Dr. Ringelberg's essay "The Faked Pain of the Artist: Empathy or Sympathy, Compassion or Concealment?" was published this month in the book Representations of Pain in Art & Visual Culture.
The newest volume in the series “Routledge Advances in Art and Visual Studies”, Representations of Pain in Art & Visual Culture, edited by James Elkins and Maria Pia di Bella, contains an essay written by Associate Professor and Art History Coordinator Kirstin Ringelberg. The essay, “The Faked Pain of the Artist: Empathy or Sympathy, Compassion or Concealment?” considers contemporary artworks like those of Yasumasa Morimura and Chieh-Jen Chen that depict the artist experiencing pain or a violent death–but where that pain or death is evidently constructed and not actually experienced. Ringelberg analyzes these works in terms of the intersubjective experience of the viewer and the possibility the artist creates for compassion and empathy.
The Routledge Press series aims to present innovative research in art and visual studies. Editors Maria Pia Di Bella (Senior Research Fellow at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, France) and James Elkins (E.C. Chadbourne Chair in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago) collected essays from 13 international scholars that consider representations of pain both real and faked, to explore further this recurring and significant theme in modern and contemporary visual imagery.
For more information: www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415530378/