“Thank You!” Beauty-Bringers, Buyers, and Brokers
When I started writing this note, a songbird started chirping her beautiful melody right outside my window. In the rain. How fitting since I sat down to write about beauty’s indispensable importance in an often drab and difficult world! Like that bird’s beautiful song (she’s still chirping), beautiful art happily invades our deepest being with peace, calm, pleasure, and joy. O, how often we need such blessed beauty-invasions! We know this instinctively, of course. We’ve all experienced it. But just in case we’ve got doubts, here are two scholarly snippets among many that affirm what we already know experience.
According to a 2011 University of London study, viewing beautiful art “increases blood flow to what’s known as the ‘joy response’ part of the brain. Thus, viewing a beautiful piece of art can alter your physiology or change your mind.”
On January 5, 2022, The Wall Street Journal Magazine reported on studies in the Journal of Psychiatric Intensive Care and Frontiers in Psychology: “’Generally, beauty and music or art is very rewarding to the human brain,’ says Wendy Suzuki, a neuroscientist and professor of neural science at New York University. ‘It can activate our natural, de-stressing part of our nervous system called the parasympathetic nervous system that slows our heart rate down. And I think that’s so important these days because our stress and anxiety levels are so high.’”
(That songbird is still chirping, even though the rain has gotten heavier. Interesting….)
But again, we already knew all this. That being the case, why am I writing this? Three reasons:
To encourage beauty-bringers (those who create beautiful art). In a larger culture that often seems to mock artistic beauty in favor of artistic dissonance, what you’re doing is increasingly essential. So, don’t give up! Keep bringing beauty! Your artworks are soul-care, my friends. So, thank you, and please keep doing what you do!
To encourage beauty-buyers (those who acquire beautiful art). Your act of acquiring beautiful art shows your care for yourself and others. It’s a purposeful, heart-lifting movement that brings healthy light to souls and minds. So, thank you, and please keep doing what you do!
To encourage beauty-brokers (those who connect beauty-bringers with beauty-buyers, like art agents, designers, consultants, gallery staff, art therapists, doctors who prescribe museum visits, and others). Thank you for connecting hearts to beauty through your physical spaces, recommendations, installations, and more. You are valued participants in this grand, heart-lifting campaign! So, thank you, and please keep doing what you do!
This story from that same January 5, 2022, article in The Wall Street Journal Magazine is a stunning example of beautiful art’s power to restore, revive, and even rescue.
During a dark period in his youth, Bill Murray thought about killing himself while wandering the streets of Chicago. “I was ready to die,” the actor said at a press conference several years ago. That day he decided to visit the Art Institute and found himself in front of Jules Breton’s 1884 painting The Song of the Lark, which depicts a young woman looking skyward, sickle in hand, a violent orange sunrise behind her. Suddenly, Murray felt hope. “I just thought, Well, there’s a girl who doesn’t have a whole lot of prospects, but the sun’s coming up anyway and she’s got another chance at it,” he said. “That gave me some sort of feeling that I too am a person, and get another chance every day the sun comes up.” Murray credits the painting with saving his life.
But again, we already knew this, right? So, please keep bringing, brokering, and buying beautiful art!
(By the way, the bird is still chirping. Yay!)
Photo credit: The Song of the Lark by Jules Breton