Ohhhhh. Very cool. Alain de Botton is ridiculously brilliant. "The Art of Travel" is one of my fave reads.

I love this...because it takes art to the venue where it should be...the web itself. Not a website about paintings...or a museum you keep meaning to visit...but actual art per se...always available (unless on a government website, which as well all know, go offline when the people leave work).

Love it. I was trained as an art therapist at Antioch in the 80's (and 70's, come to think of it). I always HATED the ideas. I HATE the art-therapy texts. I hate the whole field. It's bullshit. On the other hand, art itself is good for us. Making art, even bad art, is good for us. Looking at art is good for us, even looking at bad art, because it tells us we to develop preferences for the strong, the attentive, the original, the sensitive, the human. Go go go Alain de Botton. Thanks for writing about this, Christopher Frizz.

Hooray! I love Alain de Botton!

@3 -- Great comment. Thanks for adding your voice to this.

I adore Alain de Botton.... His "The Art of Travel" is one of my faves as well. Very special book to me. I met him a few years back and asked him if he would write something about American politics because I liked his insights on other things, and he did give me kind of a non-answer with some platitudes thrown in (it was so platitudey/non-answery that I forgot the details). Don't think he'd done much personal thinking about it. It's a shame... when he gets down to observing, he comes up with some great sentences.

@3 - I don't know much about Art Therapy, but in Depth Psychology we use creative expression/making art to access the Unconscious, to help us learn about and understand ourselves. I don't know if Art Therapy claims to do the same, but I've seen creative expression and analysis dramatically change people's relationships to themselves and others, as a result I've been curious about Art Therapy, but don't really understand how it claims to operate.

Of course, my belief in an Unconscious is not widely shared by most therapists. So, that's probably a thing...

'Pretty' pictures?

Hmm, I had trouble seeing any connection between the works of art and the psychological issues they supposedly address.

Admittedly, though, I suck at art.