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itself can actually unlock creativity. The original understanding of the concept of ‘inspiration’ involved the notion of ‘poetic madness’, with the inspired person being transported beyond their own mind in order to receive wisdom from the gods.This type of thinking can veer dangerously close to glamourising mental illness, and of course, psychological problems can be a blight on any artist’s career. The Bethlem Museum of the Mind is currently home to a solo exhibition by the artist Stanley Lench, a brilliant painter whose bright, bold works appear to draw on tribal imagery, stained glass windows and the Pop Art tradition. His art was acquired by New York’s Museum of Metropolitan Art during his lifetime, but he never attained the success of contemporaries like Sir Peter Blake. This fact is reflected in the exhibition’s title, Scaling the Citadel, with its suggestion of the art world as a closed-off fortress.Despite these difficulties, many contemporary artists today affirm the idea that irregular psychological states have strengthened their work. In his The Lancet article, George Harding writes that “my experiences of mental health have changed my art for the better” as they have given him “new insight into what it is to be alive and human”. He continues: “I find the different ways the mind can perceive the world fascinating. It gives me a glimpse of what reality truly is.”Yayoi Kusama, named as one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2016, provides an example of the ways in which adverse mental health can impose limitations, while also being channelled into valuable work. The Japanese artist has been living voluntarily at a mental health facility since 1977 and has been plagued throughout her life with hallucinations that take the form of dots scattered throughout her field of vision.To soothe the anxiety this caused, she began turning these images into artworks, using mirrors and installations to create the illusion of bright spots stretching into infinity. Six of these ‘Infinity Mirror Rooms’ are currently on a tour of the US and Canada, Artscape is one of many initiatives across the UK that use art to aid psychological wellbeing. An organisation called Combat Stress has used art therapy as a way of ‘unfreezing’ the traumatic memories that can become trapped in the nervous system of people who have experienced armed combat, while Arts 4 Dementia, which has been supported by The Arts Society, helps those suffering from conditions such as Alzheimer’s Disease restore cognitive functioning, self-esteem and a sense of purpose.The therapeutic role of the arts may play some part in attracting people with experience of mental illness to artistic vocations. Many studies over the years have suggested that individuals with certain mood disorders, such as bipolar disorder, are overrepresented in creative careers, and famous examples of creative geniuses who suffered from mental health problems, including Beethoven, Munch and Van Gogh, are often cited by those who believe in a correlation between fraught psychological health and artistic achievement.There has also been a persistent belief, stretching back through the Romantic poets all the way to Ancient Greek philosophy, that the experience of mental illness “CREATIVITY CAN BE A MINDFUL EXERCISE AND HELP WELLBEING” TOM COX, ARTSCAPE3IMAGE: COURTESY OF OTA FINE ARTS, TOKYO & SINGAPORE AND VICTORIA MIRO, LONDON © YAYOI KUSAMA 3 Yayoi Kusama, All the eternal love I have for the pumpkins, 2016. Installation using wood, mirror, plastic, black glass and LEDsART AND THE MIND39The Arts Society ReviewSummer 2017