Kelley, James L. (2022). Edvard Munch, the Spanish Flu, and COVID-19. Clio’s Psyche 28(3): 354-358. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Reflections on Literature and Art at a Time of Pandemic
Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities
Imagine the dystopia created by this viral holocaust. Incendiary piers start, burning bodies in wastelands. At night wastelands reportedly turn into a mass crematorium. At a University hospital in New Jersey, the bell rings every half an hour, announcing the passing away of a Covid victim. Ideas of nation states, frontiers, countries have only enclosed people in prisons of illusion. Such unreal lineations become fault lines for nationalism, migrations, war and hierarchical exclusion. The Corona virus however is not impeded by such boundaries. It transmits from human to human; it affects people without distinction of nationality, economics, franchise, and turns humans into targets with a kind of Dawkinsian indifference.
This is an English translation of the article Pandemia, arte y sentidos de Vida: Reflexiones desde Colombia, published in the journal El Ornitorrinco Tachado (2023). This paper emerges from ongoing research on the art works and exhibitions created in Latin America in response to the Covid-19 crisis which is understood not only as a health but also as a social, political and ecological crisis. In the first part, I reflect, from a Colombian perspective, on the different dimensions of the crisis unleashed by the pandemic, proposing that, more than a health crisis, the pandemic constitutes a political, social and existential crisis of profound scope and implications. I also examine the causes of this crisis in Colombia, framing them within the sui generis governmentality implemented in Colombia. In the second part, I examine several art works and exhibitions that respond to this crisis. I end by proposing that it is in the affective power of art that we find its ability to intervene in crisis contexts such as that of the pandemic.
ARTS DURING THE PANDEMIC PERIOD
Abstracts of the First Eurasian Conference; The Coronavirus Pandemic and Critical ICT Infrastructure, 2020
Many epidemics in human history, including plague, tuberculosis and other diseases, have caused pandemics at various times. The world is currently fighting the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic under the auspices of the World Health Organization. At all times, creative people were sensitive to such tragedies and created works of art on this topic. In the Middle Ages, the plague that gripped Europe was called the "Black Death". At that time, under the influence of the plague epidemic, the concept of "Dance of Death" was born in the culture. The Dance of Death, which existed from the middle of the 14th century to the first half of the 16th century, is a synthetic genre with an iconographic plot, accompanied by poetic interpretations [1]. In the second half of the 15th century, this "dance" was described by Bernt Notke, Michael Wolgemut, and then by Hans Holbein and other artists. The topic of pandemics in the visual arts also emerged in the late 19th century. Thus, in 1898, the Swiss painter, graphic artist and sculptor Arnold Bjoklin created the painting "The Plague". The rapid spread of the Spanish flu between 1918 and 1920 affected about 500 million people. Norwegian artist Edvard Munch also contracted the Spanish flu, but after recovering, he created the painting "Self-portrait after the Spanish flu." At the same time, the brilliant representative of Austrian Expressionism, Egon Schiele, contracted the flu and died. The artist created the painting "Family" based on the example of the tragedy of his family. This painting is one of the few examples of paintings depicting the tragic consequences of the flu. As a result of social isolation and quarantine during the pandemic, millions of people stay at home and stay away from all kinds of cultural events. At the same time, ICT is an invaluable tool for bringing people physically distant from each other together to bring them together for different purposes. Despite the fact that today, depending on the price and quality, the availability of different types of smartphones allows even the poor to master this type of technology. In this case, in turn, Internet resources become available, and access to information is simplified for all segments of the population. Since the pandemic was declared in March 2020, educational and cultural institutions around the world have gradually suspended their activities. However, given the fact that it is wrong to exclude people from education and culture in conditions of social isolation, many educational and cultural institutions decided to continue working on virtual platforms. From this point of view, one of the first projects in Azerbaijan was the creation of a joint project of the Ministry of Education and the TV channel of culture "Lesson Time" [2]. Over time, many businesses began to conduct online discussions, seminars and classes using Internet resources. In such conditions, the need for special programs and applications for video communication and video conferencing (webinars) has increased. One such tool is Zoom Video Communications, launched in 2011. As the number of people forced to stay at home by the COVID-19 pandemic has increased, so has the use of the Zoom Program. An estimated 10 million daily Zoom users in December 2019 were up to 200 million in early April 2020. Due to the requirements of the quarantine regime, more than 90,000 educational institutions in 20 countries of the world use this service, and this is not the end [3]. In connection with the transfer of the population to a strict quarantine regime, the need for access to the Internet, including the Zoom service, continues to grow rapidly in Azerbaijan. Along with educational institutions, cultural institutions are also moving to the online system. Major museums offer various forms of guided tours, workshops, 3D-walks, and other online services.
2022
From the beginning of recorded history, human beings have encountered epidemics. They have also memorialized these events, which can be deeply traumatic and scarring, in visual art and literature. In this article, we look at a selection of artistic depictions of past epidemics in Western culture in light of what they can teach us about COVID-19 today. Our analysis reveals that while responses to epidemics are culturally bound to specific times and places, they also share common features. What surfaces again and again are pandemic patterns: persistent themes, such as divine revelation, "othering," freedom, and exile, girded by a four-part dramaturgical structure as originally articulated by medical historian Charles Rosenberg. We argue that our response to COVID-19 is neither uniformly progressive nor linear, but rather circular or overlapping in time and space. COVID-19 may feel new to us, but in important ways, it is quite old. It has awoken an ancient and durable human script, laid out and reenacted over thousands of years. Understanding these pandemic patterns may help clinicians and health policy makers alike better craft a response to COVID-19 today and to the future epidemics that undoubtedly will come.
Journal of General Internal Medicine, 2022
From the beginning of recorded history, human beings have encountered epidemics. They have also memorialized these events, which can be deeply traumatic and scarring, in visual art and literature. In this article, we look at a selection of artistic depictions of past epidemics in Western culture in light of what they can teach us about COVID-19 today. Our analysis reveals that while responses to epidemics are culturally bound to specific times and places, they also share common features. What surfaces again and again are pandemic patterns: persistent themes, such as divine revelation, "othering," freedom, and exile, girded by a four-part dramaturgical structure as originally articulated by medical historian Charles Rosenberg. We argue that our response to COVID-19 is neither uniformly progressive nor linear, but rather circular or overlapping in time and space. COVID-19 may feel new to us, but in important ways, it is quite old. It has awoken an ancient and durable human script, laid out and reenacted over thousands of years. Understanding these pandemic patterns may help clinicians and health policy makers alike better craft a response to COVID-19 today and to the future epidemics that undoubtedly will come.