums especially large impressive kind of galleries and I think the thought is what am I supposed to do here so you come up against I don't know okay canvas about something and you look at the caption it tells you this was painted and X by the painter Y and it was bought and sold Barbra but it doesn't really tell you very much else and when we were at the book and did the show we were actually quite inspired by children's education in art because I think often what happens in the way that children are taught art is that they're often given a very simple task in relation to us so group of children will you know thus that sit in front of a painting and the teacher will go is there a dog in this picture and turn will go yeah there is there you know by the tree over there and like something they're looking out for a dog so they've got something that they want from the picture and the teachers put an idea in their head and has enabled them to have a relationship with the picture that otherwise they wouldn't and in a kind of hopefully more sophisticated way but actually quite similar way this books all about dogs in pictures is basically going there's lots and lots of different dogs to spot there's things to spot and if you get better at knowing what you want a spot art will go better for you and this idea that we simply look at dates and you know what it was painted on and who bought and sold it you can't love a work of art because of that those may be reasons very fascinating bits of factual information historical information but no one's ever fallen in love with oil on campus with oil on canvas that's not a route to love and you know our argument is we should love our like we love music think of the way people behave with music right we use music totally therapeutically we use it to lift our moods confirm our moods of sadness move our moods along you know expand our horizons enter new nations and in this in our imagination it you know hundreds of things right but it's all got a purpose and we're very natural with it we create playlists we discuss music very naturally art is basically for economic reasons has been in the hands of a narrow elite who've owned museums who owned the physical things and they've said to us two things a it's really important to go and and see them in our Museum so you got to pay your twenty dollars to go and see that Museum and be when you're with us you've got to pay attention to the history the materials etc and that almost killed popular enjoyment of art I mean imagine if you could only ever hear music in a concert hall and the only kind of discourse around the the playing of music was people go do you know that that oboe was sold by the King of Bavaria in 1732 you know frankly no I just didn't enjoy the tune thanks very much so we've really I think that organizations have really lost the plot on explaining art and this is why I'm so pleased that the AG oh here in Toronto has opened its doors to the book and the show because it's a way of saying let's try out new ways of presenting our enough of these captions that tell you the date and thing like let's have a caption that's that's helping you to find a dog as it were and that's what we do in a range of ways okay whether you've been to a museum or not I mean names like Rembrandt Picasso others or in a Warhol's it they're familiar to all of to all of us why are these artists that collection of names oh so particularly important a lot of it is accident I mean why is the Mona Lisa the most famous painting in the world but it's crazy I mean I took my children to see the Mona Lisa the other day in Paris and they're like we saw the nicest picture and they felt really sorry for a painting nearby and it was a very simple painting of Saint Jerome and had a beautiful background and they decided in protest spurred on a little bit by their dad that that painting was just as good and they were we were going to love that painting instead it's arbitrary it's got to do with quirks of art history money often etc the story behind and the split behind them but I don't believe like it's a pyramid and at the top is like the president of art called you know the Mona Lisa and down at the bottom is like you know the thing that hangs over your grandmother's sofa no I think that once you look at art therapeutically many things are going to be very interesting and very nice and touch it like music you know people you know people might go yes you know Johann Sebastian Bach is a very great musician but actually you know you might really enjoy listening to ABBA so in others once you start looking at art for what it can power can touch you and work with you internally you become you may still accept that yes technically a burr is worse than ba but that's not going to stop you you know listening to dancing queen as you're driving down them but it also speaks to to the freedom that we allow ourselves to have as individually and collectively that I can say to you I think box thinks I actually and and I don't feel that you are going to judge me with art you're not allowed to say out loud the castle stinks yeah um look I don't think we should ever say X stinks cuz you know but but but you criticism like look it leaves me cold or it's not for me now the other thing to bear in mind is that not all of us can love the same works of art because that the theory that we have in the book is that you fall in love with the work of art when it's got something that you don't have enough of in yourself so imagine you're a very stressed and anxious sort of person you'll probably be really attracted to calm art because it's like it's putting you in the other way putting you in the other direction simply if your life's quite dull you might want a bit of you know excitement in your art or your music etc so in other words I've got a kind of rebalancing theory of art the art that we love contains in a kind of concentrated form many of the qualities that we need but we don't have enough of in ourselves and so by getting close to that art you you know feel back in touch with it and all of us are missing different things and so you can learn a lot about somebody's character by going what is the art you're afraid of i what have you got a bit too much of in your life and what is you know what are you attracted to so for example I'm gonna tell you mine ok I like thank God ok um so what do you love so that my couch I'm on it like my yeah I mean the you know the the different kinds of Van Gogh but take the sunflowers van Gogh some haters hate them ok so what are you liking about I like the mood the moon and the sky scapes the nighttime nighttime yeah well look i think those nighttime ones are very beautiful and what the what they do is they put us in touch with the mysteries of nature so here we are in cities we spend a lot of time like face to face talking with a kind of human agenda van gogh takes us out on the starry night in provence and he shows us the kind of mystery of the universe and suddenly it's not just me and you in our houses or it's like me and the universe so our horizons open so it's a breath of fresh air for someone who has been pressed up maybe a little bit too close up to the kind of news agenda things that are going on it it kind of opens up your spirit it probably you know if you live out in I don't know a remote part of Canada and you're always looking at the huge sky you might actually really enjoy a more domestic a kind of art something that's more bounded because you you've got enough of the wilderness stuff anywhere you've got it out of your system you know I like an art that's very calm that's very serene not because I am calm but precisely because I've got a hard time holding on to calm think think of people who love pretty flowers and let's remember that the most popular art in the world is of gardens sunny skies spring and flowers that's what people love right and why is that it's because all of us have quite difficult lives and these are agents of hope these are arguments in favor of lifting our spirits making the problems of life pushing them aside a little bit in order to look at a flower so I don't mock that taste at all it's very important particularly for people who've got very hard lives and need that rebalancing interesting okay we talked about I go I want to bring up a painting this is called woman with a spade I've actually never seen this what therapeutic value does this have well one of the functions of art is to help us to care about other people and the problem about carrying out about other people is that if simply if people simply ask us to care about other people on the basis of factual information we don't care so for example if we you know there's a lot of rural poverty in France we'll go or if they bulldoze you know in Greece 31 percent of people are currently unemployed or think I don't know what that means but if somebody shows us a work of art and takes us into somebody's life so van Gogh shows us the rural peasantry of France and suddenly it's no longer just the fact it's no longer just a statistic it hits us in the heart and that becomes politically very important so in the history of art there are some key moments where artists have put on the agenda certain very important in justices but also just issues and they've got them on the agenda not by reporting factually on them but by doing so in a way by reporting on them in a way that stirs us as as emotional creatures what you're do you know what year this was painted in I'm not sure it so anyway long time ago I don't even know the material it's okay we're making it you know okay let's just agree with some ways back yeah here we are 2014 when I look at that now what what therapeutic value might that have for me now well the thing to bear in mind is okay the life of the rural French peasant has improved a lot but all over the world there are similar kinds of suffering so suffering the history of suffering goes on van Gogh primary move is compassion he wants us to understand the suffering of the other he wants to take you into you know he was he was though not not a believer it by the end of his life he was a Christian artist in that he wanted to bring life to the most oppressed people of the earth and that remains a really important mission for art a therapeutic mission because it's going to open up our hearts to you know the other two people overseas or in our own nations who are not coping well and it's too easy when you hear about the modern uses to go oh well I don't care about that okay here's something very different this is crystal feely Holy Virgin Mary this was really controversial when it was done painted out of elephant dung what their putative alyou is are in something like this well it shows us one of the functions that people have traditionally had about art and that is the idea that art should shock us particularly the 20th century people were obsessed by the idea that the bourgeoisie was a bit stupid complacent unconcerned with the really important things and therefore the job of the artist was to give them a good old shake and tell them about you know dramatic things or rude things so a lot of artists it's quite kind of rudely sexual is trying to you know is trying to shock the bourgeois and Chris ofili's work fits into that long tradition of trying to shock the bourgeois for me as a bourgeois who's a bit unshockable I think that's kind of run its course but it's important to remember that that is what a lot of art is trying to do in modern art and so if you're walking around the gallery and you see you know a giant painting with loads of swear words all over it embroidered in gold right the artist is basically telling you you're just a boring dentist or accountant or something and you are too polite and I the artist am I going to shake you up a little bit as I say I don't have huge sympathy for that kind of art but it exists Chris ofili's work is an example of that okay and you know we talked about a couple pieces that are hanging on the walls of museums and galleries which arguably only a few the bourgeois is going into I mean the average person is not going into an art gallery how accessible is art to the average person today well it's potentially very accessible through technology through digital technology you know the museum is this I sells us this idea that you need to go and see the original you need to pay your 25 bucks in order to go and see the original otherwise anything else is just ridiculous I happen to believe that you can get stuff in books online in free galleries that is you know it would carry 98% of what you know is important in the art so I think we need to learn to make art put out on our phones make it part of our daily life you know people have Instagram feeds and you know Pinterest boards that sometimes feature works of art and I think that's a very encouraging development where we're learning that looking at images can be good for us can change our mood with we're learning I think to do with art what we've always done or long done with music which is kind of live our lives alongside it and use it for certain changes of mood we talked yesterday about the news and the role of the journalist that could the complicity of a journalist in what might not be great in the news I want to ask about the role today about art critics because again these it's sort of this parochial thing that happens to us an art critic says something about you know piece of art a what role does y art critic having in influencing how the public looks at art well ideally what the art critic would do was a function as a bridge between the art and the audience and would explain the art and tell you why it matters etc most art critics make a bit of heavy weather of it because they've been trained they are so much more knowledgeable than their audience and they've been trained to speaker a technical language which other journalists don't necessarily when they're reporting on their errors but there they tend to be very technical and they often kill popular enthusiasm and popular enthusiasm for art really matters because you know there are no large public subsidies available for museums now in North America museums are going to only live and die by the interest of other people in them so people have to understand that art can be interesting and despite all the outreach programs and educational programs look it's our sense that the process is not necessarily going brilliantly I think people are still incredibly if you like constipated in front of works of art they don't necessarily feel that they know what to do with them and this book is all about giving you guidance for with a range of works what you might be able to do in order that they start to matter to you it gives you confidence if we draw the music analogy no we're all very quite comfortable being critical or praising a piece of music we're not music experts yet when it comes to art we're very uncomfortable and sort of commenting because we think we don't have the smarts or the knowledge of the know-how that's right it's utterly bizarre how when it comes to our eyes we're not allowed to trust them whereas we trust our ears which I thought tastebuds I mean you could take somebody to a restaurant who hasn't studied you know cooking in Paris for the last thirty years and we'll go actually I'd quite like this dish do you know what it was made of do you know how it was made and how the sauce was bought I don't know but I don't care because my taste buds are telling me when it comes to art we just don't even but we are beginners in this area and totally arbitrary and totally unnecessary of course it can be useful to know a lot of a lot of the history but like with music you said absolutely right like with music it's not indispensable to knowing that and as I say we just have ceased to explain to ourselves the function of what art should be you even talk well when task refers how did you choose the pieces of art better in your book well the way we've done the book is we try to imagine how works of art could be useful interesting helpful just significant in relation to many of life's great problems so you know we look at for example anxiety right like everybody feels anxiety about things so if you felt anxious what kind of works of art might you want to see take a typical example we look at Ansel Adams and he does you know beautiful images of trees in autumn and we go you know if you're feeling a little anxious Ansel Adams is really useful to look at because he takes you out of yourself he takes you into the big woods he makes you feel that things sometimes happen because they have to happen so just the trees will you know shed their leaves so to certain rather tragic events have to happen to human beings and we can't change everything so it brings a kind of calm we we find what we call the greatest artists of the 21st century which we describe which we identify as the Hubble telescope and the amazing pictures it's taken of outer space the globular clusters the distant galaxies these are some of the most stirring works of art that we can see and that belongs to art you know it's very important to realize art doesn't only exist in museums art is anything that we see through our eyes so we're sitting in Toronto if I was running the education system of this city rather than taking people just to the museum the number one priority is how can we get Toronto to look a little nicer because you know in parts it's been overrun by property developers who are putting up stuff that is not as nice as it could be part of the reason is the population is not trained in their eyes we don't have an educated population and only educated like fancy fancy education literally aware that we'll say we don't want these blocks we want city blocks that are of human dimensions of regular size regular proportion blah blah blah all the rest of it and so Toronto has been scar by a lack of art appreciation I could sound weird because you think art appreciation that means Rembrandt in a gallery no art appreciation is anything that you can see through your eyes that you can either say that's nice or that's horrible - and we're not very good at doing that in architects interesting that you you bring up this discussion of the Toronto scape as it is as art because art is always closely taught as it is in this example to to politics and I want to ask you but I mean how can how does art work in terms of being a force for political or social change this is why it's really important to get outreach to get people who speak the same language around art I mean imagine if it was a politician in Toronto who said my number one agenda in you know my my time in office is I want to make to run to a really beautiful city that would sound really weird we understand you want to expand to a richer city a safer city better education more opportunities for people people understand all that that's great if a politician said I want to make Toronto more beautiful people go really what's that beautiful you sure so in other words we know about beauty we know that Paris is really beautiful right but we're very bad at talking about our need for beauty and that comes back to a lot of the stuff we talk about in the book which is people inhibition around the whole topic of the aesthetic what what you can see with your eyes and it affects it means that you can't get a political movement going because the whole notion of ugliness and beauty doesn't seem to matter on a popular scale I think it does I mean you know I think that people express their love of beauty and their understanding of art in two areas popularly the first error is cars people especially men think a lot about cars their shape their color you know people have an interest that far outstrips equals interest in Rembrandt in the shape of the bonnet etc and the other thing is clothes fashion very interesting to a lot of people and that is all about and exercising your taste who are aesthetic and people know instinctively I like this this dress little bit you know these trousers a little bit like this etc people are talking about beauty and ugliness and art without even knowing that's what they're doing so we need to get some of that confidence and put it in the gallery well the ZM world where it belongs as well okay I want to put up one more painting this is a cameo Pissarro the Great Bridge what message it is the artist trying to get across here well it's interesting you know nowadays when we think of industry and commerce we think bad news trashing of the environment exploitation the greed of the rich you know these are some of the kind of assumptions of people's mind Pissarro is talking about heavy industry and commerce at a time when it was just getting going and he's doing something unusual for an artist which is he's helping us to see that for all it's bad side it's also got rad something rather heroic about it that consumer society isn't all terrible that they're actually some kind of amazing things in the way that we transport things make things carry things about human energy and ingenuity is also to be celebrated so like many artists Pissarro is just expanding our sense of what there is to appreciate in the world so some artists will make us appreciate you know lemons on the sideboard other artists will make us appreciate the beauty of the night sky etc and this is an artist saying actually a factory an industrial scene a Dockyard a harbor they are actually kind of beautiful so nowadays you know Pissarro might head out to the airport here in Toronto you might you know see an Air Canada engineering shed and rather than going oh that's the boring side of life might actually open our eyes to think so we need our eyes opened and works of art a really good and very therapeutic in doing that for us I that's interesting when you you kind of say pisarra was trying to tell us that that is your interpretation of what pisarra was huh your interpretation may be different than my interpretation given that how does art have meaning look art has multiple meanings just like with music right so you could say you know this piece of music reminds me of you know my grandmother and you might go really what reminds me of you know the sea wearing down the rocks or something and both of them would be as it were there's no right or wrong but at least we're talking about it in a certain way a certain personal direct way so I don't do there's one meaning to any work of art indeed work of art becomes great because it supports a huge amount because there's so much going on in a work of art so there's lots and lots of meanings and in this book we're not saying like this one meaning is a one work of art means one thing no not at all but it's just once you start talking in a more personal and emotional way you'll get a range of responses and we're trying to get people to as it would not go to our restaurant but to learn to cook themselves we want them to go off and like make their own meals around works of art bring up their own feelings and of course those will be different yes there'll be a subjective element absolutely said you do want people to go to the Eijiro and check out your course absolutely and read the book etc but but really it's it's trying to teach people a way of looking at art in general not like this work of art all that work of art appreciate your time thank you lovely to meet you thank you so much thanks for being here support Ontario's public television donate at TV org

Channel: The Agenda | TVO Today

Views: 31,734

Keywords: TVO, TVOntario, The Agenda with Steve Paikin, current affairs, analysis, debate, politics, policy, art, literature, paintings, philosophy

Id: HkT5W0Iz0xU

Length: 25min 15sec (1515 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 08 2014