Depictions of Pestilence in Literature, Media, and Art (original) (raw)
A virus as an icon: the 2020 pandemic in images
American Journal of Cultural Sociology, 2020
The 2020 coronavirus pandemic is puzzling from a visual point of view. There are millions of photographs published about the crisis every day, yet we can see the key actor, the virus, only in artistic representations. Most of us also have very restricted access to central sites of the crisis, as intensive care units, nursing homes, meat packing plants and prisons are often not available for photographic representation. At the same time, we are oversupplied by other images that try to capture the "essence" of the moment. This article analyzes three prevalent visual genres in connection with the ongoing pandemic: abstract representations of the virus and public responses to it, images of heroes and sinners, and photographs of the "stage": the iconic spaces including empty public buildings and busy domestic spaces. All these iconic representations try to grasp the "deep meaning" of the crisis through a particular scene or moment. Their expressive surfaces have become our key sources to imagine the coronavirus crisis, and to socially connect in a time of painful and prolonged physical distance.
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.
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 Postcolonial Writing , 2022
This article examines one strand of COVID art that encodes a heteroclitic cultural imaginary – and is irregular and unsettling. Banksy’s murals and paintings parody classical artworks, and are themselves parodied, so as to capture the new cultural realities of the COVID era. In the case of other artists, such as Chiara Grilli, the traditional heliotrope is parodied to convey a similar reality, like Banksy’s inversion of the superhero mythology. With the employ- ment of conventional disease-vector images, such as those of rats, Banksy brings into the human 5dwelling a “postnatural wilderness” showing the reversal of the disruption of ecosystems that had rendered animals habitat-less in India, with animals once again entering human spaces. Hence, the pandemic’s inversion of spatia- lized distribution of life can be seen as a decolonial and decoloniz- ing moment. Subsequently, the article highlights how COVID-19 art intervenes through its parodic, kitschy quality, in the discourses around the pandemic.
OCTOBER, 2020
Building on the ideas in my recent book, Heritage and Debt: Art in Globalization (MIT, 2020), this polemical text suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic may call for new methodologies for understanding art and its histories.
Reflecting on the Covid-19 Pandemic: Awareness and Survival Through the Arts
Interdisciplinary Journal of Economics and Business Law, 2023
The unprecedented pandemic, which swept across the world in 2020, came with an avalanche of public health confusion and complexities. Every sector had to restructure its operational strategies in response t chaos. This paper argues that art was a major tool for combating mental, social, and financial difficulties during the pandemic. Adopting a qualitative approach to data gathering and interpretation, this paper purposively selects some groups and organisations within Nigeria that employed the creativity of the arts in combating the complexities of the pandemic. The paper highlights the strategies employed by these groups and organisations in achieving their specific aims during the initial spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper concludes that the arts should be recognised as a key contributor to the maintenance of social and psychological balance during the pandemic. As such, the arts should not be ignored as the world rebuilds.
“A Plague upon Your Howling”: art and culture in the viral emergency
Cultural Trends
In this introduction, we outline the context for the international emergence of cultural policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our article first offers a general account of how arts and culture have been affected by the pandemic, before looking at some of the state interventions (bailouts') to support the professional sector, and the present and future conditions they might be seeking to preserve or occasion. We then examine the UK as a particular case study. In rejecting a politics of "bailout" and "return", and in synchrony with others seeking to situate culture in a re-vitalised political economy, we argue that professional arts and culture needs to move forward with a "new deal" in hand; one that can enhance culture's potential and multipart value, as well as help the sector progressively engage with the many social, economic and environmental challenges ahead and beyond C-19. KEYWORDS Art and culture; green new deal; cultural policy; Covid-19; cultural work Before the deluge The COVID-19 pandemic is global, but the globe is not homogenous. Whilst we all recognise the signs from the newsfeedslockdowns, flattening curves, flat-out medical services, first and second waves, disrupted travel, disrupted employment, masking/notmasking, solidarities/ scapegoatingthese are refracted through very different political-cultural configurations. Readers will no doubt be all too familiar with the immediate and devastating impact of the crisis on the arts and cultural sector, and the wide range of responses (or not) by governments, and by various actors from the sector itself, across the globe. This Special Issue can only be a highly selective set of snapshots on the run. Written in August, by the time it is published things will have moved on. Perhaps "snapshot" is the wrong metaphor; these are diagnostics, aetiologies, tentative prognoses. For what this crisis is illuminating, in all-too-lurid detail, is how we think about and value art and culture; how we argue for their importance; how governments and public policy actors understand and value them, what they are prepared to do, on what grounds and with what capacity. In this Special Issue, we provide a selection of national and regional accounts, outlining how professional arts and culture have been affected by the crisis, some of the state
The Role of Visual Art in Facing the Corona Pandemic
Media, Seni dan Desain, 2022
Art is constantly inspired by what happens in its social and cultural context. The arts cannot be separated from life and the significant events in the world, whether it is a war, a natural disaster, or the spread of a disease an epidemic. Today, the whole world is witnessing the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, one of the worst in human history. The current scene has taken hold of artwork and the visual arts. The spread of the virus has inspired many artists to produce paintings, posters and artwork. This study aims to reveal the role and importance of Arab artists regarding the message they present regarding the situation at hand. In this study, the qualitative data was amassed as part of the methodology. The qualitative descriptive method and the case study approach are the primary approaches for the data collection. The results section focuses on the answers obtained from Arab artists through their artwork. It is held via a virtual exhibition. The discussion section focuses on a detailed analysis of the paintings. The study results concluded that art is a kind of documentation of all of the events that happen to humans. Art is a record of historical events, so it is a bright spot in times of crisis and darkness. Through these paintings, Arab artists have provided a light to those who feel gloomy in these difficult times, indicating that those in the Arab world focus on the unity of place, language and religion. Therefore, this artistic movement moves between all its countries so that no matter how harsh the situation, people will remain unified.
Black Death, Plagues, and the Danse Macabre. Depictions of Epidemics in Art
2021
What does a plague look like? What images correspond to it? Just as visual synonyms for the pandemic are formed in the media, the depiction of epidemics in the visual arts is a recurring topos, as art has always been a seismograph for social occurrences, moods, or political developments. This article shows how epidemics have been reflected in art history and illustrates three different representations using graphics from the graphic collection Mensch und Tod (Human and Death) at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf as examples.
Art Therapy in Pandemics: Lessons for COVID-19
Art Therapy, 2020
To help art therapists work effectively with the realities of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), this special report brings together art therapists who have experience working in pandemics (Ebola, SARS), attending to health professionals, and building creative virtual communities. Art therapists can support recommended public health psychosocial guidelines by disseminating information, promoting expression and inspiration, challenging stigma, modulating media input, securing family connections, monitoring secondary traumatic stress, developing coping and resilience, maintaining relationships, and amplifying hope.