1st Edition

Representations of Pain in Art and Visual Culture

Edited By Maria Pia Di Bella, James Elkins Copyright 2013
230 Pages 46 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

244 Pages 46 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

230 Pages 46 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

The presentation of bodies in pain has been a major concern in Western art since the time of the Greeks. The Christian tradition is closely entwined with such themes, from the central images of the Passion to the representations of bloody martyrdoms. The remnants of this tradition are evident in contemporary images from Abu Ghraib. In the last forty years, the body in pain has also emerged as a... Read more

Preface James Elkins and Maria Pia Di Bella  Part 1: Expressive Pain  Introduction James Elkins  1. Sculpture and Pathognomics in Classical France Tomas Macsotay  2. The Faked Pain of the Artist: Empathy or Sympathy, Compassion or Concealment? Kirstin Ringelberg  3. Empfindnis and Self-Inflicted Pain in Performance Art Helge Meyer  4. Sontag’s Regarding and Bataille’s Unknowing Louis Kaplan  5. A Painful Labor: Photography and Responsibility Sharon Sliwinski  6. On The Complicity Between Visual Analysis and Torture: A Cut-by-Cut Account of Lingchi Photographs James Elkins  7. Pain in Public Holly Edwards  Part 2: Other Traditions  Introduction Maria Pia Di Bella  8. Our Very Own Chinese Postcards from Hell Tim Brook  9. Flogging Photographs from the Congo Free State John Peffer  10. The Public Display of Torture Photos Dora Apel  11. A Feeling for Images: Medieval Personae in Contemporary Photojournalism Valentin Groebner  12. Confronting Horror: Emily Hobhouse and the Concentration Camp: Photographs of the South African War Michael Godby  13. Observing Executions: from Spectator to Witness Maria Pia Di Bella  Roundtable Conversation

Biography

Maria Pia Di Bella is Senior Research Fellow at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, France.

James Elkins is E.C. Chadbourne Chair in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.