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My good friend Serdar has a smart discussion on the idea that one’s artistic creations can be therapy. I won’t comment per se because his piece stands on its own. Instead, I want to explore my own thoughts on the matter.
I am automatically suspicious when someone says that their public art is therapeutic – the art on display, that is sold, etc. Some of it feels disturbingly exhibitionistic in an uncomfortable way, someone sharing things that are very intimate with you and everyone else all together. Some of it feels manipulative, trying to affect your feelings or demand you have a certain reaction or you must react. To share very intimate things very openly makes me suspicious and uncomfortable, and thus “here is my therapeutic art” is not an announcement that immediately compels my attention.
This is not to say that one cannot share very personal and intimate experiences in art – indeed for some artists that is the goal, to connect and share. In cases like this the sharing is part of the experience, the revelations and experience are communicated in a way that reaches me and the audience and treats us as people. Some “this is my therapeutic release” art in public gives me the feeling that I am not a participant, but someone there to nod, or acknowledge, or just feed attention.
Now can one do art for therapeutic purposes? I’d say entirely yes, and in fact it can be very positive. To explore expression, mediums, and so on is very useful. So often we can’t reach what we want to say, and art can help us do it – some things can’t be done in words but can be done in paint or dance or music. I am all for different modes of therapy – but I think there’s a question of when and how you share what comes out.
I don’t ask to see your therapist’s notes, and it might not be healthy to share them. Essentially publishing them makes me suspicious unless it’s done in a way that communicates with me as a person.
There I think is the difference between therapeutic art that makes me suspicious or uncomfortable and art that is, well, art – that the artist is taking on the role of an artist as well as expressing the issues they are coping with. If an artist is able to explore their issues and present them as an artist, connecting with an audience as artist and a person I’m for it. It might even be more inspiring than something with less connection to the artist’s issues.
Art therapy is great. Producing art is great. It’s when you have both that the artist may need to pause and ask where they’re coming from – because they might not be going where they intended.
Steven Savage