The Healing Power of Art
Suffering from back pains, headaches or recovering from an operation? Focusing your attention on a masterpiece such as Starry Night by Van Gogh or Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus (to mention just two examples) can help lessen discomfort and pain.
Research recently carried out by the University of Bari in Italy has proved that Art, Décor and a pleasant environment does in fact help us to overcome both emotional and physical pain. The results of the experiment will no doubt be good news to those hospitals who are accused of wasting money on Art and interior design.
A team at the Neurophysiopathology Pain Unit run by Professor Marina de Tommaso randomly selected a group of men and women to pick 20 paintings that they found to be either beautiful or ugly from a collection of 300 masterpieces by artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Bottero and Botticelli.
Whilst the group examined the paintings they were zapped with a short laser pulse into their figure tip. What they experienced was a sensation akin to a pin prick. Interestingly, each subject reported the sensation to be a third less intense whilst viewing the selected works they deemed beautiful as apposed to when they were viewing just a blank panel or an ugly painting.
Paintings that were deemed beautiful by the group who were not experts in art were works mainly by Leonardo da Vinci, Van Gogh and Botticelli whilst Bottero was ranked as an ugly painting. Whilst electrodes measuring brain activity noted a reduced response to pain whilst the group observed the beautiful paintings they did not measure any increase in pain whilst the subjects viewed the uglier paintings.
Distractions such as music and art have always been suspected of soothing pain in patients but now the findings from Professor Marina de Tommaso and his team reported in the New Scientist finally give us some proof of beauty being a healer.
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