Art is not mere entertainment. Alongside philosophy and religion, it has been humanity’s chief
source of consolation. It is what we should turn to in our very worst moments.
Here are seven of the most calming works of art ever produced.
We are very poor at retaining perspective. Art can help by carrying us out of present
circumstances and reframing events against a more imposing or vast backdrop.
This is a move being made by the Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto through his
gigantic empty photographs of the Atlantic ocean in a variety of moods. What is most
notable in these sublime scenes is that humanity is nowhere in the frame. We are afforded a
glimpse of what the planet looked like before the first creatures emerged from the seas.
Viewed against such an immemorial scene, the precise discontents of our times matter ever
so slightly less. We regain composure not by being made to feel more important, but
by being reminded of the miniscule and momentary nature of everyone and everything.
In Ansel Adams’s photograph, a row of aspens have been surprised by the photographer's
light and stand out as strands of silver against the blackness of night. The mood is sombre,
but elegant. There is a consoling message within the artistry that can appease our raw
grief and anxiety about our mortality and the fleetingness of time. The image invites
us to see ourselves as part of the mesmerising spectacle of nature. Nature's rules apply
to us as much as they do to the trees of the forest. It’s not personal.
Leaves always wither and fall. Autumn necessarily follows from spring and summer. The photograph
is a reframe device. It invites us to think of our own deaths, is having a natural order,
nothing to do with individual justice . The photograph tries to take the personal stink
out of what is happening to us.
3. Ludolf Bakhuysen, Warships in a Heavy Storm, 1695
In the 17th century, the Dutch developed a tradition of painting that depicted ships
in violent storms. These works, which hung in private homes and in municipal buildings
around the Dutch republic, had an explicitly therapeutic purpose to them: they were delivering
a moral to their viewers, who lived in a nation critically dependent on maritime trade, a
message about confidence in seafaring and life more broadly. The sight of a tall sailing
ship being tossed to a twenty degree angle in a rough sea looks - to an inexperienced
person - like a catastrophe. But there are many situations that look and feel much more
dangerous than they really are, especially when the crew is prepared and the ship internally
sound.
Bakhuysen’s Warships in a Heavy Storm looks chaotic in the extreme: how could the people
in the picture possibly survive? But the ships were well-designed for just such situations.
Their hulls had been minutely adapted through long experience to withstand the tempests
of the northern oceans. Bakhuysen wanted us to feel proud of humanity’s resilience in
the face of apparently dreadful challenges. His painting enthuses us with the message
that we can all cope far better than we think; what appears immensely threatening may be
highly survivable.
The highest selling postcard of art in France is Poppies by Claude Monet.
Sophisticated people could be tempted to scorn. They are afraid that such enthusiasms might
be evidence of a failure to acknowledge or understand the awful dimensions of the world.
But there is another way to interpret this taste of pretty things: that it doesn’t
arise from an unfamiliarity with suffering, but from an all too close and pervasive involvement
with it – from which we are impelled occasionally to seek relief if we are not to fall into
despair. Far from naivety, it is precisely the background of suffering that lends such
beauty and dignity to this work of art. Claude Monet hasn’t just made a pretty picture;
he has bottled hope.
Caspar David Friedrich shows us a striking, jagged rock formation, a spare stretch of
coast, the bright horizon, far away clouds and a pale sky, all carefully designed to
induce us into a mood.
The picture does not refer directly to the stresses of our day to day lives. Its function
is to give us access to a state of mind in which we are acutely conscious of the largeness
of time and space. The work is sombre, but not despairing. And in that condition of mind,
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 Japanese have an artistic tradition, known as kintsugi, wherein the broken pieces of
an accidentally-smashed pot are carefully picked up, reassembled and then glued together
with lacquer inflected with a luxuriant gold powder - to create a beautiful ode to the
art of repair. In kintsugi, there is no attempt to disguise the damage, the point is to render
the fault-lines obvious and elegant. The precious veins of gold are there to emphasise that
things falling apart isn’t unexpected or panic-inducing: it creates an opportunity
for us to mend - and mend redemptively.
'Fernando Pessoa' is a beautifully dark monumental work by Richard Serra, named after a Portuguese
poet with a turn for lamentation.
The work does not tell us to cheer up or point us in a brighter direction (what people often
do when we tell them our troubles). The large scale and monumental character of this intensely
sombre sculpture implicitly declares the normality and universality of difficulty. It is confident
that we will recognise the legitimate place of solemn emotions in an ordinary life. Rather
than leaving us alone with our darker moods, the work proclaims them as central features
of life. In its stark gravity, Richard Serra's 'Fernando Pessoa' creates a dignified home
for sorrow.
Too many books have been written trying to explain what art might be for. In moments
of great crisis, the answer becomes only too obvious: art is there to help keep us alive.
Our book, "What is Culture for?" , helps us find passion, hope and perspective in the arts.