ART AS CREATIVE THERAPY

by Paul Henrickson, Ph.D. ©2007

Jan-Erik Andersson, A Finnish architect and installation artist, reported: “I have used art as a way to deal
with my personal life. This concerns the art I made in the 80s that mixed the art and ideas of the
international art stars with my own personal life. When I stopped drinking and cleaned up my life, which I
did through my art, by cleaning an empty gallery for three weeks every day from nine to five. I kind of got
happier and more relaxed and ready for a more socially oriented path for my art. I started to think over the
fact that the surroundings and buildings where people spend most of their lives in general are very
unimaginative and un-stimulating. The art element has been taken away from architecture since the
beginning of modernism and this had in a way led art into a position of commenting and deconstructing
the society, not so much being involved in developing it into new more stimulating environments. This was
when I started to make public works, which were incorporated in the building’s structure, like floors,
ceilings and walls, trying to create spaces where people would feel they are in some kind of tale. So the
art wouldn't be works to be hung afterward in the space, but organic parts of the building. I also wrote
stories myself which influenced how the installations turned out, and of course my personal life history
could be seen in these, but not as directly as before.

Students at Sikkula school in Turku Finland.

Jan-Erik Andersson, Finnish architect
Shawn Decker, Jan-Erik Andersson and Dr.Richard Sandler collaborated on what
might adequately be called a live mixed media presentation

Theoom contained the apple eating sounds, and the first performance segment
consisted of the same performance as given in Chicago. The second room contained
"cultural" sounds of eating: recordings of restraunts, outdoor cafes, etc. In this
room, Jan-Erik did a performance involving stuttering - something that he naturally
does, and which is very much influenced by social situations. Finally, the third room
concentrated on digestive sounds. For this, we owe special thanks to Dr. Richard
Sandler, at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, who as a researcher of internal body
sounds was able to supply me with special equipment for monitoring the body's
internal digestive sounds. In this room the performance consisted of monitoring Jan-
Erik's stomach as it worked on the apple he had just eaten several minutes before.
Throughout the piece, the sounds of eating, social "dinner conversation", and
digestion intermingled throughout the gallery.

If my hypothesis is correct these contemporary efforts to expand the media of

artistic (aesthetic) expression have a root cause it might well be in the human
being’s effort to bring all his experiences into conceptual balance so that, in the
midst of all this chaotic stimulate, thee individual begins to know where he is. By
way of analogy, if the reader recalls the sequence of his experience from the time
he left the “outside world” and entered a “fun house“ and later exited, in what
ways had he been a changed person?

ET SATAN CONDUIT LE BAL by Paul

Henrickson, © 2007
 Jeff Koons: HANGING HEART

Increasingly, it seems, over the past several decades, news items,

especially out of the United States, have focused on the bizarre,
that is, the joining of one image to another one which logical
connection seemed, to say the least, was obscure. The sale at
auction of Jeff Koon’s “Hanging Heart” which sold for
$23,600,000. might be considered such a bizarre event. Certainly
if that kind of money came into my life I would consider it a
bizarre event.
Now, having said that, I recall having been instructed by a 16
year-old, twenty-five years my junior, that having been stuck by a
poisonous Crown of Thorns Star Fish one simply, and beautifully,
reverses the process and turns the animal upside down and
allows the starfish to suck out the poison. The use of the source of
a threat as the cure for the same threat also seems rather bizarre,
but that is the way it was. On the other hand, and from another
point of view, it might appear to be a part of a normal organic
process such as our uses for salt, one as a preservative of dead
meat and, two, in smaller amounts, as an enhancer of taste.
 A Crown of Thorns Starfish. These measure
14” sometimes

My gosh!, but that explanation, that demonstration of an organic

process with the star fish was a revelation. This Micronesian
sixteen year-old also calmed my fears when, greatly startled, I
warned him of a shark not 10 feet from where the boy stood
waist deep in water covering the reef. He was not concerned for
he told me “That one is afraid of people.” “Oh”, I replied, “I hope
the shark knows that”. I did not pursue the matter further to ask
that if he is afraid of people what is the shark was doing so close
to two of them?
I really am at a loss to explain what these examples might have to
do with one Timothy McVeigh, out of protest for the murders of
fetuses bombs an abortion clinic. As if his “conceptual statement”
indicated that killing other human beings is bad before the birth
of the individual, but acceptable when he does it after they have
been born into this world. I do not know how the theory of organic
processes might work in this connection.
But I am able to turn the discussion in the direction of suggesting
that a work of art might also bear some social responsibilities
There is something NOT acceptable with the notion that because
a work is labeled a work of art it is, thereby, exempt from any
moral obligations. I once knew a perennial New York socialite who,
for reasons I am unable to explain unzipped his fly at table as an
example of a “conceptual event” and peed onto the platter of
asparagus. It has forever altered my vision of asparagus. Perhaps
he wanted those assembled at table in this fifth avenue
apartment to realize there was a similarity between a rod of
asparagus and his semi-occult appendage. Some additionally
disciplined intellectual analysis needs doing. Of course there is
the example of Gandhi having drunk his own urine, but that was
his own and the organic relationship seemed somewhat more in
evidence than with my friend and the platter of asparagus.
Except! …returning now to the question of an organic relationship between
Timothy and the bomb…there may be a clarifying factor if some how, one wonders
why there weretwo other unexploded bombs fond in the building after the one
McVeigh delivered went off and caused the deaths of 168 people. Our current
society seems content not to have the existence of those other two
bombs explained preferring to avoid having to consider the morality of
an off-balanced individual having been trained by our efficient armed
services into being a previously prepared and ready explanation for the
event. Something not unlike “The Manchurian Candidate”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9tYbGbtT0I

There are times when art may be more effective in

explaining events than reason and at this time I bow to
Tom Lehrer who had shown himself to be extremely
clever at this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pklr0UD9eSo This link is for a musical ditty
composed, arranged and sung by the Harvard mathematician (or was it M.I.T?) Tom Lehrer.
While he, too, is pocking some serious critical fun at our social values, some four decades ago or
more, there is considerable humor, wry though it may be, and wit, evident in phrase after phrase
verbal and musical and so the entire piece both entertains and instructs us as well as moving us to
a level of helpless concern …all responses he successfully elicits from us which, I think, Jeff
Koons does not. That something is. I believe, an arrangement, a composition, a specially focused
organization that takes us from one level to another. I have not identified that quality in the work
of Jeff Koons. There is no doubt that the world has given him every opportunity and, in that
process, deprived hundreds of others.
The Oklahoma City bombing was in 1995 and McVeigh is
now executed, erased from the national consciousness
and absolved of guilt, and it was, after all, only 6 years
later that another 3,000 people died at the Twin Towers
where it is also thought other explosive devices were
planted in advance …a job much better done and with a
significantly greater human yield of corpses….thus the
title of this piece “Et Satan Conduit La Bal” a phrase
taken from Gounod’s opera “Faust” and, I hope, the
similarity between that seduction and that of the
Manchurian brought to focus.
In this connection one might well check out the cultural
roots of Saatchi’s Galleries behaviors regarding its
operations which could appear to be the actions of a
cultural fifth column who might well have taken a phrase
out of Breznjev’s observation that one should not
underestimate the power of an image. Nor, for that
matter, the influence of associates, and the values placed
on personality development by the military…and as for
the military, I should be very interested to hear Colin
Powell’s comments on the conceptual conflicts this
engendered in his mind when confronted with the reports
coming out on El Graib and the subsequent efforts to
make a heroine out of that female soldier England and
even more recently in connection with the Blackwater
operations where the Iraqi families of Blackwater
slaughter are suing in the United States. All this might
make it appear as though our value structure has
experienced a crack…or two.
But, it might be asked, what has all this to do with Jeff
Koons? Well, look at his work and at who it is who
supports it and at what cost and then ask “Why?”
A decade ago I was acquainted with a couple where the
mother, thinking her son might be gay, thought the best
way to cure him was to seduce him. One might wonder
whether there weren’t mixed motives in that decision. It
is thought that Mrs. Pushkin had the same thought for
Rudolph Nureyev. And I, at 21, was rebuked by the
husband of a woman of 63 for not having had sex with
her as an earlier associate at the school had done.
That behavior simply hadn’t been my view of a husband’s
role. To repay me for my indifference she told the rest of
the town that I was gay and that I didn’t care who knew
it. Well, a guy doesn’t have much chance in denying it, or
not, does he?
It just goes to show the lengths to which some ladies will
go to express their disappointment. This, all of the above,
is, I believe, a part of what the Hopis call KOYANISQATSI…
a world out of joint.
Now we find that eight and nine year-olds are accused of
rape by an eleven year old…and the arresting officers
believe it! It seems that one is damned if one does and
damned if one doesn’t. And living in a convent or
monastery is no security these days either.
It has been said that art reflects the time from which it
emerges, a concept which certainly raises interesting
questions as to what other art may have been produced
during any of the period one has traditionally studied for
it is obvious to nearly all today that not all types of
aesthetic production reach the level of a million dollar
approval. One wonders what such off-beat Rococo notions
may have been… My, my!! A totally new field for
economic exploitation!
One comment published regarding the sale of Koon’s
(bleeding) heart indicated that the writer thought the
work in “bad taste”, a heuristic comment if there ever
was one…opening up a whole range of additional
comments. In general, matters of “taste” are matters of
social preference and, in general, the expression of “good
taste” is a matter of social agreement. In the area of what
are generally considered the “creative” arts the
significant works are NOT the works that abide by the
prevailing contemporary taste.
“Good taste” in mid 19th Century France did not include
the efforts of Eduard Monet and this condemnation was
dully reflected in many critical comments published at
the time. “Good taste” might be detected a century later
when the works of Dane Clark might be placed beside
Monet’s work when the observer might also learn
something about the difference between “good taste”
and aesthetic perception.

Dane Clark: “Spring in Santa Fe”

Dane Clark “Park”

Claude Monet: Impression

Philip Guston: untitled
In short, there is something just a little disturbing, “off-
center”, “not quite right”, or “questionable” about truly
creative works of art. They seem to work provocatively on
our sensibilities. If there is creativity involved it is likely
that, as observers, we are not bored. Of course, that may
all depend upon the level and sort of expectation residing
in the observer.

We might generate a thought by considering the

proposition that the use of metaphor, a visual metaphor,
seems to progressively disappear from the Clark where
the metaphor seems to be “spring blossoms are pretty”
to the Guston where the metaphor seems to be “how
should I organize these sguiggles”. and all of this might
raise the question as to the role of metaphor in visual art,
or, for that matter, in theatre.

Greta Gabo with Munch’s “Scream” (is there a metaphor here?)

I suppose something might be said for Koons in that he

seems to reintroduce metaphor into the visual art format,
however, debased that reintroduction might be.

pIsuoe,ahtvrymigbdfKnHwo

How pointedly and how often might it be necessary to

show us how very intellectually and aesthetically
commonplace the American bourgeois culture may be a
matter for debate. But such a debate, I think, would end
up at least with the agreement that all such attempts had
been futile because there had been no challenging
alternative in the offing.
The national consensus seems to be that the everyday
art reviews appearing in the newspapers as well as in
some art journals belong in the same section as
entertainment. Granted, that considering the complexity
of some of the ideas under discussion, and involved in art
criticism, the daily or weekly newspaper can hardly
provide a platform for the exercise of subtlety. Newspaper
editors are generally very stodgy and do not tolerate a
difference of opinion regarding the nature of their
readership and protect their self-image with ready
assertions of generosity and patience where the more
correct description would be timidity and ignorance.
Would it be too risky to state that Koons ‘ work is banal? It
is there, in place (and must be noticed(?),but so what?
Along the same lines, is it important that we now know
Koons is circumcised?

Jeff Koons and wife.

As for economic reality and what passes for art world event we are
informed that:
Consumer confidence is at a two-year low, oil prices at an all-time high, a million or more sub-prime
mortgagees are facing eviction from their homes in the coming year, and banks, brokerages, and
bond-rating companies are sinking under a flood of bad debt.

But in the art world, the party's just getting started -- and this could be the year the market breaks
the $1 billion mark.

My comment is: and just what, I ask, does all this interest mean in terms of the qualities
of the work involved? The Manchurian Satan seems to be at it again!
“Hanging Heart” is just a gig shiny red metal heart-shaped form with a gold bow
attached…does it, perhaps, have some relationship with the fate of a two year-old girl
who was cruelly treated and whose body was stuffed in a blue plastic container set adrift
in Galveston Bay? No relationship that we think we might draw with any certainty, yet,
if I apply the criterion for art criticism that I have applied elsewhere I might try to say
that Koons is purposefully trying to get the rest of us to understand is that the things we
cherish, or tell each other we cherish, exist only in certain realities that are outside of
ourselves. The ideal of the concept does not flourish within. Caring is reduced to a paper
greeting card and my “blue diamond is bigger than yours”. To the extent that Koons may
be revealing to us how utterly and cynically empty he is,and the rest of us as a result, we
need only to appraise his work. What can be said for sure is that finding evidence of a
creative use and manipulation of material does not exist in his realm of operation and
his conceptual realm is bankrupt despite the @23,000,000 some strange person, whose
ego needed some artificial assistance, paid for it, or there was another social goal.

Koons is not alone, there is Henk Hofstra in the

Netherlands painting a road blue in metaphoric memory
of what once was a canal, or so they tell us. The Arts
Journal announcement that published this photograph
also referred to the role of metaphor. Now, it would seem,
it is required to determine the quality of the metaphor. I
suppose, in the case of “The Blue Road” it is important to
know that it required 14,000 litres of paint to accomplish
it. What other artist would count the ounces it required to
accomplish a task? ….or that one
might even consider it a “task”?
“Featuring 1000 metres of road painted blue
and the phrase "Water is Life" written in eight-
metre-high letters across it, the Blue Road is
reminiscent of the waterway that used to be
where the road is now. It's a memorial to
nature, but it's also just plain awe-inspiring.
There's even a few cool tidbits along the road,
like a sinking car.”
 (from the Arts
Journal announcement)`
This is without doubt an “awe-inspiring” use of rhetoric to
underscore degeneration and the impoverishment of, to
use a popular contemporary word, “concept”. We are not
told where the other half of the 75,000 euros came from
that this project cost, perhaps it was Hofstra’s investment
in his own career, in which case some serious questions
aught to be answered as to why the Municipality would
authorize such a devastating subsidy at a time when
there are areas in the world where there is no water and
75,000 Euros might have provided some for parts of
Africa. That might have been a worthy concept to
subsidize. Let us hear from those awed-individuals on the
Municipal Board who voted for this project.
Back to Dane Clark. It is not my intention to degrade
Dane Clark’s aesthetic focus. My intention is to point out
that his focus is different from that which Monet displays
in the work above. Clark’s intention was to please, titilate
and to seduce, Monet was teaching us something like
how to see what we might be looking at. To try to make
the point even clearer it might not be difficult for the
reader to make the aesthetic jump, from the Monet to the
Guston work…and from there to others. Having made this
leap, then, will probably mean that the observer has seen
that the Clarks deal with a more decorative (socially
acceptable?) view of the outside world and Monet and
Guston are dealing more directly with the material
pigment in hand which are creative artistic concerns…not
social, not polite, not empty of intelligent analysis.
Hirst's New York show is a spectacular success. Hymn, one of the pieces in
the show, is bought by Charles Saatchi for ?1 million. But Humbrol, a toy
firm based in Hull, considers legal action over the piece, which it claims is a
replica on a larger scale of its Young Scientist Anatomy Set, which sells for ?
14.99. To fend off legal action, Hirst makes a 'goodwill' payment to the
commercial sculptor who designed the set.

Damien Hirst : “Hymn”

While I believe, the materials are much alike, plastic, that is, the
concepts are very different between the Hirst and the Jimenez but
I will need to time to gently figure out what they are.
Note:
Luis Jimenez, 65, a successful but often controversial New Mexican sculptor whose work has
been displayed at the Smithsonian and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, died June 13 in
what authorities are calling an industrial accident at his studio in Hondo, N.M.
Part of a sculpture was being moved with a hoist when it came loose and struck the artist,
pinning him against a steel support, said the Lincoln County Sheriff's Department. He was taken
to the Lincoln County Medical Center, where he was later pronounced dead.
.
 Jimenez:“Pieta” the toy

Hirst: Valium
Ishihara: test
for color blindness
 Now, I have to admit that there are more visual experiences in the offing in the
Hirst than in the Ishihara, and both Ishihara and Hirst were probably aware of what
they themselves were doing the main difference here in these works being brought
together is to further demonstrate the importance of recognizing the “why” of
something’s existence. The Ishihara had a closely defined purpose in its attempt to
measure the tolerances in human vision. The Hirst was simply interested in
providing a stimulous for a visual experience…a roller coaster ride, as it were,
breathtaking (look closely at “Valium”) at the time and thrilling in remembrance.
The one is science, the other is art. Hirst is, regrettably, an inconstant lover and
seems to prefer size (mine is bigger than yours) over the quality of the concept..

Warhol: ‘Green Car

Crash” a sycophant Warhol was not, perhaps, a highly paid court
jester probably. Either way is he worth 71-72million?
 Tracey Emin’s “The Unmade
Bed” reportedly her own bed together with all the accumulation of
human detritus.
Two art students have caused a stir at the controversial Turner Prize show
in London by staging a semi-naked pillow fight on one of the exhibits and
pouring vodka over it.
Jian Jun Xi, 37, and Yuan Cai, 43, said they were "visual artists" attempting
to make Tracey Emin's work more interesting

. Tracey Emin out of her bed, but looking like she might go back in.
Now, if it is conceptual art one is considering, it would seem that at some
point distinctions might have to be drawn…if only to be able to determine
where one’s thoughts really were.
All in all, then, what I am attempting to describe is a scene not unlike
that described in Gounod’s opera “Faust” where “the father of lies” has
stirred up the unthinking passionate masses into a frenzy. This is the best
stage direction and acting I have seen of that scene and was performed
by Bryn Terfel a video clip which I include here for those who would
enjoy a conceptual elaboration of the ideas (concepts?) the expressive
arts have been able to engender. Hopefully, the reader will be
able to transfer some of the aesthetic experience from
the video clip to the process he uses to understand other
plastic arts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4I3obvWA4c Bryn
Terfel

Conceptual art requires quite a different mode of thinking . one better

acquainted with the art of punning, a kind of secret, obscure and scurrilous
language, of great interest to the barely educated and one that is generally
unrewarding to those accustomed to a disciplined thought process. Yet,
there is value in it, a value that is often undetected by its practitioners or
their admirers, but one that is there none the less and the mental exercise
that is required to unearth this material can be rewarding. Such a one is, I
believe, Doris Cross.
Doris represents, at least from my point of view, a mind which, when left in
a state of abeyance, remains open to information not otherwise available. It
is, perhaps, similar to that state which some refer to as “regression”. I tend
to think of it in that light. In any event. Doris has described her work
process in that way and the results often suggest that information, not
otherwise directed comes through about which she claims to have known
nothing, such as Greek mythology and medieval defenses. I believe she
didn’t know anything about them. Why such information appears to have
emerged in her work through the technique of mind absenteeism I do not
know. Perhaps such interpretations are all merely a factor of the observer’s
mental work, or, as some have believed in the past, it is the way the Gods
communicate with man.
In any event her efforts are not unlike those of the Essenesin her
attempting to take an existing language and employing it unconventionally
(and destructive of the intent of the original language) to say something
other than what it had said before.

• Redefining the uses to which material can be put seems to me to be very much a
part of the creative artist’s function. Doris may have fallen into such a course by
accident through her having felt incapable of achievement in the more
 traditionally defined ways and the fact that she generally had difficulty, both
mechanical (anatomical) and psychological, in communicating verbally
her process of destroying the structure of vocabulary and meaning
may have been, for her, a therapeutic if not also a retributional action.
Whatever its origin we now have a new thought item…an item that
does require us to think about its appearance in our world.
This demand upon us is not made by the work of Rafael Labro, or, if it is, I
have not been able to detect what it might be, except he is, for me, a fake.
He can make an appeal only to the ignorant and the corrupt which may be
the reason he gained the support of both businesses and politicians.
This piece, below, is a work by the French "artist"
Raphael Labro, now exhibiting in Malta, who got the
President of Malta, other politicians and church people
to come to the opening. There were also about 12 - 15
businesses which sponsored him. I couldn't even get my
bank to do that. I feel sorry for Malta, but then, it
is following the rest of the world, and, if one can’t
be real, one can, at least, be
fashionable.I will leave the reader to suppose what I
think of this effort. Yet, we are urged to discover
what the organic roots for this monstrous obscenity
might be.
 R
ApnaigtbyheFrcsRlLo
A painting by the French Artist Raphael Labro, presently appearing to
create a stir on this Mediterranean island.

When I was in Santa Fe and asked the director of the

Governor's Gallery (a gallery out side the governor's
office which had a good space if I might have a show
there. He came to my house to see my work (and later
congratulated himself on that generosity for as
Director of the Governor's Gallery he felt I should
have gone to him) and as the interview went I asked him
how works for exhibition were selected. He said there
was a committee of three (That sounds like a real
democratic procedure) when I asked who they were he
told me he was one, the secretary to the governor's
wife, and the third was the governor's wife. I asked
what their art qualifications were for making this sort
of decision and he replied he had had a course in Art
Appreciation, the secretary had an MBA and the
governor's wife was the governor's wife.

This shows Clara

Apodaca, the wife of the then Governor Jerry Apodaca instructing Georgia
O’Keeffe. This is not the same gubernatorial administration I referred to
above. Allan Pearson was the Director of the Governor’s Gallery at the
time O’Keeffe exhibited and James Rutherford was the Director at the time
I mentioned. I am no longer certain who the Governor was at that time. It
may have been the one who used to speed through town on very important
missions. He was Republican, Apodaca, of course, a Democrat, but in the
United States it is increasingly difficult to tell the difference. I think
the body language very instructive in this image and I hope illustrates
one of the moral distinctions between artists and politicians.

If nothing else, the value of art criticism lies in its ability

to raise thought processes in the reader.
A most cynical friend of mine grows passionate over the
useless and awesome seriousness with which the
professions…all of them… are viewed and “art” is
included. My viewpoint is different and I sense that with 6
billion inhabitants on earth and all that potential mental
activity we need to develop more venues for its
dissipation or experience an implosion.
This illustration comes from the Wikipedia explanation of “Fun House”. One
somewhat aside observation : I =could not help top wonder what the inspiration of
the onion domes might have been since one, generally, associates them with a
mosque and, perhaps, the fairie tales of Islam which include some very fascinating
and rewarding characters. The Wikipedia definition of a funhouse includes,
interestingly enough the recognition that the “funhouse” experience involves the
participation of the visitor.