“ARTS IN HOSPITAL” EXPERIENCES OF A TEN-YEARS UNESCO PROJECT
Moussong-Kovács Erzsébet
Professor emeritus, Semmelweis University Budapest
(Telephone: 3-915-312, 3-226-570)
Summary
In 1988, the UNESCO initiated the World Decade for Cultural Development including a program for the amelioration of quality of life in health institutions by means of artistic activities, aesthetic objects, and performances. The art as therapy aimed not only the well being of patients, but it served also to prevent the ‘’burning out” of professional helpers as well as to gain the acceptance and empathy of the larger community for the diseased and handicapped.
The project enclosed conferences and workshops with demonstration of different therapeutic methods and models; these have been discussed and evaluated in the experts’ meetings – the present rapporteur being one of them. These events have taken place in different European health centers – Vienna, Oslo, Basel, Ljubljana among others – comprising the visit of various very interesting medical and cultural establishments.
Preface
A timely event, the commemoration of Van Gogh’s birthday, born just 150 years ago, induced me to introduce my lecture with a few pictures suitable to this festival occasion and appropriate as well to illustrate some of the most important questions raised by the UNESCO-project “Arts in Hospital” (1).
What Needed To Be Changed In The Climate Of A Hospital?
As an extreme example I present the work of István Pál dated of 1929 “The corridor of the Ward” exposed in the Psychiatric Gallery Museum from Budapest (2, 3).
This professional painter falling ill from schizophrenia signed his pictures as the Hungarian Van Gogh. He depicted in an expressionistic style the catatonic postures of totally idle patients confined in a mad house in an epoch when no effective antipsychotic treatment has yet been available.
How, By What Means May Be Changed, Improved This Atmosphere?
An other painting of Pál represents “The Lounge of a mental hospital” where some patients seem playing billiards, while some others sitting near small tables converse or merely contemplate.
We recognize the artistic remodeling of Van Gogh’s picture from 1888: “Night Café of Arles”.
It’s dominant personnage; the headwaiter in white coat is replaced in the hospital scenario by the white-cloaked male head-nurse with a billiard cue in his hand. This adaptation of Van Gogh’s original picture conveys manifold messages pertinent to our subject:
it demonstrates a sort of recreational therapy in the frame of a hospital,
with a member of the staff markedly involved in this activity,
with all the patients organized as a loosely structured social group,
and finally the whole composition reflects the self-healing individual creative therapy of an artistically gifted mental patient.
Even without leaving the field of visual arts, the preceding examples may be generalized in the larger context of art therapies. Indeed, as invited expert I enjoyed the exhibition of wonderful pictures made by a Venezuelan neuro-surgeon working in Vienna, as well as I appreciated the collective paintings in a home for backward children.
A key-problem was how to integrate the occupational therapies of average patients with the artistic activities of the personnel and some manifestations of the cultural élite organized inside the hospital. For instance due consideration has been dedicated to the possibilities of travelling exhibitions of museum works in different health centers.
The built-up environment received proper attention. We admired in Vienna the architectural ensemble in Jugendstil – Theatre and beautiful Chapel within a traditional mental hospital, while in Zurich or Hollabrunn (Lower Austria) our visit concerned very modern general hospitals with their gardens, indoor equipment and decoration conceived according the patients’ preferences and the realizing artists’ philosophical views on life and health problems. The majority of patients welcome the aesthetic improvement of their surrounding but their taste proved to be more conservative as expected. They refused for example the colorful changing of furniture in sickrooms or on the diagnostic equipment. In some other surveys, they preferred a traditional style in the pictures as well as in the music proposed for the waiting- and leisure-halls.
Focusing on the music as therapy it offered very similar experiences. In the University Clinic of Ljubljana, we have been fascinated by the chamber music of doctors and we delighted as well the popular dances of the nursing staff. But the ideal is – as in my recent experience in a social home of Szentgotthard (Hungary) – such a choir, in which it is no more possible to distinguish a patient from the personnel, nor on the basis of their Sunday clothes, nor according to their performances.
All these efforts for ameliorating the quality of life of patients did not end with the expiry of this project, but “The Seed Is Sown”. “Culture and Health” a new UNESCO and WHO undertaking follows it, mainly in the Health Promoting Hospitals.
References
- Tautz, H. /editor/ Ten years of “Arts in Hospital”. The seed is sown. UNESCO, 1998, p. 304
- Moussong-Kovács, E. Paintings Representing the Disease and the Period in Psychiatric Gallery Museum’s Catalogue, ed. Veér A. OPNI, 1992, 62-77 p.
- Plesznivy, E. “Der ungarische Van Gogh“ Pál István festőművész munkássága, életútjának és pszichózisának története Psychiat Hung 1997, 12:6, 758-774
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