When we think about art in interior design, our mind may gravitate to images of canvases and prints hanging on a wall in some undefined office space, hotel room, or waiting area. Art, from this perspective, serves as mere decoration, a way to fill a visual vacuum. Of course, art is much more than that.
Art gives us an immediate connection to place. It speaks to us about where we are and why. It may reflect the local history or geography. Or it may deliver a message about the company or service we are dealing with, to let us know they are creative, classy, hip, or what have you. In a personal space, like a home or office, art gives us insight into the person who works or lives there—their taste, their aspirations, their affinity for certain people or things.
Beyond its function as imagery, art has great emotive power. I am speaking not only of art’s ability to evoke feelings of awe, reverence, and gaiety but also of its capacity to facilitate positive behaviors and outcomes. It has long been held that the difference between aesthetic emotions and other emotions is that aesthetic emotions do not motivate practical behavior. But recent research shows the division may not be quite so neat, and that has important implications for the use of art in interiors.
A study conducted at Cleveland Clinic in 2014 found that visual art on display at the clinic helped reduce patient stress and increase satisfaction with their care. At one level, the art serves as a kind of “positive distraction,” according to the clinic’s art program curator Jennifer Finkel. In other instances, as in the case of a video installation that shows a tree changing as it cycles through the seasons, patients became thoroughly engaged with the art and reported feeling a sense of peace, which helped alleviate their anxiety and fear about their treatment. Dr. Iva Fattorini, who helped oversee the study and promotes “the latent therapeutic power of art” to heal, stated that the results help to “shift the paradigm” about the use of art in healthcare settings “from what it costs to what it actually does for people.”
Another study, published last year in the Journal of Workplace Learning, examined how art affected the employees and board members at an organization with an institutional art collection. The participants said they believed the art in their workplace, through its creativity and diversity, “promotes social interactions, elicits emotional responses, facilitates personal connection-making, generally enhances the workplace environment, and fosters learning.” Concludes the researcher, Christina Smiraglia of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, the findings highlight “the importance of the aesthetic environment in the workplace.”
Art and arts education in schools have also been shown to have a positive impact on students. A study of 25 first graders in Portland, Oregon, showed students felt more at ease when art was displayed in the classroom, and that made it easier for them to concentrate and to be receptive to learn. “Numerous studies have demonstrated the advantages of arts integrated learning,” says Robin VandeZande, associate professor of art education at Kent State University. She cites a 2006 study that “determined arts education improved visual analysis skills, creativity, learning from mistakes, and making better critical judgments.” A 2014 study demonstrated a link between the visual arts and greater proficiency in mathematics and communication.
In addition to these “practical” applications, art stimulates and rejuvenates us, feeding deep spiritual and emotional needs for beauty and joy. Designer Ingrid Fetell, who has conducted considerable research into the “aesthetics of joy” and operates a blog by that name, points out that joy involves more than just happiness or pleasure. Joy energizes us, engages us, and makes us feel connected to our surroundings and others. Likewise, says Fetell, a lack of joy depletes us. “I think we are in the early stages of discovering a new set of mechanisms by which ill health is caused through environmental factors that are not chemically or biologically toxic, but rather aesthetically toxic,” she writes.
Art and design go hand in hand. They are both aesthetic expressions of our sense of place and our inner life, emotional and spiritual. As the studies cited above show, our response to art and beauty has a profound effect on our sense of well-being and thus on our ability to think, to learn, to perform, even to heal, and stimulates creativity and innovation. Art, like design, has the power to transform our sense of place and to connect us to our deepest humanity.
Stephanie Clemons, Ph.D., FASID, FIDEC, serves as the ASID national chair on its Board of Directors, and is a professor of interior design as well as University Teaching Scholar at Colorado State University. ASID can be reached at 202-546-3480 or [email protected], and online at asid.org.
