\n<\/p>\n
I<\/span>n an era characterised by burnout and doomscrolling, a therapeutic alternative is hanging on a gallery wall. When volunteers at London\u2019s Courtauld Gallery stood before Van Gogh\u2019s Self-Portrait With Bandaged Ear, Manet\u2019s Bar at the Folies-Berg\u00e8re, and Gauguin\u2019s Te Rerioa, their stress and inflammation levels dropped compared with those of volunteers viewing reproductions. Science suggests that original art is a medicine that one can view rather than swallow.<\/p>\n That art can lift spirits is well known. But that it calms the body is novel. A study by King\u2019s College London asked participants to look at masterworks by 19th-century post-impressionists \u2013 Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Manet and Gauguin \u2013 while strapped to sensors. Half the group saw the originals in\u00a0the gallery, half viewed copies in a lab. The results were clear: going to art galleries is good for you \u2013 relieving stress and cutting heart disease risk, as well as\u00a0boosting the immune system.<\/p>\n There\u2019s growing evidence to support that opinion. Earlier this summer, a team of Cambridge psychologists conducted a similar project at Kettle\u2019s Yard Gallery to show how appreciating artistic beauty\u00a0helps us escape the \u201cmental trappings of daily life\u201d. These experiments follow research published last\u00a0year by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, to quantify the improvements to physical and mental health from taking part in creative activities, as\u00a0well as the economic gain \u2013 estimated to be an average of \u00a31,000 per person a year, as a result of improved work productivity and fewer trips to the GP. Nature Magazine\u2019s review of the current science suggests that art can play a role in public health, especially in the prevention of chronic diseases. And for the first time in its 202-year history, The\u00a0Lancet recently\u00a0ran a photo essay showcasing how art can enhance lives.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you experience an artwork, you don\u2019t just see it, but you feel it,\u201d the art historian Katy\u00a0Hessel writes in her new book How to Live an Artful Life. \u201cThe best thing we can do is take time with it.\u201d Time, of course, is what we are lacking in today\u2019s frenetic world. But this seems to be key to art\u2019s therapeutic powers. Galleries are quiet, contemplative places. We stop scrolling and start really looking. Deeply engaging with a work of art induces \u201cpsychological distancing\u201d \u2013 seeing the bigger picture. As Iris Murdoch wrote, \u201cGreat art is liberating, it enables us to see and take pleasure in what is not ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n When creativity is being outsourced to AI, galleries bring us face to face with human genius. When we notice the intensity of brushstrokes in Van Gogh\u2019s Self-Portrait With Bandaged Ear we feel the pain behind them. As Auden reminds us in Mus\u00e9e des Beaux Arts, great paintings teach us about human suffering, and our everyday indifference to it.<\/p>\n We are advised to exercise and eat healthily; will doctors soon be prescribing a visit to a local gallery or museum? Against a backdrop of falling visitor numbers and funding crises, these studies provide another incentive for greater investment in the creative sector. The government\u2019s \u00a3270m funding package to shore up England\u2019s \u201ccrumbling cultural infrastructure\u201d earlier this year was welcome. But more must be done to ensure that everyone has access to what the team behind the King\u2019s College study called a \u201ccultural workout for the body\u201d. Art is vital not only to the nation\u2019s economy, but to its health. You can\u2019t argue with the science.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In an era characterised by burnout and doomscrolling, a therapeutic alternative is hanging on a gallery wall. When volunteers at London\u2019s Courtauld Gallery stood before Van Gogh\u2019s Self-Portrait With Bandaged Ear, Manet\u2019s Bar at the Folies-Berg\u00e8re, and Gauguin\u2019s Te Rerioa, their stress and inflammation levels dropped compared with those of volunteers viewing reproductions. Science suggests<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32017,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[3153,1868,6597,1516,1510,37,1701,6814,1511],"class_list":{"0":"post-32016","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-art","9":"tag-body","10":"tag-cure","11":"tag-editorial","12":"tag-guardian","13":"tag-health","14":"tag-masterpiece","15":"tag-soul","16":"tag-view"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}