Art, Pain and Fortitude

In the context of our Visual Style elective, Paul gave an interesting and thought-provoking lecture on applying aesthetic form to images of suffering, i.e. the perennial discussion about whether images of suffering of people are allowed to be ‘beautiful’. He drew interesting parallels to other art forms, notably paintings. I won’t repeat all the arguments but would like to dwell a bit on the Christian iconography that most people recognise in photographs. Quite a few photographs of suffering people contain elements of a pieta like depiction of people or Madonna and child references.

Paul quoted a remarkable book by Nigel Spivey, which demonstrates that most of this Christian iconography existed long before in Greek, Roman and even much older Egyptian art. I got the book from the library today. Should prove an interesting read…