This is a blog to store and record research and information relevant to the dissertation I will be writing next year as part of the final year of my degree in Drawing and Applied Arts.
Through my dissertation I want to explore the use of art as a therapy and how this is valued within our society.
The nine decades of Yayoi Kusama’s life have taken her from rural Japan to the New York art scene to contemporary Tokyo, in a career in which she has continuously innovated and re-invented her style. Well-known for her repeating dot patterns, her art encompasses an astonishing variety of media, including painting, drawing, sculpture, film, performance and immersive installation. It ranges from works on paper featuring intense semi-abstract imagery, to soft sculpture known as ‘Accumulations’, to her ‘Infinity Net’ paintings, made up of carefully repeated arcs of paint built up into large patterns. Since 1977 Kusama has lived voluntarily in a psychiatric institution, and much of her work has been marked with obsessiveness and a desire to escape from psychological trauma. In an attempt to share her experiences, she creates installations that immerse the viewer in her obsessive vision of endless dots and nets or infinitely mirrored space
At the centre of the art world in the 1960s, she came into contact with artists including Donald Judd, Andy Warhol, Joseph Cornell and Claes Oldenburg, influencing many along the way. She has traded on her identity as an ‘outsider’ in many contexts - as a female artist in a male-dominated society, as a Japanese person in the Western art world, and as a victim of her own neurotic and obsessional symptoms. After achieving fame and notoriety with groundbreaking art happenings and events, she returned to her country of birth and is now Japan’s most prominent contemporary artist.
Now 82, and resident by choice for the past 35 years in a psychiatric care home in her native Tokyo, Kusama is currently seeing all her wishes come true. Not only has she been granted this obsessive-compulsive 14-room retrospective by the Tate, one of her career-defining Infinity Net paintings sold for $5.1m in 2008, a record for a living female artist.
Success did not come easily. Born in patriarchal and deeply conservative Japan of the late 1920s, even the idea of becoming an artist, as a woman, must have taken a supreme effort of will. To become an artist quite as liberated from convention as Kusama must have felt a lot like the insanity she has always feared – and to some extent nurtured – in herself.
Her autobiography, Infinity Net, translated for this show, traces, with suitably dreamlike intensity, the web of influences that shaped her and her art. As a child, she claims to have experienced hallucinations, and nightmarish out of body experiences, which she subsequently attempted to describe in paranoid, vivid paintings alive with eyes and threatening organic forms, some of which, from the 1950s, make an alarming and expressive opening to the exhibition. She seems to have been drawn to surrealism, but given it a less playful, more psychologically unbalanced field, an edge perhaps explained by the fact that at the same age as she was seeing her visions, she was forced by her mother to spy on her father in bed with his string of mistresses and geishas. She developed a loathing of phallic images, and an overwhelming fascination with voyeurism.
Her response to these disturbing, formative forces seems twofold: she sought a kind of self-obliteration, covering herself and everything around her with her trademark polka dots – there is, among many other spotted surfaces, a fabulously spacey suburban living room here in which the edges of objects, sofas and tables are blurred by primary-coloured circular stickers, picked out in a psychedelic light. Elsewhere, mirrored "infinity rooms" take these points of colour into more dimensions than the eye can easily cope with. Almost nothing has been immune from Kusama's dottiness: horses and cats, buses and houses, trees and fields and rivers, she has camouflaged them all. Damien Hirst's outsourced efforts look decidedly spotty by comparison.
Alongside these identity-denying projects she also sought to overcome her phallic anxieties with a workaholic kind of aversion therapy. For a long period in middle age, she painstakingly stitched together apparently infinite numbers of "soft-sculpted" penises, which, her autobiography suggests, she found perverse solace in lying down among. These forms, made from stuffed surgical-looking cloth, grow out of chairs and lamps, shoes and bookshelves. In one celebrated instance, Kusama covered an entire rowing boat with them, oars and all; the boat is given a room of its own here, complete with the 999 reproductions of the image which paper walls, floor and ceiling. Elsewhere, the teeming, faceless sock puppets create cacti-like forests, run wild, and coming at you from all angles – again, the psycho-dramatists of contemporary British art, Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas, are made to seem somewhat lightweight in their neuroses.
Kusama arrived in America, having corresponded with Georgia O'Keeffe, in 1957. By the early 60s, she was exhibiting alongside Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol, both of whom she seems to have influenced, with her manic exhibitionism as much as anything. The 60s in New York, the mix of underground promiscuity and hallucinogens, were waiting for her, in a way. She became a self-styled shaman, organising orgies and happenings in which hippies lost and found themselves by painting one another's nakedness with Kusama's polka dots until the NYPD arrived, to clear up the mess. The human dot-to-dot events were captured on films, which gained an arthouse following, and which are oddly compulsive viewing now as ethnographic documents – like those early films of the lost tribes of Papua New Guinea – evidence of another, hairier, time and place altogether.
Kusama was a curator of these events, never a participant, except with a pot of poster paint; still, she returned to Japan in the early 70s carrying some of their generally good-natured lunacy with her, and checked herself into an asylum, where she has lived as an ostentatious recluse ever since. In recent years she has returned to painting canvases; large, vibrantly coloured pictures which play with her recurring vocabulary of eyes and roots and wriggling spermatazoa-like forms, and which taken together have a borrowed aboriginal quality. She came over for the opening of this show, a rare public sighting, and sat in her polka-dotted wheelchair, in her polka-dotted dress in the midst of all this colour, looking like a child in the internal landscape of her own making, half magic roundabout, half Freudian case study. You wouldn't, you guess, want to live in this landscape full-time, but as a tourist destination, it certainly makes for a lively hour or so.
Emin places herself centre-stage in her work, telling intimate stories about her life. "It's like a cleansing of my soul. It's not just getting rid of baggage or carnage.
It's not that simple. Something actually happens within me.
"Being an artist isn't just about making nice things."
Other common name(s): creative arts therapy, expressive arts therapy
Scientific/medical name(s): none
Description
Art therapy is used to help people manage physical and emotional problems by using creative activities to express emotions. It provides a way for people to come to terms with emotional conflicts, increase self-awareness, and express unspoken and often unconscious concerns about their illness and their lives. “Expressive arts therapy” or “creative arts therapy” may also include the use of dance and movement, drama, poetry, and photo therapy, as well as more traditional art methods.
Overview
Many clinicians have observed and documented significant benefits among people who have used art therapy. Art therapy has not been studied scientifically to find out if it has value for people with cancer.
How is it promoted for use?
Art therapy is based on the idea that the creative act can be healing. According to practitioners, called art therapists, it helps people express hidden emotions; reduces stress, fear, and anxiety; and provides a sense of freedom. Many art therapists also believe the act of creation influences brain wave patterns and the chemicals released by the brain.
Art therapy has been used with bone marrow transplant patients, people with eating disorders, emotionally impaired young people, disabled people, the chronically ill, chemically addicted individuals, sexually abused adolescents, caregivers of cancer patients, and others. Art therapy may also be used to engage and distract patients whose illnesses or treatments cause pain.
Artwork may also be used as a diagnostic tool, particularly with children, who often have trouble talking about painful events or emotions. Art therapists say that often children can express difficult emotions or relay information about traumatic times in their lives more easily through drawings than through conventional therapy.
What does it involve?
People involved in art therapy are given the tools they need to produce paintings, drawings, sculptures, and many other types of artwork. Art therapists work with patients individually or in groups. The job of the art therapist is to help patients express themselves through their creations and to talk to patients about their emotions and concerns as they relate to their art. For example, an art therapist may encourage a person with cancer to create an image of themselves with cancer, and in this way express feelings about the disease that may be hard to talk about or may be unconscious.
In another form of art therapy, patients look at pieces of art, often in photographs, and then talk with a therapist about what they have seen. A caregiver or family member can also gather artwork in the form of photographs, books or prints, and give the patient a chance to look at and enjoy the art.
Many medical centers and hospitals include art therapy as part of inpatient care. It can be practiced in many other settings, such as schools, psychiatric centers, drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs, prisons, day care treatment programs, nursing homes, hospices, patients' homes, and art studios.
What is the history behind it?
The connection between art and mental health was first recognized in the late 1800s. In 1922, a book titled Artistry of the Mentally Ill aroused interest in the subject and caused the medical community to examine the diagnostic value of patients’ creations. Some practitioners realized that art might be valuable for rehabilitating patients with mental illness.
In the 1940s, ideas from psychoanalysis and art were combined to develop art as a tool to help patients release unconscious thoughts. Patients’ creations began to be considered as a type of symbolic speech. In 1958, at the National Institute of Mental Health, an artist named Hana Kwiatkowska translated her knowledge as an artist into the field of family work and introduced methods of evaluation and treatment techniques using art therapy.
In 1969, the American Art Therapy Association was established. The organization now has more than 4,500 members and, along with the Art Therapy Credentials Board, sets standards for art therapists and educates the public about the field. Registered art therapists must have graduate degree training and a background in studio arts and therapy techniques. More recently, several groups specializing in various kinds of art therapy, and expressive art therapies in general, have been established.
What is the evidence?
Numerous case studies have reported that art therapy benefits patients with both emotional and physical illnesses. Case studies have involved many areas, including burn recovery in adolescents and young children, eating disorders, emotional impairment in young children, reading performance, childhood grief, and sexual abuse in adolescents. Studies of adults using art therapy have included adults or families in bereavement, patients and family members dealing with addictions, and patients who have undergone bone marrow transplants, among others. Some of the potential uses of art therapy to be researched include reducing anxiety levels, improving recovery times, decreasing hospital stays, improving communication and social function, and pain control.
Are there any possible problems or complications?
Art therapy is considered safe when conducted by a skilled therapist. It may be useful as a complementary therapy to help people with cancer deal with their emotions. Although uncomfortable feelings may be stirred up at times, this is considered part of the healing process.
Relying on this type of treatment alone and avoiding or delaying conventional medical care for cancer may have serious health consequences.
Government advisers are expected to recommend art therapy on the NHS for people with schizophrenia.
The National Institute of Clinical and Health Excellence (NICE) will promote use of programmes offering music, art and dance therapy for the first time.
Activities include playing musical instruments and creating collages.
An expert panel found the therapy works particularly well in patients with "negative" symptoms such as withdrawal and poor motivation.
Schemes use trained therapists, with degrees in art, music or dance, and encourage people with schizophrenia to be creative as well as participating in group activities.
With psychoses, part of the problem is hallucinations and delusions and it becomes really hard to talk to people about them and people become isolated because no one is listening to them
Dr Mike Crawford, Imperial College London
Dr Tim Kendall, co-director of the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health, who helped put together the draft guidance, said there are some arts therapists in place already but services are patchy.
"We have pulled together data from six different trials on several hundred people.
"Dance, art and music therapy all seem to have a positive benefit," he said.
"In Sheffield where I work it's available quite widely but some areas don't have the services."
Communication
NICE first issued guidance on schizophrenia in 2002 but has revisited the topic in light of new evidence.
A consultation on the new recommendations will be open until November, with final guidance due next year.
Dr Mike Crawford, an expert in mental health services at Imperial College London who has carried out studies on arts therapy, said the therapies help people communicate.
"With psychoses, part of the problem is hallucinations and delusions and it becomes really hard to talk to people about them - and people become isolated because no one is listening to them."
He added: "Although there is evidence these therapies work we don't really know how.
"It's possible they work because they just bring people together and break the cycle of isolation.
"Other people have argued it's helpful because you are constructing something."
Alison Cobb from the mental health charity Mind said: "While medication for schizophrenia can help tackle symptoms such as psychosis, medication alone fails to address some of the other problems people may experience, such as problems communicating and socialising with others.
"Art therapy is a non-threatening and accessible therapy that can help people express their feelings without the need to talk them over."
An art therapy project for people with mental health problems has been saved thanks to a grant of £65,000.
The Openart Studio in Darlington gives patients the chance to work with professional artists to help improve their mental wellbeing.
It was under threat of closure, but the funding from Durham Primary Care Trust means it can move into new premises when Darlington Arts Centre closes.
The project is run by the primary care trust and Darlington Council.
Darlington Arts Centre is due to shut in July.
A council spokesman said: "Unlike other schemes, people do not need to be referred by a medical professional to join Openart Studio - anyone aged over 18 who is interested in art and thinks they could benefit is welcome.
"The studio also welcomes carers, usually relatives or partners of people undergoing medical treatment, and runs special sessions for families and young people, as well as outreach sessions in the community."
Visiting artists offer a range of activities including drawing, painting, ceramics, textiles, photography and film.
Running throughout the year at The Bridge, Openart Studio is open to anyone with an interest, regardless of ability in exploring creative and artistic activities. We provide opportunities to learn and experiment with a range of materials and techniques with the help of professional artists and other studio members.
A joint partnership project, funded by PCT County Durham and Darlington Borough Council, Openart Studio aims for anyone living in Darlington:
Mood enhancement
Stress reduction
Relaxation
Social contact
Self esteem
Skills development
Structure of time
Confidence building.
Basically, anyone wanting to have fun, learn something new, make new friends and gain a skill should consider coming for a visit. Free of charge for the first eight weeks (including all materials and equipment), Openart Studio has something for everyone.
With psychoses, part of the problem is hallucinations and delusions and it becomes really hard to talk to people about them and people become isolated because no one is listening to them 