The Guardian view on art and health: the masterpiece can cure the body as well as the soul | Editorial

IIn an era characterized by burnout and doomscrolling, a therapeutic alternative hangs on a gallery wall. When volunteers at London’s Courtauld Gallery stood in front of Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, Manet’s bar at the Folies-Bergère, and Gauguin’s Te Rerioa, their stress and inflammation levels decreased compared to those of volunteers viewing reproductions. Science suggests that original art is a medicine that can be seen rather than swallowed.

That art can boost morale is well known. But the fact that it calms the body is new. A study from King’s College London asked participants to examine masterpieces by 19th-century post-impressionists – Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Manet and Gauguin – while attached to sensors. Half the group saw the originals in the gallery, the other half saw copies in a laboratory. The results were clear: going to art galleries is good for your health: it relieves stress and reduces the risk of heart disease, while strengthening the immune system.

There is growing evidence to support this view. Earlier this summer, a team of psychologists from Cambridge carried out a similar project at Kettle’s Yard Gallery to show how appreciating artistic beauty helps us escape the “mental traps of everyday life”. These experiments follow research published last year by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, to quantify the improvements in physical and mental health linked to taking part in creative activities, as well as the economic gain – estimated at an average of £1,000 per person per year, through improved work productivity and fewer trips to the GP. Current scientific analysis by Nature Magazine suggests that art can play a role in public health, particularly in the prevention of chronic diseases. 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,” writes art historian Katy Hessel in her new book How to Live an Artful Life. “The best thing we can do is take some time with this.” Time, of course, is what we lack in today’s frenetic world. But this seems to be the key to the therapeutic powers of art. Galleries are calm and contemplative places. We stop scrolling and really start looking. Engaging deeply with a work of art induces “psychological distancing” – seeing the bigger picture. As Iris Murdoch wrote: “Great art is liberating, it allows us to see and take pleasure in that which is not ourselves. »

While creativity is entrusted to AI, galleries bring us face to face with human genius. When we notice the intensity of the brushstrokes in Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, we feel the pain behind them. As Auden reminds us at the Museum of Fine Arts, great paintings teach us about human suffering and our daily indifference to it.

We are advised to exercise and eat healthily; will doctors soon prescribe a visit to a local gallery or museum? In a context of falling visitor numbers and funding crises, these studies provide an additional incentive to invest more in the creative sector. The Government’s £270 million funding package to shore up England’s “crumbling cultural infrastructure” earlier this year was welcome. But more needs to be done to ensure everyone has access to what the team behind the King’s College study called a “cultural workout for the body”. Art is vital not only to the country’s economy, but also to its health. You can’t argue with the science.