meIn an age characterized by burnout and doomscrolling, therapeutic alternatives hang on gallery walls. When volunteers at the Courtauld Gallery in London stood in front Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, Manet’s Folies Bergère Bar, and Gauguin’s Terrerioa.Levels of stress and inflammation were reduced compared to volunteers who watched the replica. Science tells us that original art is a medicine to be seen rather than swallowed.
It is well known that art can lift the spirit. But what’s novel is that it calms the body. Research at King’s College London Participants were asked to view masterpieces by 19th-century Post-Impressionist artists, including Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Manet, and Gauguin, while wearing sensors. Half of the group saw the original in the gallery, and half saw the copy in the lab. The results were clear. Going to an art museum is good for your health, including relieving stress, reducing your risk of heart disease and strengthening your immune system.
There is growing evidence to support that opinion. Earlier this summer, a team of Cambridge psychologists similar projects Kettle’s Yard Gallery shows how appreciating artistic beauty can help break away from the “mental traps of everyday life.” These experiments include: A study published by the Ministry of Culture, Media and Sports last yearTo quantify the extent to which participation in creative activities improves physical and mental health, as well as the economic benefits, it is estimated at an average of £1,000 per person per year through improved work productivity and fewer GP visits. From Nature Magazine examine Modern science suggests that the arts can play an important role in public health, especially in preventing chronic disease. And for the first time in its 202-year history, The Lancet recently published a photo essay showing how art can improve lives.
“When you experience a work of art, you don’t just see it, you feel it,” art historian Katy Hessel writes in her new book. How to live an artistic life. “The best thing we can do is invest our time.” Of course, in today’s hectic world, we are short on time. But this seems to be the key to the therapeutic power of art. The gallery is a quiet and contemplative place. Stop scrolling and start really looking. Deep involvement in a work of art induces ‘psychological distancing’ that allows you to see the bigger picture. As Iris Murdoch wrote, “Great art is liberating, allowing us to see and delight in things that are not ourselves.”
At a time when creativity is outsourced to AI, galleries bring us face to face with human genius. When we feel the intensity of the brushstrokes in Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, we feel the pain behind them. As Auden reminds us art galleryGreat paintings teach us about human suffering and our everyday indifference to it.
We recommend exercising and eating healthy. Will doctors soon be prescribing visits to local galleries and museums? At a time of falling visitor numbers and a funding crisis, these studies provide another incentive to invest more in the creative sector. The government’s £270 million funding package to strengthen Britain’s “crumbling cultural infrastructure” earlier this year was welcomed. But more needs to be done to make what the King’s College research team calls a “cultural movement for the body” accessible to everyone. The arts are vital not only to the national economy but also to the health of the nation. You can’t argue with science.
