Art Against Despair | The School of Life

Next time someone asks you what art is for, what its purpose is, you should tell them that art is a weapon against despair, a tool to be used to try to wrestle against fear, persecution, loneliness and regret.

The new School of Life title presents itself as a portable gallery of sorrow composed of images - photographs, paintings, sketches - that have the ability to shore up our moods. As the manifesto that fronts this book states:

"We may no longer believe in gods very much, but this doesn't mean that art has abandoned its capacity to console and rescue us. Secular works of art -a careful painting of four daffodils in a jar in early April, a silvery photograph of the Sierra Nevada, an embroidered tapestry of a llama, an abstract canvas of dark blues and greens, a sketch of a sheep and its a young [ ] retain a power to rescue our moods and rearrange our priorities. Culture can replace scripture."

Each featured work is accompanied by an essay that talk about the works in a way that offers us comfort and inspiration. It is a book that invites us to look at art with unusual depth and then find our way towards new hope and courage.

Size: 186 x 258mm

Pages: 207