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Art Therapy for Your Broken Heart

Creativity and Empathy can Sooth the Heart

By Asterion AvocadoPublished 2 years ago 5 min read
Top Story - March 2022
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“I am constantly trying to communicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell about something I only feel in my bones and which can only be experienced in those bones” — Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

I'd be dishonest if I didn't admit to being an honorary graduate of Broken Hearts University. Nonetheless, during the time of the fracture, I didn't have a decent technique to deal with or channel the agony. If you choose, you can summon it for a tangential advantage.

I'm reminded of Justin Timberlake's (maybe a little cringe) use of a Britney look-alike in Cry Me a River. Or, as Olivia Rodrigo expresses in Driver Licence, bittersweet heartaches. But the more I envisage the pain valve's setting being turned all the way up, the more I think of examples in literature — perhaps an inspiration for future novels — or visual arts.

Now, I must admit that certain sufferings are easier to bear than others. Some are simply unfair. The aches of the heart are numerous and diverse, and for some, no words can explain how deeply something hurts. Images come to the aid of damaged souls, piecing them together and accepting both the reasonable and the irrational.

So, in the spirit of visually comprehending how art may help the heart, I'd like to show you three paintings.

Kokoschka

In 1912, Kokoschka first met Alma Mahler, composer Gustav Mahler’s newly bereaved wife. Fire and passion surged between them in an instant. His obsession with her expressed itself in almost 400 letters, numerous oil paintings, and various drawings over the following ten years. When Oskar Kokoschka and Alma Mahler returned to Vienna in the spring of 1913 (after a holiday in Italy), the artist blackened the walls of his studio. He also started work on The Tempest, sometimes known as The Bride of the Wind.

Their three-year romance, however, was marked by jealously and heartache, and Alma eventually left him for a previous lover. Nonetheless, Alma kept a tiny duplicate of The Bride’s Wind in her home in New York, where she had fled before World War II.

The split of the couple in 1914 had a significant impact on Kokoschka’s expressive brushwork, which grew increasingly anarchic. While the painting was completed prior to the breakup, the urge to express problematic feelings via colours and figures is evident.

Alma is sleeping soundly in the artwork, yet despite his statements on the calm he wanted to picture, Kokoschka seems restless and gloomy. Many see his expression in the painting as a realisation of the perilous nature of their relationship, for their intense love was eventually shattered by conflicts, his jealousy, her social standing, and her refusal to commit.

Gentileschi

Now I know. This, if interpreted correctly, is not just about heartache. It is about pain, trauma. Probably many more things that are too difficult to understand. Still, I felt the need of including it in this story, as — again, if interpreted correctly — it is the perfect example of how art can help s summon pain, and modify it. Shape it into a new story. Or at least try.

Judith Slaying Holofernes is a work by the Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi, produced in 1612–13 and presently housed in Naples, at Museo Capodimonte. The image is regarded as one of her most important paintings.

The painting depicts Judith beheading Holofernes; the subject is an event written in Old Testament’s apocryphal Book of Judith, which chronicles the killing of Holofernes by the Israelite Judith.

What happened to Artemisia Gentileschi?

Artemisia’s distinct representation of Judith and Abra has led academics to believe that Artemisia related with the story’s protagonist in a manner that her male colleagues did not. This link is formed not simply by gender, but also by Artemisia’s own horrific trauma.

At the age of 17, Artemisia was brutally raped by the artist Agostino Tassi, a long-time acquaintance of her father. When Tassi did not marry her as the social norms of the day expected, her father took him to court (you would think marriage was not the reason to take him to court, alas, they were other times). Artemisia narrates her fight with Tassi and her attempt to stab him with a knife during the trial.

She also recalls feeling betrayed when she discovered her female companion had conspired with her rapist, Tassi, in order to leave the two alone.

Kahlo

As for Memory, the Heart, Frida finished painting it after learning that Cristina (her sister) had slept with Diego Rivera some years before. Though Frida seems cool and composed here, you can see that she is crying. The large human heart at the bottom illustrates the intensity of her heartbreak and emotional agony as a result of the news. Frida’s emotional agony is also represented by the rod with the small cupid piercing her.

Academics see the dresses as symbols of her conflict between present and past, and the missing limbs a sign of her feelings of disempowerment.

I see pain, mutilation of the soul. A woman whose big heart cannot be any more.

Conclusion:

Before we go on, I have to reason that Art for therapeutic purposes and “Art Therapy” are not always the same thing. Unlike art employed for therapeutic purposes, Art Therapy usually has rules to follow (more or less strictly) and often is performed with the aid of a professional.

Art may aid in the healing of a person’s wounded feelings.

However, I believe that the power of Art Therapy comes from, well, art.

I am a writer, thus I channel my emotions through writing (especially poetry), but I also do it through enjoying visual arts; reading paintings as text. And I can only imagine how cathartic it may be to produce art in hopes of healing.

As for Art Therapy itself, there is more info out there on why it is effective. Art may aid in the healing of a person’s wounded feelings. This is the foundation of art therapy. According to the American Art Therapy Association, art therapy, when led by a trained art therapist, efficiently supports personal and relationship therapeutic objectives, as well as community problems. Art therapy is used to improve cognitive and sensorimotor processes, to create self-esteem and self-awareness, to nurture emotional resilience, to encourage insight, to strengthen social skills, to minimise and resolve conflicts and suffering, and, sometimes, to advance ideas of societal and ecological change.

Yet, can’t all art creation do exactly this? I think it can. You?

art
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About the Creator

Asterion Avocado

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  • Mark Graham2 years ago

    When I was a LPN in a geriatric psychiatric unit mainly working with Alzheimer's/Dementia patients I lead art 'therapy' activities that allowed them to 'share' their feelings. When I did these activities there seemed to be less agitation. It was fun.

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