Art & the Search for Sanity
Suzy Nees
Sample Art Therapy exercise for a Psychiatric Ward
Lesson 1: Gluing buttons to the lid of a mayonnaise jar
Materials: Glue, buttons, mayonnaise jars
Overview: This exercise is designed to help mentally ill patients build self-esteem by getting in touch with their
creative energies. By limiting materials to a few simple everyday objects, this exercise provides a safe and
comforting atmosphere of mediocrity in which patients can more easily avoid frustration and feelings of
worthlessness.
Lesson time: 1 hour. Cleanup time: 10 minutes.
The sarcasm is all mine, but the art therapy exercise above was taken from real life.
Obviously, there are more grave injustices in the mental health system than boring art therapy
activities. And I understand that the art therapist who presented this lesson probably had good
intentions, and very likely was operating under a set of limitations bordering on the ludicrous.
But as an arts educator and a self-taught artist, I take it very personally when I hear about demeaning
"creative" exercises like this. Besides seeming incompatible with the sanity process, they are an
affront to creativity, and an insult to the consumer community. They presume that consumers (persons
who suffer from a mental illness) are somehow lacking in imagination and have little, if anything, to offer society through their creative
endeavors.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Case in point: Yayoi Kusama.
Yayoi Kusama is a powerhouse in the world of contemporary art. She has exhibited work with Claes
Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, and Jasper Johns. Kusama represented Japan at the Venice Biennale in
1993, and in 1998 & 1999 a major retrospective exhibition of her work toured the U.S. and Japan.
Today, one of Kusama's small sketches would cost the average person a year's salary.
Yayoi Kusama is also a consumer. Since childhood, she has suffered from hallucinations and severe
obsessive thoughts, often of a suicidal nature. Today she lives in a mental hospital in Tokyo, where
she has continued to produce work isnce the mid-seventies. Her studio is a short distance from the hospital. "If it were not for art, I would have killed
myself a long time ago," Kusama once said.
Here is a statement by the artist about her 1954 painting entitled Flower (D.S.P.S):
"One day I was looking at the red flower patterns of the tablecloth on a table, and when I looked up I
saw the same pattern covering the ceiling, the windows and the walls, and finally all over the room, my
body and the universe. I felt as if I had begun to self-obliterate, to revolve in the infinity of endless time
and the absoluteness of space, and be reduced to nothingness. As I realized it was actually
happening and not just in my imagination, I was frightened. I knew I had to run away lest I should be
deprived of my life by the spell of the red flowers. I ran desperately up the stairs. The steps below me
began to fall apart and I fell down the stairs straining my ankle."
(Yayoi Kusama)
Early in Kusama's career, she began covering surfaces (walls, floors, canvases, and later household objects and naked assistants) with the polka dots
that would become a trademark of her work. The vast fields of polka dots, or "infinity nets", as she called them, were taken directly from her
hallucinations.
Yayoi Kusama's later work included installations in which she would fill several rooms with hundreds
of stuffed objects that have been described as resembling a cross between a phallus and a taste bud.
And whether or not that kind of thing is really your cup of tea, you have to admit that that is about as
far away from buttons on a mayonnaise jar lid as you can get.
The art world is a funny thing. It's easy to hate, in many ways. It can be very elitist, and self-important,
and alienating; even insulting sometimes. But you have to give it credit for one thing: It does give
people the chance to speak in their very own made-up language, however strange it might sound.
Because let's face it: there are some human emotions that just can't be expressed any other way.
Yayoi Kusama is a true hero, not just in the art world, or even as an icon of Mad Pride. By re-defining
the boundaries of what we now call art, she really did make a difference in the human condition. Her
weirdness changed the world.
Yayoi Kusama expanded the realm of human expression in a radical way by fiercely refusing to let
herself be categorized according to her way of seeing the world. That simple act -- the act of resisting
stigmatization -- is one of the most powerful and influential decisions that any human being can make,
whether you do it in the name of race, nationality, religion, gender, or the degree to which you are
comfortable with reality.
Thank you, Kusama-san.