“Beautifully therapeutic.”
I use this little phrase to describe anything that cultivates consecrated* pleasure to bring healing, wholeness, and true human flourishing. Here are some physical examples:
By its visual beauty, silky-soft petals, fragrant aroma, and representational richness (e.g., to express love), a blooming rose is beautifully therapeutic.
By its visually beauty, delicious taste, physiological nutrition, and thoughtful preparation and presentation, good food is beautifully therapeutic.
By their visual beauty, ear-tickling delight, and scale, softly-rustling, Autumn-gold leaves are beautifully therapeutic.
Like all these physical things, fine art can also be beautifully therapeutic when it cultivates consecrated pleasure to bring healing, wholeness, and true human flourishing. It can do this through visual and other sensory experiences, like physical touch and interaction. In fact, fine art that stimulates a wide variety of sensory experiences has the potential to be extraordinarily beautifully therapeutic.
Happily, these ideas are being increasingly employed by architects, designers, artists, and others. They’re collaborating more than ever before – as at the 2024 Conference and Expos on Environments for Aging – to create buildings, landscapes, interior spaces, and artwork that is beautifully therapeutic. This is especially true in healing and transition-related spaces like hospitals, medical centers, memory-care units, senior living residences, and more. Stephen M. Scott, President of SSM Health Saint Louis University Hospital, confirmed this commitment in the design of the 802,000 square foot, $550 million hospital opened in 2020.
We also remain committed to incorporating national best practices in patient-centered design while delivering an improved overall patient, visitor, and staff experience. A central piece of this improved experience includes artwork featured throughout the hospital. Art plays a powerful role in healing.1
I was honored to create twelve sculptures (six diptychs) for that new hospital, partnering in the mission to create a space that is beautifully therapeutic. It’s in that same spirit that I’ve been creating new artworks that offer wider sensory experiences. Of course, my artwork will always be visually beautiful. This new artwork also invites physical touch and interaction to bring consecrated pleasure, and thus, healing, wholeness, and true human flourishing. As mentioned above, these artworks are especially relevant for healing and transition-related spaces like hospitals, medical centers, memory-care units, senior living residences, and more.
Memory Cubes and Wandering Waves (see videos below) are two sculptures that offer this wider sensory experience in pursuit of the honored title “beautifully therapeutic.” What do you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the overall concept of “beautifully therapeutic” and on these two new sculptures.
*I included the modifier “consecrated” to distinguish virtuous pleasure from depraved pleasure. There are pleasures that are depraved and destructive: the high from illicit and addiction-causing drugs, the momentary rush of stealing something, the strange satisfaction of lashing out in bitter vengeance, watching gratuitous violence in a movie, and more. Fine art can fit this description if it’s nothing more than an artist’s vain self-expression, is poorly crafted, arouses vice, and is devoid of hope or beauty. By contrast, fine art that brings consecrated pleasure is that which is both enjoyable and constructive. It’s not that such fine art can’t deal with painful topics or include an artist’s self-expression. But ultimately, healing art, art that brings wholeness and human flourishing, must convey aesthetic beauty along with virtue that lightens the soul and body. I’ve written on this topic extensively in other blogs, and if you have any thoughts about it, please comment!
1The Healing Power of Art, SSM Health Saint Louis University Hospital, published by the Marketing and Communications Department of SSM Health, 2021, page 7.