Sorrow

'Fernando Pessoa'- Richard Serra Exhibition, Gagosian Gallery London, a photo by Loz Flowers on Flickr.

Serra Fernando Pessoa 

'One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is teach us how to suffer more successfully. Consider Richard Serra's Fernando Pessoa. It is encouraging a profound engagement with sadness. The outward chatter of society is typically cheerful and upbeat ... But Serra's work does not deny our troubles; it doesn't tell us to cheer up. It tells us that sorrow is written into the contract of life. The large scale and overtly monumental character of the work constitute a declaration of the normality of sorrow ...

More importantly, Serra's work presents sorrow in a dignified way ...

In effect, it says, "When you feel sad, you are participating in a venerable experience, to which I, this monument, am dedicated. Your sense of loss and disappointment, of frustrated hopes and grief at your own inadequacy, elevate you to serious company. Do not ignore or throw away your grief."

...

Many sad things become worse because we feel we are alone in suffering them. We experience our trouble as a curse, or as revealing our wicked, depraved character. So our suffering has no dignity; it seems due only to our freakish nature. We need help in finding honour in some of our worst experience, and art is there to lend them a social expression.'

p. 26

Alain de Botton, John Armstrong

Art as Therapy

The School of Life

http://alaindebotton.com/ 

 
 

Art as Therapy

'Cheerfulness is an achievement, and hope is something to celebrate. 

If optimism is important, it’s because many outcomes are determined by how much of it we bring to the task. It is an important ingredient of success.

This flies in the face of the elite view that talent is the primary requirement of a good life, but in many cases the difference between success and failure is determined by nothing more than our sense of what is possible and the energy we can muster to convince others of our due. We might be doomed not by a lack of skill, but by an absence of hope. 

Today’s problems are rarely created by people taking too sunny a view of things; it is because the troubles of the world are so continually brought to our attention that we need tools that can preserve our hopeful dispositions.'

p. 16

Alain de Botton, John Armstrong

Art as Therapy

The School of Life

http://alaindebotton.com/ 

 

The Frown

Turn that frown upside down.., a photo by [Duncan] on Flickr.

'the idea that we can build a financial utopia ...'

'that we can properly translate everything around us into a commodity that we can consume for our personal pleasure ... that if we have sufficient property we can reduce the world to our personal  pleasure dome that will create happiness is a fantasy ... '

'the capitalist dream ... that the world is a playground and we should have a life in which we are comfortable all the time ...'  

'sadly, happiness has come to mean a life that is comfortable ... free of discomfort ... avoiding pain, death, decay ...' 


from Radio National 360documentaries, 10 February 2013

 http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/360/the-frown/4440548