Can Art Change Your Personality?

“Blooming” by Cy Twombly, 2001-2008

Art is undefined and unlimited. Dance, architecture, music, film, literature, it goes on. Art means different things to different people. Your relationship with art can change over time; it is unique and individual. You can love one piece and hate a different one. You can love to paint, but hate to dance. You can be a spectator or an artist, or both. 

Before exploring whether art can change our personality or not, let’s consider what it takes to experience art first. Empathy, sensitivity, a deeper emotion? Is all of that really needed? Shouldn’t art evoke feelings within us on its own? Do we learn to appreciate art or is it innate? Is that also individual, or can we divide this ability among societies? Is art for everyone? If not, who is art for? In order to change a personality, art would have to prove to have a higher influence than a systemic popularity. It would have to prove an individual emotional change within a person. 

Art has been an inseparable part of human life since the dawn of time. It is visual and it is sensual. And we do learn best through our senses, through experience. When you look at it, art is ever-present. It’s on your walls, it’s in the books, in the music you hear and dance to, in the films you watch. We need art for a full, rich life, to enjoy ourselves, simply– to live. But art is often considered as a vague, ambiguous creature, which is written under the reigning discipline of sciences. But without it, we would experience a death of the soul. Why? Because it is art, my dear, that makes us human. 

“Nu au lit” by Felix Vallotton, 1910

“A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone’s knowledge of himself and the world around him.”

— Dylan Thomas

Art is communication. Art makes you think. Art is an expression of our times. Art unites. Art inspires. Art enriches. We express ourselves, we understand on a metaphysical, universal level the message that is being put out. How else can we explain the flooding emotions when we watch a film, read a book, look at a painting. In each of us awakens a memory, a feeling, a sensation, an unexplained urge. Even an amorphous, abstract painting or sculpture– it speaks. Picasso’s Guernica shouts. Chris Stapleton’s Tennessee Whiskey makes us feel warm inside. Pina Bausch’s dance makes us cry.  On a cloudy day, in a private art collection in Switzerland I stood in front of a painting by Félix Vallotton. It was a naked woman in bed, looking straight at me. I couldn’t walk away and until this day I cannot explain why. I’d like to think that it changed me, as I carry her with me often, a personal symbol of sensuality.

We can establish that art moves us, but does it change us? My instinct is to reach towards an expansion of empathy and sensitivity, however what I want to explore is how art changes other spheres of our personality. Is there scientific evidence that art changes us? Turns out there is an overwhelming evidence on this. Art can not only have an impact on an economic situation of a person, but also on improved educational outcomes and cognition (Catterall, 2009, Deasy, 2002; Ruppert, 2006), as well as health and physical wellbeing (Castora-Binkley, et al 2010; Noice and Noice, 2009), and community wellbeing (Jackson et al. 2003, Jackson, 2006; Goldbard, 2006). Moreover, “Individuals who engage in higher levels of audience-based arts participation and who engage directly in artistic activity will demonstrate higher rates of civic engagement.” (LeRoux & Bernadska). There you go, we are all better citizens for it.  

“Victor 25448” by Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1987

“—if a painting really works down in your heart and changes the way you see, and think, and feel, you don’t think, ‘oh, I love this picture because it’s universal.’ ‘I love this painting because it speaks to all mankind.’ That’s not the reason anyone loves a piece of art. It’s a secret whisper from an alleyway. Psst, you. Hey kid. Yes you.”

— Donna Tartt in "The Goldfinch"

It appears that we both have evidence of emotional influence, as well as proof of a deep personal and societal change caused by exposure to arts. What is it in the nature of arts that causes this change? Perhaps a more important question would be: Why art changes your personality? How art changes your personality? I recently read a book “Excellent Sheep” by William Deresiewicz, a terrific examination of all that is wrong with today’s education system and the obsession with Ivy League schools and their faulty curriculum. Deresiewicz suggested we shift towards a greater interest in liberal arts, mostly because he votes for “learning: learning for its own sake, curiosity for its own sake, ideas for their own sake”. But why? Because for long artistic subjects have been pushed over to the sidelines and judged at a university level, as they are considered a whim. But what some are missing, is that art lets us get to know who we really are. It gives us an education no science can, an education on the world we live in, on how think, reflect, and grow. The nature of art is ethereal and that is its strongest suit, because it is carnal to a point that at times we cannot explain why a piece had changed us forever.

Can art change your personality? How can it not! Personality and art are intertwined and complementary. We express ourselves and our personality through arts, then how can we not be changed when we engage in arts? We are all artists in our own way, we are changed by our art and if we just open ourselves we can be changed through the art of others.