Do Manet’s asparagus remind you of your struggling long-term relationship?

In calling their book Art as Therapy Alain de Botton and John Armstrong have taken the direct route. They’re not waiting for us to interpret their motive: their title tells us everything.

Art, the theory goes, can help us improve our psychological state in a way that’s progressive and cumulative. It can assist our relationships, our careers, our money concerns. Art is a tool which ‘compensates us for certain inborn weaknesses, in this case of the mind rather than the body’. It is a ‘therapeutic medium’, and it should be treated as such. This means that galleries, instead of arranging works by period or style, should place art in emotive groups, based around how they can reform and enrich our own lives. An illustration in the book shows a re-imagined Tate Modern floor plan with the ‘Gallery of Suffering’ on the first floor, the ‘Gallery of Compassion’ on the second, and so on.

This may not sound too radical, even if it risks seriously narrowing the possible responses to a work of art (how many works communicate both suffering and compassion, for example?) But this is merely the thin end of a very substantial wedge. Galleries should also include ‘therapy rooms’ which ‘one might need to pass through before getting to see any works for sale’. Who will be the therapists in this scenario? Art dealers, of course. They will ‘help clients live better lives by selling them the art they need for the sake of their inner selves’.

The authors seem to have a rather specific idea of who their audience is. You will be a fully employed professional, middle-aged, married, secular and quick to reveal your feelings to others. I don’t tick many of those boxes, which possibly explains the detached feeling I had as the authors’ ambition overflowed and spread into almost every crevice of modern society.