Guffwatch - 'Art as Therapy' (ctd.)
May 5 2014
Picture: National Gallery of Victoria
Bad news readers - this gufftastic Alain de Botton 'Art as Therapy' nonsense is spreading fast. A reader alerts me to the fact that the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia has now succumbed to it. Here's an example for the above c.1540 Flemish school picture of St Jerome:
Once Jerome was young – he ran about the fields, he climbed trees and he got excited when he was given a bit of cake. He had a successful career. His efforts were rewarded. Now he’s old and is facing the brutal facts of his mortality. The sand in the hourglass will soon run through. He is going to die.
He touches a skull – a terrifying reminder of what is going to happen to his body. Like us, he is bewildered – how can this happen to me?
How can it be that I, who am alive now, will one day be dead? Jerome is forcing himself to admit the truth.
The book he is reading has a picture in it of the Crucifixion. Jesus, the person Jerome has most admired, is meeting his death. If you keep the idea of death at the front of your mind, it helps you to live well. It keeps things in proportion.
'The book he is reading'? It's the bible and he translated it into Latin. That's (partly) what the picture is about. Not cake, you plonkers.
You'd have thought that plain speaking Australia would be the last place to succumb to this sort of thing. But no. My reader, who works in the NGV, writes:
I’ve been following your blog and goings-on at Philip Mould for a while now. I’ve been giggling and shaking my head incredulously at the utter twaddle that is ‘Art as Therapy’, the book and collaborations with galleries.
I was stunned to learn that our state Gallery, the National Gallery of Victoria was “collaborating” with School of Life for ‘Art as Therapy’. The final product is a self-guided tour (they’ve even got an app), with nice and discreet labels alongside the works on display. This is quite unlike the Rijksmuseum with their shouty post-its. I have a problem with the themes. Most are under “Sickness”.
If you can bear it, there's more NGV Art Therapy labelling here. And here's a good review of 'Art as Therapy' in the New York Times. Money quote:
[...] perverse, playful reductiveness has always been de Botton’s shtick — he’s just never done it so badly.
Update - a reader writes:
As for Alain de Botton and psychobabble about paintings, we are looking at a triumph of marketing over substance so common, very common indeed, in popular culture.
Albert Barnes viewed painting as line, color, and composition, viewed sentimental criticism as intellectually flabby, and built an extraordinary collection on that basis. it was a peculiar and narrow approach, but had more substance than the labels Art as Therapy provides.
Indeed St. Jerome late in life would be concerned with eternal salvation, a belief and concept alien to the authors of the label.
Update II - another reader writes:
Well, art is "therapy" -- if "therapy" means that great art makes me happy, thoughtful, sometimes troubled, excited, uplifted and in awe of the wonders humanity and individual creativity can accomplish. But understanding the times and circumstances in which the artist worked, his or her intentions and the patron or commissioner's intentions, the meanings and ideas expressed, the technical artistic means deployed to such marvellous effect, and -- yes -- other people's interpretations with which I can agree or disagree, all that contributes, it does not detract. But calling all this merely "therapy" impoverishes our experience of art and artistry and artisanship, insults us by presuming that we have some disorder that needs therapeutic treatment, and insults the English language too.
Update III - a reader wonders:
I think the Flemish St. Jerome you discussed recently might actually depict the saint with a Missal and not a Bible. In his study of Durer, Panofsky mentions Missals with large images of the Crucifixion, and even today Catholic Missals still have large color images of the Crucifixion.
