{"id":2231,"date":"2012-02-29T17:44:09","date_gmt":"2012-02-29T21:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www3.arts.umich.edu\/ink\/?p=2231"},"modified":"2017-09-27T12:42:11","modified_gmt":"2017-09-27T16:42:11","slug":"illness-in-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/2012\/02\/29\/illness-in-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Illness in Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

Illness, whether a mental or physical debilitation, has been the subject of countless works of art throughout history.\u00c2\u00a0 It has been pictured scientifically, religiously, sympathetically, heroically, and any number of other variations.\u00c2\u00a0 In relation to the artistic discourse, the ways in which illness is depicted reflects historical stigmas as well as broad human emotions. \u00c2\u00a0Much of what we know about responses in society to illness, like the Plague, are documented in art but it is often used to evoke an appeal, like in works by Picasso or Basquiat, to universal distress.\u00c2\u00a0 To examine this, works concerning illness spanning several centuries will be analyzed, as well as texts related to art in illness and artists that suffer from illness themselves.\u00c2\u00a0 In order to do this, it is important to look at these works of art comparatively, thus many works will be compared to others in their same time period and other eras.\u00c2\u00a0 Illness is complicated through art because it can take something fairly scientific objective and turn it into a work that is subjective, propaganda, or even just reflect it back objectively.<\/p>\n

Though art traces its roots back much farther than the Middle Ages or the Renaissance, some of the most terrifying and prolific images of illness came from these eras.\u00c2\u00a0 An example of this would be Pieter Bruegel the Elder\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Triumph of Death<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0 The \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Triumph of Death\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (or the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Dance of Death\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) motif was a common one, arising from medieval times with religious reinforcement.\u00c2\u00a0 In the face of the Black Plague, this theme was given ample commissions by the Catholic Church as a memento mori, <\/em>reminding the public of the pains of Hell and the rapidity that death can come in.\u00c2\u00a0 The hysterical lust for repentance during the outbreak and spread of the Bubonic Plague reflected the religious fervor that gripped Europe, and this is partially why the Triumph of Death<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s savage depiction of illness is important documentation.\u00c2\u00a0 In Bruegel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s painting, finished circa 1562, Death is seen ravaging every social hierarchy, from peasants to emperors.\u00c2\u00a0 Some \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Triumph of Death\u00e2\u20ac\u009d works from this period even went as far as to include Catholic bishops among those being cut down by Death (represented by skeletons).\u00c2\u00a0 In relation to illness, this painting shows the intense religious reaction to a fear of sickness.\u00c2\u00a0 Through depicting illness and death, Bruegel examines people\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s frantic and desperate desire to escape the inevitable but not without religious propagation.<\/p>\n

In the same vein as Bruegel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s piece, artists continued to use their talents to the liking of higher authorities.\u00c2\u00a0 The subject of illness and death seemed to be a point of supreme sympathy or relatability for the masses because it continued to be the center of many works commissioned by governments or churches, possibly because of its ability to tap into the fears of every person; dying is inescapable for everyone and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be lucky if you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t suffer greatly while doing so.\u00c2\u00a0 In the 18th<\/sup> Century Neoclassicism began, unlike its state commissioned predecessor Rococo, to use illness to illustrate \u00e2\u20ac\u0153civic virtue\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in relation to the rise of Republicanism in Paris.\u00c2\u00a0 Themes included bodily sacrifice for the state, like in Drouais\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s The Dying Athlete<\/em>, David\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s The Death of Socrates<\/em>, or Regnault\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Liberty or Death<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0 It was considered a great honor to die for the Revolution and those running it spent lavish amounts of money in order to propagate this ideal.\u00c2\u00a0 Jacques Louis David even proposed parading the decomposing body of one of the Revolution\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153martyrs,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Jean Paul Marat, in the bathtub he was murdered in through the streets of Paris (though the body atrophied beyond recognition before this could be carried out).\u00c2\u00a0 Unlike the previous religious implementations of illness into art, the Neoclassic and later Romantic usage was meant to display a choice: Republicanism or an un-honorable death, or Republicanism with a heroic death.\u00c2\u00a0 However, both religious and Jacobin propaganda stressed <\/p>\n

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unwavering devotion.\u00c2\u00a0 French Revolution artists would have been fools not to draw from Christian artwork though; centuries of blind Catholic following in France was a resource widely tapped into by the likes of David and Ingres.\u00c2\u00a0 There was already the perfect model of martyrdom and illness: Jesus.\u00c2\u00a0 Probably the most famous work to come out of the 18th<\/sup> Century was David\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Death of Marat<\/em>, styled after countless Pietas, most famously by Michelangelo.\u00c2\u00a0 Along with the death motif the painter made a point of displaying Marat still in his bathtub.\u00c2\u00a0 Marat spent most of his time in that bathtub because he had a very sensitive skin condition, something that increases the perception that this was a cruel murder against a helpless victim.\u00c2\u00a0 This shows how, among other things, illness can be manipulated and exploited in art.<\/p>\n

Toward the middle of the 19th<\/sup> Century state commissioned art began to disappear.\u00c2\u00a0 With the restoration of the Bourbon Dynasty in France, less concentration was paid to funding political art in an attempt to disassociate themselves from the still leftist and revolutionary artists prevalent at the time, like Daumier, who was imprisoned briefly for unkind caricatures of Louis Philippe in the form of a sickly, rotting pear (which also caused a nationwide ban on any depictions of pears) or Delacroix.\u00c2\u00a0 A new form of bourgeoisie was also in place, one offended by the growing influx of peasants drawn to the city during the Industrial Revolution.\u00c2\u00a0 With this brought unclean and unhealthy living environments, along with a fantastic rise in prostitution and an artistic desire to depict these realistically, hence Realism.\u00c2\u00a0 Emile Zola, an ardent supporter of Impressionist Realism, remarked upon hearing outcries from the upper classes over Manet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s masterpiece Olympia<\/em> \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why not be honest?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 Olympia<\/em>, a sardonic response to Cabanel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s saccharine Birth of Venus<\/em>, shows a thin, pale, and bold prostitute lacking the typical voluptuous body that was associated with beauty.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 This pursuit of the real, an unglorified view of the sickness the Parisian poor were experiencing, became a fixture in Impressionism.\u00c2\u00a0 This was done, almost to a grotesque point, by Degas in his sculpture Little Dancer of Fourteen Years <\/em>9<\/sup>.\u00c2\u00a0 Called by one critic the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Flower of the Gutter,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Degas disgusted critics with his bony, often speculated as anorexic, ballerina.\u00c2\u00a0 His original sculptures of Little Dancer of Fourteen Years<\/em> was not a bronze cast as the current ones are but a wax sculpture with genuine human hair\u00c2\u00a0 and displayed in a glass case.\u00c2\u00a0 Unlike today, displaying a sculpture in a glass case was not common practice for artists in the 19th<\/sup> Century and was perceived as a reference to medical displays.\u00c2\u00a0 This was a scandal; prior to Impressionism artists did not attempt to exhibit realistic interpretations of the lower classes.\u00c2\u00a0 Full scale paintings were previously reserved for heroic battle scenes, aristocrats, or works of civic virtue but to devote them to the fl\u00c3\u00a2neur and prostitutes, and not kindly done, of Paris was an outrage.\u00c2\u00a0 Other then class relations, Realism changed how illness was dealt with.\u00c2\u00a0 It was no longer used as a tool to instruct or cause fear for the masses, but was instead a point of power and change in shocking the bourgeoisie.\"\"<\/p>\n

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Illness, whether a mental or physical debilitation, has been the subject of countless works of art throughout history.\u00c2\u00a0 It has been pictured scientifically, religiously, sympathetically, heroically, and any number of other variations.\u00c2\u00a0 In relation to the artistic discourse, the ways in which illness is depicted reflects historical stigmas as well as broad human emotions. \u00c2\u00a0Much […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2231"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2231"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8449,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2231\/revisions\/8449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}