Art therapy is a discipline that incorporates the creation of visual art as a method of diagnosis and as part of the treatment of individuals who have already received a conclusive diagnosis. According to the most recent research, art therapy can help people feel more in control by giving them a practical medium to tether themselves to. Doing art can relieve anxiety and depression, including among people dealing with physical illness. It can be an excellent way to manage pain more efficiently since it allows the mind to move away from the stimulus. Veterans dealing with PTSD and ill patients that must be in isolation for prolonged periods, such as those infected with tuberculosis, can benefit from art therapy as well.
While artistic talent is not a prerequisite, throughout history, several artists have used their artworks to alleviate worries and anxieties in their lives.
Basquiat
When you look up fine art prints for sale to add to your home, you will probably come across the works of Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose art was part of the 1980s Neo-expressionism movement. In 2017, a 1982 Basquiat painting titled “Untitled” sold for more than $110 million, becoming one of the most expensive works of visual art ever purchased. Basquiat’s art focused on social dichotomies, such as the divide between wealth and poverty, and he used social commentary, poetry, and other texts to create introspection in his artworks and discuss the power structures and systemic racism affecting the black community. Although he had no formal artistic training, Basquiat was very accomplished. He drew inspiration from the works of several other artists but left his own very powerful mark on his works as well.
After his parents separated, Basquiat and his siblings were primarily cared for by their father as their mother was admitted to a psychiatric hospital and, from then on, spent her life in and out of mental health institutions. In the beginning, Basquiat was focused on graffiti he would make around New York. Unfortunately, his life was also affected by substance abuse, and despite attempts at sobriety, he succumbed to an accidental overdose at the age of twenty-seven.
Louise Bourgeois
Louise Bourgeois is known for her installation art and large-scale sculptures, but she was also a printmaker and painter. The themes she explored in her works involve domesticity, the family, death, the unconscious mind, and the body. Bourgeois considered these topics to be directly linked to her childhood and art-making as a therapeutic process. In 1930, she entered the Sorbonne in order to study geometry and mathematics, as she felt that these subjects provided her with stability and peace of mind. Two years later, her mother passed away, and she thought that she needed a change in her career path. As a result, she began studying the arts. Between 1934 and 1938, she was the apprentice of several male artists, such as Paul Colin, André Lhote, and Fernand Léger, but their refusal to recognize the merits of female artists made her skeptical of the artistic environment and the patriarchal concepts that dominated it.
Much of her childhood trauma was connected to having a philandering father since, as a child, she discovered that her English governess was also her father’s mistress. The loss of her mother also affected her deeply. As a result, overbearing fathers are a staple in her works, as are helpless children. The “Destruction of the Father” is one of the best examples of an artwork featuring this subject. The “Femme Maison” speaks to how the world seeks to keep the minds of women chiefly in the domestic sphere, while “Maman”, arguably one of Bourgeois’ best-known works and one of the largest sculptures in the world, is made out of marble, stainless steel, and bronze and is a homage to her mother.
The similarities come from the fact that Joséphine Fauriaux was a weaver, clever, and protective (similar to how spiders eat mosquitoes, insects known for spreading diseases). In 2010, the last year of her life, Bourgeois used her art to speak for equality for LGBT people by creating the “I Do” artwork, which depicts two flowers growing from one step. The artwork went to the nonprofit organization Freedom to Marry.
Tracey Emin
Tracey Emin is known for its confessional and autobiographical attributes. She has produced art through a variety of different mediums, including sculpture, painting, film, photography, neon texts, and appliques. “My Bed” is one of her best-known and controversial works, completed in 1998. As the name suggests, it consists of the artist’s bed surrounded by different objects left in a disorganized state. The main theme of the work is mental health, as “The Bed” was inspired by an episode in the artist’s life during which she remained in her bed for four days, didn’t eat anything, and only drank alcohol as a result of suicidal depression brought on by relationship troubles. Critics slammed the work by saying that anyone could have displayed an unmade bed as a work of art, to which Emin replied that while that may be true, nobody had actually done it before.
Tracey Emin is one of the two women professors appointed at the London Royal Academy of Arts since its founding in 1768. In 2020, she was diagnosed with bladder cancer, for which she has undergone operations and remains in remission. She talked about how her illness led her to quit drinking and smoking and led to her reconsidering her life and the way in which she makes art.
Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo was inspired by Mexican culture and folk art, and her works explore themes such as class, gender, postcolonialism, identity, and the intricacies of Mexican society. As a child, she contracted polio and had been dealing with disability when she was additionally injured in a bus accident at the age of eighteen. This event caused her to be in chronic pain for the rest of her life and left her dealing with numerous medical issues. It also changed her career path as she moved away from medical school and rediscovered her childhood interest in the arts. Much of Kahlo’s work is focused on her relationship with her own body and the effects of chronic illness on her life. Polio had also forced her into isolation, causing her to be separated from her peers. She even said that the reason she painted herself so much was because she was so often on her own, and so her own person was a subject that felt very familiar to her.
To sum up, even though art cannot actually heal anyone, it can definitely act as a helpful medium that allows individuals to process their emotions more effectively. And while patients from all over the world do it nowadays, well-known and highly celebrated artists did and still do it as well, showing once again that art truly has cathartic properties.
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