Readers reply: Can art save lives?

"This month, Art on the Underground is unveiling a new artwork at Stratford station, London, by the Kurdish artist Ahmet Ogut, entitled Saved by the Whale's Tail, Saved by Art. It was inspired by a metro accident outside Rotterdam in which the train overran the elevated station stop, but was saved from plunging into the water below by a 10-metre-high sculpture of a whale's tail, one of two placed there by artist Maarten Struijs. There were no passengers on board,"

"The art therapist Margaret Naumburg successfully worked with schizophrenic patients during the second world war at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, using arts therapy as a first-line treatment. Allen Ginsberg was treated similarly at the same hospital in 1949 and went on to have a career as a major and influential poet. Thomas Hennell recovered from a schizophrenic episode while painting a mural at Claybury mental hospital in the 1930s, and went on to become a war artist."

"I'm not sure the spiritual is divorced from the physical. It's a continuum. Art has been a thread throughout my life, from being old enough to hold a drawing implement. It has allowed me to express myself, explore the world and what's going on in my head, move through time. It's a flow that I follow, like a little boat on a river, sometimes flowing fast and sometimes barely flowing at all, but always at the heart of"

An artwork at Stratford station by Kurdish artist Ahmet Ogut, titled Saved by the Whale's Tail, Saved by Art, takes inspiration from a Rotterdam metro accident in which a train overran an elevated stop and was prevented from plunging into the water by a 10-metre-high whale-tail sculpture by Maarten Struijs. The incident involved no passengers and the driver escaped unharmed. Observers describe the event as a vanishingly unlikely coincidence rather than a designed rescue. Historical examples show art aiding mental-health recovery, including Margaret Naumburg's wartime arts therapy, Allen Ginsberg's treatment in 1949, and Thomas Hennell's recovery while painting. Personal testimony frames art as a continuous, grounding force in life.

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