Art as Therapy takes the healing power of great art literally. The website, dubbed a “virtual museum,” matches your emotional concerns with a specific painting that can help.
Here’s how to use it: Go to ArtAsTherapy.com, click on one of the topics at the top of the page such as Love…Work…Self…Anxiety…and then click on a phrase. For example, under Anxiety, if you click on the phrase “I worry about everything,” you’ll be directed to an image of Rocky Reef on the Seashore, an 1825 painting by Caspar David Friedrich. The commentary: “…a striking, jagged rock formation, a spare stretch of coast, the bright horizon, far away clouds and a pale sky to induce us into a mood…somber, rather than sad; calm but not despairing.”
Gaze upon it, the website goes on, and “we are left, as so often with works of art, better equipped to deal with the intense, intractable and particular griefs that lie before us. The tensions in my marriage or the frustrations of my work are not my problem alone, they are part of the structure of the universe…”
Art as Therapy is based on a book by the philosopher and essayist Alain de Botton, in collaboration with the art historian John Armstrong. The Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, and the Art Gallery of Ontario provide the art. The beautiful coffee table book is from the art publisher Phaidon.
Can looking at great art really change your emotional state for the better? There’s no double-blind study here, to be sure, but it’s a noble and quite beautiful effort. At the very least, you’ll be introduced to some beautiful paintings.
Try it out, and let us know how these virtual paintings make you feel!