Another Day for Knight

Art for therapy has been big for a long time--as long as I can remember, which is about 47 years. So long, that many readers can be incensed by Christopher Knight’s sensible and closely reasoned article (“What Exactly Can Art Heal?,” Nov. 4). Incensed, so far as I can gather, because for them, art’s only value is therapeutic. Attack that and you’re attacking art. And not just attacking art, but attacking artists and art societies and the people who have been or will be healed by art’s gentle ministrations.

Knight has done nothing of the sort. He has merely defended art, defended it well, against the attacks of those who would ignore its other values, which include abrasiveness and shock and anger and criticism and, yes, beauty, whatever that means. (Beauty, for me, can mean Diamanda Galas as well as the Anonymous 4.)

You may recall the dairy farmers who played Mozart for their cows, which supposedly increased milk production. My question then was “Which piece?” and then, “How loud?” I’d take any odds that no one ever played the Dies Irae to them, certainly not at concert volume.

There’s no denying that shapes and sounds and colors can soothe. Or disturb or annoy or heal or excite. Art tries to do all of those things and do them all at once.

To the people who want to abstract only the therapeutic values, I say fine, go ahead. But don’t go calling it art. And don’t go yelling at Christopher Knight.

MICHAEL KARMAN

Redlands