The art world has been kicking up a fuss again. But this time it's about what art, if any at all, should go into NHS hospitals to help give patients a more pleasant environment. As the Saatchi collection makes a gift of contemporary works for hospital display, Alexandra Pitman looks at the ensuing argument

Waterlines by Richard Long is familiar to anyone who spends a lot of time in hospitals. The huge grey print shows the dribbles of waterlines made by the artist on a trek through Portugal and Spain in 1989 and was one of six prints offered to hospitals by the King's Fund in the late 1980s. The contemporary works, by artists including Anish Kapoor and Helen Chadwick, were chosen by art critic Richard Cork and made available at low prices. Many hospitals took up the offer, recognising the importance of the arts in providing a stimulating and invigorating environment for patients.

The idea of using art to enliven the healthcare environment for patients, staff, and visitors can be traced right back to the Renaissance.¹ Florence Nightingale observed in 1859 that "variety of form and brilliancy of colour in the objects presented to patients have a powerful effect" and "are actual means of recovery." The theory is that spartan clinical surroundings can be humanised by introducing colour, interest, and the human touch. Since the goal of health care is to look after the whole person rather than just their individual ailments, art is one aspect of therapy.

Waterlines is just one of thousands of works on display in UK hospitals. With NHS spending under the political microscope it would be unacceptable for anyone to be deprived of treatment in order to fund art, and there is little leeway for an arts budget. The generosity of individuals, charities, and businesses, however, has enabled art to flourish in healthcare settings. There are now more than 80 arts coordinator posts across the country, and last year a national network for the arts in health was launched to coordinate the many UK initiatives.

One organisation that came into the news recently is Paintings in Hospitals, a registered charity providing original works of art on loan to healthcare facilities. In December it was announced that the collector Charles Saatchi, who famously bought Damien Hirst's pickled shark, was to donate 50 works to the Paintings in Hospitals collection. This announcement sparked the wrath of the Evening Standard's art critic Brian Sewell, a hater of what he terms the "junk art" of Charles Saatchi and Nicholas Serota, the Tate Gallery's director.² Dismissing the works as cast-offs that Saatchi couldn't sell, he suggested that this was a cheap ploy to earn public gratitude. Furthermore, he claimed, "The sick are not interested in art... and art inescapably imposed by others might well be described as destructive of a patient's mind."

Sewell speaks as an ex-patient of the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London, where he was treated for a myocardial infarction some years ago. The hospital is renowned for its collection of contemporary art and the 18 m Acrobats mobile hanging in one of its atriums is thought to be the largest indoor sculpture in the world. Sewell dismisses the hospital's collection as "flashy, shallow stuff; decorative but insignificant" and insists that in hospital real people want to look at art of the "fluffy kitten and damp-eyed pup variety." Conversely, the aim of the Saatchi donation was "to introduce new art to a wider audience," allowing members of the public to make up their own minds about what they liked.

Sarah Tisdall, an artist who painted the x ray department's waiting room at the Radcliffe Infirmary to look like the inside of a conservatory, has received countless compliments from patients and staff. She points out that although sick people may be too ill to enjoy the art, their relatives find it helps them get through hours of anxiety.³ Paintings in Hospitals itself claims that it receives countless letters and calls of appreciation as well as offers to buy the works on display. The therapeutic benefit is hard to prove, but "the environmental one is present for all to see."⁴

Prince Charles is the patron of Paintings in Hospitals and has recently been appointed by the Department of Health to act as a design tsar to improve the environment of new hospitals. Sewell's attack on hospital art ends with a plea to the Prince, in this advisory role, to consider aspects such as light, air, colours, and "textures that induce a feeling of calm" rather than just the use of contemporary art. Certainly architecture is important, and art in hospitals could fail where it has been used in a piecemeal fashion to "fill the gaps."⁵ Hanging works sensibly in an architectural environment where light, space, and colour are used to evoke a feeling of calm can sometimes reduce the fear of going into hospital. As John Weeks, the architect at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, points out, "Art is not essential to hospital life, but it's very, very nice."⁵

Whatever your views on the more extreme examples of contemporary art, the many works currently on display in hospitals do represent a diverse range of styles and artists. All are chosen to fit in with their surroundings, and while people's tastes vary markedly there are many who are truly appreciative. The King's Fund has awarded a grant to the Chelsea and Westminster to research the effect of the visual arts on the healing process, but the results are not due until autumn 2002. By then, works from the Saatchi collection should be hanging in hospitals across the country, and it will be interesting to see what patients think of them. Sewell's claims that they could be "destructive of a patient's mind" might even be proved groundless.