The moment we call art “therapy,” it dies a little.
I’ve long held a visceral hostility towards what I’ve called the ‘muesli theory’ of art. This theory maintains that art should be consumed because it’s good for you.Aside from anything else, the idea that art is good for you takes all the fun out of it. It gives art an air of lugubrious obligation that is completely at odds with the involuntary suspension of the self that is art’s most beautiful side effect.
Take, for example, the idea that art is a treatment for mental health. Philosopher Alain de Botton is a prominent proselytiser of ‘art as therapy’. With partner-in-crime John Armstrong, de Botton aims to reinterpret artworks as self-help manuals. He does so with a determined, dutiful banality that is enough to make any young artist want to hang herself on a sunny morning.
More recently, a study aimed to quantify the relationship between art and happiness in the general population. It concluded that people who had two hours a week of ‘arts engagement’ were much happier human beings, all other variables being taken into account. These two hours was called the ‘dose-response’ – in other words, the minimum ‘dose’ required for a positive effect.