Agony in Effigy: Art, Truth, Pain, and the Body

February 21–June 17, 2018

This selection of historical works explores how physical violence and suffering have been represented in art, from the promise of transcendence to political critique.

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Francisco Goya: Tristes presentimientos de lo que ha de acontecer (Gloomy presentiments of things to come), from the series Los desastres de la guerra (The Disasters of War), 1819–23; etching, reinforced with aquatint; 11 1/8 x 15 in.; BAMPFA, gift of Mrs. Louise Mendelsohn.

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Past Events

Friday, April 13, 12 PM
Gallery Talk: Todd Olson on Agony in Effigy

UC Berkeley art history professor Olson explores the theme of female violence in two works on view in Agony in Effigy.

BAMPFA
Thursday, February 22, 12 PM
Curator’s Talk: Philippe Pirotte on Agony in Effigy

The curator of Agony in Effigy shares his insights into artistic depictions of bodily suffering and violence in this exhibition walk-through.

BAMPFA
Wednesday, February 21, 6 PM
Philippe Pirotte and Niklaus Largier in Conversation

Agony in Effigy curator Philippe Pirotte and UC Berkeley professor Niklaus Largier offer historical and cultural context for the exhibition’s varied and affecting images of pain and suffering.

BAMPFA

Past Films

Agony in Effigy: Art, Truth, Pain, and the Body

February 21–June 17, 2018

Drawing primarily upon historical graphic works in the BAMPFA collection, Agony in Effigy: Art, Truth, Pain, and the Body explores the ways in which physical violence is represented in art through visual cues using an impassioned language of gestures—what German art historian Aby Warburg described as the pathos formula, an enduring artistic motif in which victims are depicted seemingly taking pleasure in their own extreme pain.

The exhibition opens with prints representing bodily violence and torture with a transcendental promise. Examples include religious images featuring martyrs, such as Hans Baldung Grien’s Christ and the Instruments of the Passion (1517), Jean de Gourmont’s Flagellation (1520–40), or Jusepe Ribera’s St. Jerome Receiving the Stigmata (1620).

Allusions to suffering and its purported value recur in imagery throughout Western European art history. Passionate gestures in the School of Rembrandt van Rijn drawing Conversion of Saint Paul (c. 1645) or the early nineteenth-century ink-and-wash drawing Death of Camille, Sister of Horace, attributed to the school of Jacques Louis David, exemplify such depictions of bodily suffering and violence.

Other works in the exhibition offer a critical alternative to positive representations of physical pain. Jacques Callot’s The Miseries and Misfortunes of War (1633) and Francisco Goya’s The Disasters of War (1810–20) represent the beginning of a deprecatory stance against the legitimation of bodily violence.

As we view these images of truth, pain, and the body, we should ask ourselves: What are the dangers in aestheticizing pain and torture? Can the appealing form, which seduces us with the iconography and sensuality of the infliction of pain, also become a force for self-subversion?

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Agony in Effigy: Art, Truth, Pain, and the Body is organized by Senior Adjunct Curator Philippe Pirotte with Matthew Coleman, curatorial assistant.

Agony in Effigy: Art, Truth, Pain, and the Body

February 21–June 17, 2018

Selected Exhibition Objects

Print

Tristes presentimientos de lo que ha de acontecer (Gloomy presentiments of things to come), from the series Los desastres de la guerra (The Disasters of War)

Francisco Goya

Past Events

Gallery Talk: Todd Olson on Agony in Effigy

Curator’s Talk: Philippe Pirotte on Agony in Effigy

Philippe Pirotte and Niklaus Largier in Conversation

Past Films