Art for Comfort and Serenity

During the last few months, I have come across several projects that showed art for the sake of having a calming and soothing effect. These went from YouTube videos to The School of Life’s Art as Therapy book, written by Alain de Botton, founder of the everyday-philosophy global organisation, and British philosopher John Armstrong. The book collects 150 pieces of art to help people cope with the common difficulties of life and the website artastherapy.com was created to accompany it. Some museums, such as the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, and the Art Gallery of Ontario, have captions written by The School of Life on display next to the art pieces identified as therapeutic.

The Fondation Beyeler in Basel currently has its collection on display under the curatorial initiative Silent Vision – Images of Calm and Quite, proposing artworks and the museum spaces as sites of stillness and reflection. In the halls there are works by Mark Rothko, Alberto Giacometti, Antoni Tàpies, Philippe Parreno, Félix Gonzalez-Torres, among those of many other illustrious names, answering to the need to slow down that many people feel in these times. Inspired by these initiatives, I began putting together my own list of art that soothes and calms. In order to create a collection that could have a calming effect even through this digital medium, I included mainly paintings and photographs, as I believe that other artforms are harder to enjoy away from the physical space.

1.     Vija Celmins, Night Sky #18, 1998, on long-term loan to the Tate and National Galleries of Scotland.

The first work I wanted to include is this photorealistic reproduction of the night sky. Latvian-American artist Vija Celmins’ body of work mostly comprises meticulous, photorealistic reproductions of the ocean and the sky, achieved through a time-consuming, meditational process. With charcoal, the artist began Night Sky #18 by making the black backdrop, out of which each star was then picked out with an eraser. The calming effect of this work stems not only from the obvious beauty of looking at a starry sky, but from the beauty of the long artistic process behind it.   

 

2.     Villhelm Hammershøi, Interior with Ida playing the piano, 1910, part of the collection of the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo.

Nineteenth-century Danish artist Hammershøi created several works showing his wife Ida in their house. In this picture she is shown from behind, intent at playing the piano, with light seeping into the scene from the windows we imagine being just outside the picture, on the left. The tranquillity of the scene, filled with the music we easily imagine floating from the instrument, make it a scene of peaceful domesticity.

 

3.     Guo Hongwei, Painting is Collecting – Stones No. 16, 2017, artist represented by Chambers Fine Art.

Painting is collecting of Chinese artist Guo Hongwei is a series of watercolour arrangements that group what look like different specimens of mushrooms, birds, stones and leaves on a white background. The images recall the extremely detailed natural history books of the 19th and 20th centuries, with the difference though that Hongwei does not look for a precise scientific rendition of nature. He gives himself the freedom of interpreting the concept – the stones, the leaves – creating natural objects that not necessarily exist. With this process, Hongwei is celebrating the power of nature and its ability of creating such diversity, a power has also a very humbling effect on humans’ perception of our place in the world.

 

4.     Piet Mondrian, Composition no. 10 in black and white, 1915, part of the collection of the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands.

Mondrian was inspired by the sea for this work. The longer, horizontal lines towards the centre of the elliptical composition represent the rolling waves, while the vertical lines at the bottom are the waves breaking at the shore. By abstracting the world with horizontal and vertical lines, Mondrian is expressing the idea that there is a basic harmony and rhythm out there, and that at the core of everything there is a common simplicity.

 

5.     Motohide Takami, FIRE.P, 2013, artist represented by Seizan Gallery.

Takami’s images of disasters being witnessed from a safe distance want to criticize the human indifference towards tragedy. His images evoke silence and make the viewer feel tranquil and appeased, showing that if placed in a comfortable position, just far enough from disaster, people will be unconcerned with what is happening elsewhere. The social message is strong, but as a viewer of the work one cannot help but fall into that soothing trap the artist set.  

 

6.     Paul Wonner, “Dutch” Still Life with Flowers, Cartons and Dessert, 1982, part of the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art.

 Wonner’s still life mixes together what are some of the pleasures that most easily can give a moment of serenity, like getting some flowers and placing them in a vase or taking the time to look at a recipe and bake a cake. These are all small specs of comfort that take place in the everyday, and there is always great comfort in knowing that that bit of wellbeing and happiness is only a small gesture away.

 

7.     Nadav Kander, Pinboard, as part of the Signs We Exist series.

Photographer Nadav Kander created a series titled Signs We Exist. Part of it are this picture of a  pinboard, in which the marks of previously hanging photos, notes, postcards are still visible, and images of a street with gum stuck to it, a wall with remains of posters, a napkin dirty of what looks like coffee, a floor carpet with dents in it. These are all visual reminders of the presence and passing of humans and there is a soothing beauty in knowing that these tiny things document our existence in space.

 

8.     Barnett Newman, The Way II, 1969, part of the collection of the Fondation Beyeler.

The last piece I wanted to include in the collection is one that I saw at the Fondation Beyeler as part of the Silent Vision exhibition. The work is big and up-close one gets lost looking at the effect of the acrylic paint on the canvas. This intense, slow looking of the piece gives exactly the feeling the curator of the exhibition Dr. Raphaël Bouvier wanted to orchestrate: silence taking over.