In the beginning there was painting or sculpture depicting the mortification of another person - that is, art in which the subject is mortification, of the sort with which Western culture is tiresomely replete. Some patron would commission from some artist an image from the Calendar of Suffering Saints and would receive the image of a tortured individual stretched in exquisite pain across a Baroque, Renaissance...
Body of work: How far to go for one's art?
Mortification of the flesh in Baroque and Renaissance art evolved in the 20th century into works featuring self-torture by the artists themselves. Why so gruesome?
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Ouzi Zur


