The Life-Saving Power of Art

The Red Vineyard, painted in 1888, is the only confirmed painting Vincent van Gogh sold in his lifetime. Yet during the artist’s one-year stay at the Saint-Paul psychiatric clinic in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence from 1889 to 1890, he still made 130 paintings; Starry Night and Getty’s Irises are famous examples.

“When Van Gogh came here, he found a certain welcome and support he didn’t often receive,” says psychiatrist Jean-Marc Boulon, who has been the clinic’s medical director for more than 30 years. “He was treated with humanity and found an innovative freedom through painting.”

Dr. Boulon continues to uphold Van Gogh’s legacy and keeps art at the forefront of the treatment plan. In 1995 he launched the Valetudo association, a program that offers on-site art workshops that lead to exhibitions and sales of patients’work. Speaking from Saint-Rémy-de-Provence through an interpreter, Boulon reflected on the enduring legacy of the clinic and how art can improve well-being.

Do you find time to practice your own art?

Jean-Marc Boulon: Just as a person needs regular physical activity, they need an active life of the mind. Pursuits like reading, learning, and creating are nourishing. I’ve always practiced piano and painted, thanks to my mother. She sent me to music and art schools after my father died when I was six and had a wound to overcome.

I still paint and have maintained music as a practice, although I preferred rock bands over the traditional channels of a music conservatory. These practices led to other forms of art: I coauthored a novel and a book about the life of Van Gogh. Life’s journeys are all like palette elements that you can then apply to a painting or photographic canvas.

By practicing art, I overcame the idea of being orphaned, of being by oneself. And thanks to art, I’ve had the life I always dreamed of.

What does making art do for your mental health, especially considering that healthcare professionals regularly face so much stress?

JMB: If you have an art practice, then the sensory experiences in your workshop—the smell of the oil paints, turpentine, and any other stimuli—will create positive associations for you. Also, creating art is shown to affect the brain’s neurotransmitters—you remember more things, just like what happens in psychiatric treatment. Making art does that for me.

This practice has also given me a social outlet. Thanks to my work, I now have a rapport with the Getty Museum. And I enjoy talking to my patients. Today I was in a therapy session with a depressed person who had psychotic episodes and all manner of schizophrenic behavior. This person was saying incoherent things. But at the same time, they were creating. And this placed the personhood, that person’s very being, in front of me. So, I was no longer the person treating; it was two adults engaged in a real intellectual relationship.

How does your workshop guide patients as they make art?

JMB: Our workshop has two art therapists. I assist in most of the sessions, coming and going. I bring them a moment of listening, support, sharing, and relief of responsibility. In fact, the art therapists nicknamed me their “Theo,” as in Van Gogh’s brother. Theo van Gogh always backed his brother and helped him.

And there’s a new trend in art therapy: peer-led sessions, where therapy is complemented by people in similar situations. For example, a woman who paints can also co-lead a workshop. There are also musical workshops where women sing. I accompany them on the piano. After that singing session, we do a follow-up session with words and treatment. And sometimes professional musicians come in and play music and accompany them too. We also offer theater. It’s a wonderful program.

Speaking of Theo, wasn’t it a letter from Theo to Vincent that became the impetus for creating your art program, Valetudo?

JMB: Yes. In that letter, Theo wrote that artists must contribute their work to an organization and pool their efforts to mutually help each other.

Banding together gives people the means to support their existence both on a material and psychic level. The idea of having a collective gallery is something Van Gogh loved. He wanted it to be here in the south of France.

His project was not intended to meet an objective centered on him, but intended for a collective and social goal. In a contemporary way, Valetudo adds the narcissistic revaluation of the reconstruction of social ties.

Are there any surprising stories of recent patients who transformed their lives through art?

JMB: I have many, but I will share one incredible anecdote. In May 1889, within days of being admitted here, Van Gogh began painting Irises, which is now at the Getty Museum. In April 2023, Getty’s associate paintings conservator Devi Ormond came to the clinic to study the painting’s color evolution.

A few days later, I informed her that a young patient named Anne had checked in that morning and wanted to attend the art therapy workshop. I suggested that Anne paint her interpretation of our irises in St. Paul’s Park, just like Van Gogh after his admittance. Devi and Anne found the idea very interesting, and Devi filmed Anne creating her painting. Once finished, I asked Devi if she could take Anne’s painting to the Getty Museum, and Devi sent us a video with it next to the original Irises.

We cry every time we look at it. Anne was released from our clinic two months later. She has continued to paint and regularly sends me her work to sell at Valetudo’s shop. In agreement with Anne, Devi sent Anne’s painting back. I was in the park with guests when the reception desk called to tell me that a package from Los Angeles had been delivered. I immediately knew it was the return of Anne’s painting and asked for it to be brought to me in the park. The people I was with helped me open the package—they were Willem van Gogh and his first cousin, both great-grandsons of Theo and therefore great-grandnephews of Vincent.

There are many similar stories of artists who had lost their professional activity but were once again able to exhibit their work in galleries. There are a lot of passageways to going back—floors and stairs, I say—through creativity, museum visits, and exhibitions. Everyone can make progress. There’s not a single person who hasn’t found something they lost.

What is the connection between art and wellness?

JMB: Art opens up people who would otherwise be difficult to approach. Like a child coming to a doctor with stomachaches who doesn’t want to be examined or touched—you must build a rapport with them before you can find out what’s going on. In psychiatry, people are in their own worlds, and it’s challenging to enter their headspace. Art establishes a reassuring bridge, allowing them to express themselves and then to confidently share their torments and inner worlds.

Creating art also satisfies an individual need within ourselves: the need to become independent, get around, and nourish oneself. And this starts at a young age when we see children with an innate satisfaction in taking up clay, sculpting, or drawing. Unfortunately, this is not a fundamental value reflected in higher education. Art should allow you to create without someone censoring you.

In depression, there is, on the one hand, a profound lack of interest in everything and, on the other hand, the absence of desire to act. Add to this, for some, delusional thoughts about the uselessness of life, the idea that it would be better to disappear. But if you invite someone to immerse themselves in art, even in their isolated corner—to paint, to sculpt, or to write—they can combat their darkest thoughts and lessen their impact.

How does art therapy impact certain disorders or conditions?

JMB: Gershwin, Bach, or other composers might have been considered autistic or obsessive if judged by their behavior. And that would have been reductive. But thanks to their capacity to reach musical heights, we find ourselves in front of another dimension. I view all patients this way.

Art therapy has something for all life periods, classes, and ages. For example, if someone is showing signs of depression, you can have this person talk for hours, and you can listen to them. Talking triggers something in them; it starts them up. If you take one of our workshops, you start with a blank canvas, then you create a painting. It is exhibited, and then it is sold for real money. Sometimes, the pictures are exhibited around the world: the United States, Croatia, Amsterdam, and Rome. When the patient discovers this, they feel pride and a renewed confidence, which will encourage them to apply it to their life.

We can expect to see the effect of art on what happens in the body, such as the production and release of pleasure neurotransmitters, in the years to come. The cognitive stimulation from art can enliven deadened or altered parts of the brain.

Are there differences between the United States and France in how psychiatrists use art and therapy?

JMB: In France, psychiatrists don’t have a unique system of references to lead their practices. The government has just asked each regional health agency to establish new mental health research programs. The scientific committee of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region has assigned me the role of coordinator of the “art therapy” group. Although there are already many exciting initiatives in France, a common foundation is missing. The goal is to establish solid foundations to which each psychiatric institution can refer. The evaluations and innovative American scientific studies on art therapy are part of the important data that we use to determine recommendations.

What about pharmacology?

JMB: In pharmaceutical research, the goal is to develop more effective molecules with fewer side effects. Biological, biochemical, and genetic biomarkers will play an increasingly important role in diagnostics and drug choices. Gene therapies will appear in other medical specialties.

It all depends on the stage and severity of the disease. When new patients are referred to me by the public hospital after a serious suicide attempt, we do not start with art therapy, music or painting. The sedation drugs for the unbearable anxiety and motivation to restart are essential first. As soon as possible, we adjust the treatment, reduce the doses, and introduce another form of therapy, such as art therapy. So I use both approaches. Starting exclusively with art therapy in these serious cases could have disastrous consequences.

Do you see differences in how art was used in therapy in France back in Van Gogh’s day versus now?

JMB: Yes. Back in Van Gogh’s day, few psychiatrists understood the importance of art as therapy. An event centuries before, in 1518, called Épidémie dansante, or dancing plague, had mass outbreaks of people dancing in the streets for days and weeks. Psychiatrists didn’t know if it was an illness or a form of art therapy through release.

Patients were often stigmatized as “insane” and considered a danger to society. They were treated in isolation and deprived of freedoms, sometimes with physical restraints.

But there were exceptions. Dr. Théophile Peyron welcomed Van Gogh with great humanity in the Saint-Paul clinic and allowed him to paint where he wanted, to rest, to regain his senses. Peyron let Van Gogh express his creativity as a patient.

Similarly, there was Dr. Esprit Sylvestre Blanche, who treated the notable writers Gérard de Nerval and Guy de Maupassant. Blanche’s nursing home, which was progressive at the time, focused on patients’ dignity by letting them create and maintain social connections.

Today, all psychiatric establishments are fundamentally humane and aware of the power of art therapy.

There’s a history of famous artists and writers experiencing mental illness or intense suffering. Their work might take on a different significance for this reason. Why do you think that is?

JMB: To me, the link between suffering and creation is the tolerance to the symptoms. Not everyone views suffering as a bad thing or as an illness—some want to accept the pain. When someone accepts their condition, it acquires another significance.

For example, some people want to make sadness go away, whether through therapy or medication. Others say: “No, I’m sad. It’s part of me. Leave me. I paint better, write better, and play better music when I’m sad.” It’s the same thing with anxiety. And it is also possible to tolerate these symptoms and mental states with the help of art.

What is the role of art in greater society?

JMB: For art to be received, it must fulfill some kind of social need. It responds to the collective unconscious of a time period. The Austrian psychologist and writer Bruno Bettelheim described this using the example of fairy tales, which exist because some people need to have answers to certain questions. Art responds to society’s call for certain things. All cultures have certain works that are unconsciously chosen by that society.

Art is also an extraordinary tool for expression that allows for dialogue without creating conflict. People read works of art differently, of course, but when they broach these differences with each other, they’ll do it respectfully, unlike with politics and religion. And this enriches each individual as much as social groups.

Art and creations are tools for repair, relief, and peace—both inner and collective.

Watch a video narrated by Dr. Boulon about Saint-Rémy and its therapeutic garden here.