Chromaform therapy

Avicenna is a historical figure of rare intellectual weight. He was born into the Islamic Golden Age and became a student of ancient texts. He knew Aristotle’s Metaphysics as completely as he knew the Quran. He grew into a polymath who practiced medicine and astronomy, and a philosopher and writer who produced 450 works, of which some 240 survive.

In The Canon of Medicine, Avicenna stressed the importance of color in diagnosing and treating bodily ailments. He wrote that red moved the blood, blue and white cooled it, and yellow reduced muscular pain and inflammation. Although his work with color has medical antecedents in ancient Egypt, Greece, and China, his extensive records of it qualify him as the founder of chromotherapy.

You’d think that in the millennium since Avicenna’s death, a great deal of progress must have been made to undergird chromotherapy with credible scientific research, but not so. There is a related and respected practice, phototherapy, that uses artificial sunlight to treat seasonal affective disorder, jet lag, and sleep disorders, but no body of agreement about the effectiveness of chromotherapy. So good luck to anyone who is, say, feeling depressed and wants insurance to pay for chromotherapy treatments. Still, many are willing to reach into their pockets, and today chromotherapy is a viable business. Take a look at this advertising video made by Kohler, and you’ll understand why. Just watching it makes me relax!

The claim that color can affect mood and stimulate relaxation is, I think, beyond dispute. What I find more interesting is the question, does color maintain its power to affect emotions outside a therapeutic setting? I’m convinced the answer is a rousing “it depends.” Out in the open world, color attaches to objects. It’s not an aura; it’s wedded to form. One consequence of this union is the possibility — more likely the probability — of clutter in the visual field. Imagine standing beside a city boulevard or in front of an open refrigerator. To be sure, color still has some impact, but it’s dispersed across a multitude of objects. The impact it makes is scattered and small.

Now imagine colors and forms in a “managed” environment, one in which their number is limited and composed, and your view of them is selected for you. I’m thinking primarily of painting and photography. In this case, I claim that form multiplies the power of color and produces in us a stronger response than color alone can create. Here’s an example of what I mean:

I call this picture an instance of chromaform therapy. It’s a managed use of color and form that works like a tonic, giving us a fillip of peacefulness and pleasure. The subject is familiar to us, and that is crucial. The stronger the recognition or identification with the subject, the stronger its impact. Here’s a somewhat different example:

We are in paradise; specifically, at a Na Pali Coast overlook. We see that landscapes can be therapeutic, too, so long as the image offers something simple and singular. And again, it is familiar. Perhaps not from a visit to Kauai, but from pictures of places that are green and lush and apart from life’s cares.

Familiarity dictates the scope of what qualifies as a therapeutic subject. That means animals, people, and human artifacts make good subjects.  Photographic realism isn’t necessary, so long as the subject is stylized by a credible impression of it.  However, an idiosyncratic deconstruction and reconstruction of a subject does not qualify, as it is without therapeutic value. Examples will make this clear.

Here’s an animal as a therapeutic subject:

And a scene from New England in October:

And a portrait of a young woman:

Now for a couple of counter-examples — chromaform images that do not speak to our emotions:

This Mondrian creation is nothing but colored quadrilaterals. It’s like looking into my refrigerator, though far less interesting. The only experience I can connect it to is my first week of 8th-grade geometry.

My second example at least offers some curved lines:

There are breasts and buttocks here, so not a total loss. But I have the eerie impression that the artist has a dismemberment obsession. His work doesn’t even rise to the level of pornography, not with the juxtaposition of forms unknown in this world. This is not a painting of life but a geometric algorithm applied to life. It is a bloodless intellectual curiosity.

The exploration of what I call chromaform therapy inevitably leads to questions about the nature of the visual arts. Questions like, what is the value of art untethered from emotion, and is abstraction more than a game that artists play with a pretentious culture?