Representations of Pain in Art and Visual Culture

Recently there have been a number of texts on images of pain by authors such as Elaine Scarry, George Roeder, Susan Sontag, Ulrich Baer, Georges Didi-Huberman, and Giorgio Agamben. In this volume, contributors add to the discussion on images of pain by providing thoughtful scholarly accounts of representations of pain in art and the media. The book covers areas such as contemporary performance art, international photojournalism, surrealism, and Renaissance and Baroque art, with imagery of Congolese whippings, contemporary American execution chambers, Abu Ghraib, lynching photographs, and concentration camps, among others.

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 recurring theme in performance art.

Recently, authors such as Elaine Scarry, Susan Sontag, and Giorgio Agamben have written about these themes. The scholars in this volume add to the discussion, analyzing representations of pain in art and the media. Their essays are firmly anchored on consideration of the images, not on whatever actual pain the subjects suffered. At issue is representation, before and often apart from events in the world.

Part One concerns practices in which the appearance of pain is understood as expressive. Topics discussed include the strange dynamics of faked pain and real pain, contemporary performance art, international photojournalism, surrealism, and Renaissance and Baroque art. Part Two concerns representations that cannot be readily assigned to that genealogy: the Chinese form of execution known as lingchi (popularly the "death of a thousand cuts"), whippings in the Belgian Congo, American lynching photographs, Boer War concentration camp photographs, and recent American capital punishment. These examples do not comprise a single alternate genealogy, but are united by the absence of an intention to represent pain. The book concludes with a roundtable discussion, where the authors discuss the ethical implications of viewing such images.