Art Therapy and 'Ways of Seeing'

John Berger’s TV series ‘Ways of Seeing’, first shown on the BBC in 1972 (produced by Mike Dibb), is a BAFTA award winning four-part series reflecting on the European tradition of oil painting. Berger explores this form of visual representation in order to discover the ways in which they are seen in relationship to the invention of the camera, the development of mass reproduction and the market value of works of art. In the first part he says that the ‘most important thing about paintings themselves is that their images are silent and still’. He emphasizes the need to ‘demystify’ our responses to great art and abandon any kind of religiosity, which he also associates with the market value given to works of art. He embarks on an exploration of the way in which visual media has penetrated every aspect of life and raises important questions about how we interpret and absorb what we see when looking at drawings and paintings, past and present.

The description of paintings as silent and still denotes something of the purpose and significance of drawings and paintings in art therapy. As a practicing art therapist it has always been important to me to understand how visual modes of communication in the media influence how I see and interpret images made in art therapy. This is particularly important in an age of what Peter Fuller (1947-1990) referred to in the 1980‘s, as the Mega-Visual tradition (Fuller, 1980, p39). In the 21st century, corporations of monopoly capitalism have saturated the environment with a highly seductive cocktail of imagery, traveling at lightening speed via increasingly sophisticated technologies.

Being before the silent and still image demands concentration, attentiveness and perseverance: an attitude and discipline that is an aspect of art therapy practice although not exclusively. According to Berger, meaning becomes transmittable via what he describes as the visual corridor between the image and the eye of the beholder (a process he believes that is easily manipulated and transformed for ulterior reasons and motives). The fact that the objects and artifacts created in art therapy are silent and still is a reality that is worthy of reflection and consideration. It may also reflect something of Berger’s perspective that when an image is viewed unencumbered by superimposed cultural and political associations it can been seen in a more authentic way and the viewer connects the content and their responses to the image with their personal experience more directly and spontaneously.

This aforementioned attitude and discipline also requires an ability to allow the visual experience of looking and seeing to reveal that which is hidden. The artifact is silent and still before the client and therapist demanding a non-verbal, attentive response before the interruption of speaking, dialogue and action. I am convinced that in these moments meaning-making is taking place and the intra-personal and interpersonal dynamics between the artifact, client and therapist are activated. This is intrinsic to the non-verbal interpretation of the physiological presence of the client and the therapist and the emotional and mental processes entering the space between them. The art object becomes enigmatic in these moments. In my practice I ensure that there is adequate time given for the client and myself to simultaneously optically, cognitively and emotionally absorb the artifact that has arrived and is now materially present and embedded within the therapeutic space. I attempt to avoid a too hasty verbal intervention and encourage silence and stillness, perhaps only briefly in order to allow for important moments of interaction and adaptation in response to the image. It is interesting to consider pace and timing in these moments and be sensitive to the clients ability to absorb their image and begin the process of meaning-making.

Jacques Rancière (2013, pXII) discusses the ‘aesthetic regime of art’ in his book Aisthesis, which he describes as the combined interplay and ‘transformation of the forms of sensible experience, of ways of perceiving and being affected’ (ibid, pIX). His exploration of specific scenes where a particular form of art is considered in terms of this ‘regime’ encourages a response to art that takes account of the context in which the object or event is being viewed in terms of the timing or moment in history and the environment in which it is displayed or performed. The artifact or performance is a potential vista that invites the audience or spectator to discover novel and unique perceptions and insights. This is helpful when thinking about the artifact created in art therapy. It is made in unique circumstances and the response of the art therapist and the client is dependent on their respective experience and knowledge of what it means to look at, scrutinize and reflect on images and more specifically those made in art therapy. The artifact in art therapy is being made for multiple reasons and potentially diverse purposes. One of those may well be aesthetic, but on the whole it is created as a means of deepening and extending the range of psychotherapeutic benefits to the client.

The encounter with images in art therapy is not free of complex external influences. Social, political and historical complexities can determine the attitude of the therapist and the client with regard to their responses to art in general and therefore the images created in art therapy. Internal processes of the mind and the emotions are coloured profoundly by context and environment. Exploring the therapeutic meaning and purpose of images in art therapy is an indeterminate process that can however bring about moments of understanding and transformation. It is this potential that art therapists value and facilitate. Art therapy is about tolerating the indeterminacy of the art-making process and engaging with the image as a means of working with uncertainty and ambiguity within the relationship between the client, their art work and the art therapist. The stillness and silence of the image considered as an object of scrutiny and interpretation within the ‘aesthetic regime of art’ may be useful to the art therapist as a way of further deepening and enriching the encounter with art-making in art therapy and the artifacts created within this unique relationship. This requires a disciplined critique of ways of seeing as a prerequisite to developing a more refined sensibility in art therapy practice.

References

Fuller, P (1980) Beyond The Crisis in Art, Writers and Readers Publishing. Rancière, J (2013) Aisthesis: Scenes from the Aesthetic Regime of Art, Verso.