PAIN AS A TRIGGER IN STRATEGY CHOICE FOR ART AND LIFE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29121/shodhshreejan.v3.i2.2026.100Keywords:
Illness, Physical Pain and Suffering, Painting, Graphics, Creative Strategy, Atti-Tudes, Philosophy Of Pain, Psychology Of PainAbstract [English]
The research aims to understand and to analyze how the personal or close people’s pain and suffering influences an artist’s choice of art and life strategy. Nobody can avoid pain. There are different degrees and different forms of it, pain can emerge in different periods of life. Everyone needs to develop a certain attitude to pain, this is why it is especially useful to un-derstand the experience of the great masters of fine arts, the ways they perceived and ac-cepted the pain. These ways range from passive self-pity to themselves depicted in their artwork to active overcoming by means of art: extirpation or transformation of this condi-tion into the creative activity that either does not transmit pain at all or pours it out onto the paintings. The object of the analyses is the fine art of masters of the XIX-XX centuries, choosing or ignoring the topic of pain, their attitude to the creative process as such and their world outlooks that result into a certain choice.
The result of the research carried out by means of art, historical, comparative and structural analyses, as well as data extrapolation, was revealing and explaining the active or the passive position of an artist in art and in life, which, in its turn, lead to defining the de-gree of pain/suffering depiction in the selected artists’ works and to developing the classifi-cation of subtypes of strategies developed by the masters encountering pain. Overall, the work provides grounding to the possible reasons of the artists’ choice with the help of scien-tific works in medicine, philosophy, psychology and art studies, as well as certain events in the artists’ biography, their memories and their biographer’s evidence.
One of the essential deductions drawn from the research is the following: physical pain and suffering mostly do not result into the destruction of the creative personality or into the surrender in their creative work. Even if the artist chooses the passive strategy, pain/suffering generates creativity.
References
Aristotle. (1927). Poetics (N. I. Novosadskij, Trans.). Academia.
Benedetti, F. (2019). The Pain: Ten Key Points to Understand it. Carocci.
Berest, C. (2024). There is no Black and There Will Not Be (A. Koval'Chuk, Trans.). Mann, Ivanov i Ferber.
Bernard, C. (2022). All the Colors of Love (S. Poljakov, Trans.). Arkadiya.
Bettelheim, E., Liu, J., Dazzan, P., and Turkheimer, F. (2024). Painting Schizophrenia: An Empirical Investigation of the Self-Portraits and Portraits of Edvard Munch [Preprint]. Preprints.org. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202406.1631.v1
Bonito Oliva, A., and Zamora, M. (2022). Frida Kahlo (M. Fedorova, Trans.). AST.
Bruno, G., Grøgaard, S., and Trabucco, L. (2018). On the Path Along the Abuse: Readings by Edvard Munch: Art History and Psychoanalysis. Nicomp L.E.
Burrus, K. (2022). Viva la Frida (O. Terent'eva, Trans.). Mann, Ivanov i Ferber.
Cooke, A. (2024). The Scream: Lament as a Way to Hear Silence Into Speech. Pastoral Psychology, 73, 431–444. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-024-01130-1
Dahl, E., and Rolfsen, T. S. (2024). The Phenomenology of Pain and Pleasure: Henry and Levinas. Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, 31(1–2), 46–67. https://doi.org/10.5195/jffp.2023.1050
Fekete, A., et al. (2022). Does Art Reduce Pain and Stress? A Registered Report Protocol of Investigating Autonomic and Endocrine Markers of Music, Visual Art, and Multimodal Aesthetic Experience. PLOS ONE, 17(4), e0266545. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266545
Finger, S., and Sirgiovanni, E. (2024). Edvard Munch's Crisis in 1908 and French Medicine: His Doctors, Treatments, and Sources of Information. Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/0964704X.2024.2357059
Finger, S., and Sirgiovanni, E. (2024). The Electrified Artist: Edvard Munch's Demons, Treatments, and Sketch of an Electrotherapy Session (1908–1909). Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 33(3), 241–274. https://doi.org/10.1080/0964704X.2023.2295201
Fortoul, T. (2024). Toulouse-Lautrec, His Thickness and his art. Revista De La Facultad De Medicina, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 67(3), 52–56. https://doi.org/10.22201/fm.24484865e.2024.67.3.07
Freud, S. (1969). Selected Works (E. Zhiglevich, Ed.; Vol. 1). Overseas Publications Interchange Ltd.
Freud, S. (2006). Psychology of the Unconscious (A. M. Bokovikov, Trans.; A. M. Bokovikov and S. I. Dubinskaja, Eds.). OOO Firma STD.
Freud, S. (2021). Collected Works (Vol. 22). Vostochno-Evropeiskii Institut Psikhoanaliza.
Galli, L. (2009). When Life Changes Color: React to Pain and Illness. Mondadori.
Goethe, J. W. (2020). The Sorrows of Young Werther. AST.
Gromova, E. (Comp.). (2010). Gallery of Geniuses: Kustodiev (O. Medvedkova, Ed.). OLMA Media Gru
Hanson, L., and Hanson, E. (2016). Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Odoya.
Johnson, M. I., et al. (2023). Pain Through the Perspective of Art and Creativity: Insights from the Unmasking Pain Project. Frontiers in Pain Research, 4, 1179116. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpain.2023.1179116
Khajdarova, G. R. (2013). The Phenomenon of Pain in Culture. Izdatel'Stvo Russkoi Khristianskoi Gumanitarnoi Akademii.
King, R. (2021). Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies (A. Glebovskaja and A. Zakharevich, Trans.). Azbuka; Azbuka-Attikus.
Kinodo, J.-M. (2012). Reading Freud: The Study of Freud's Works in Chronological Perspective (O. Zhuravlev, Trans.; N. I. Kigaj, Ed.). Kogito-Tsentr.
Lanthony, P. (1993). Cataract and the Painting Of Claude Monet. Points de Vue, (29), 12–25.
Lee, W. H. M., Gholamrezaei, A., and Pourkazemi, F. (2023). Effects of Visual Arts on Persistent Pain: A Systematic Review [Preprint]. Medrxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.05.24.23290506
Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (A. Lingis, Trans.). Duquesne University Press.
Levinas, E. (1998). Otherwise than being, or beyond essence (A. Lingis, Trans.). Duquesne University Press.
Levinas, E. (1998). Time and the Other: The Humanism of Another Person (A. Paribka, Trans.; B. Ostanin, Ed.). Vysshaya Religiozno-Filosofskaya Shkola.
Levinas, E. (2000). Selected Works: Totality and Infinity. Universitetskaya Kniga.
Marmor, M. F. (2006). Ophthalmology and art: Simulation of Monet's Cataracts and Degas' Retinal Disease. Archives of Ophthalmology, 124(12), 1764–1769. https://doi.org/10.1001/archopht.124.12.1764
Marmor, M. F., and Ravin, J. G. (2009). The Artist's Eyes: Vision and the History of Art. Abrams.
Marmor, M. F., and Ravin, J. G. (Eds.). (1997). The Eye of the Artist ( 2–25). Mosby-Year Book.
Maïdi, H., and Karavanova, E. (2021). Trauma and Symbolization in Edvard Munch: Art and Psychoanalysis. Annales Médico-Psychologiques, Revue Psychiatrique, 179(9), 792–796. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amp.2021.09.001
Munch, E. (2021). Diaries and Letters (E. Rachinskaja, M. Makaridina, and E. Vorob'eva, Trans.). AST.
Nagy, Z. Z. (2018). Painting and the Eye. Developments in Health Sciences, 1(1), 2–9. https://doi.org/10.1556/2066.1.2018.02
Ness, A. (2021). Edvard Munch: Biography of the Artist (E. Rachinskaja and A. Turuntaeva, Trans.). KoLibri; Azbuka-Attikus.
Palacios-Sánchez, L. (2021). Francisco De Goya and Lucientes: Genius and Neuropsychopathology. Medicina, 43(2), 318–325. https://doi.org/10.56050/01205498.1610
Peraica, A. (2022). Anthropocentrism and Solipsism in Photographic Self-Portraits of Edvard Munch. Photographies, 15(2), 187–203. https://doi.org/10.1080/17540763.2022.2060287
Perruchot, H. (2005). Renoir's life (S. A. Tarkhanova and Ju. Ja. Jakhnina, Trans.). Rusich.
Perruchot, H. (2019). Van Gogh, Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec: Biographies of Great Masters. AST.
Renoir, J. (1970). Auguste Renoir (O. Volkov, Trans.). Iskusstvo.
Sartre, J.-P. (2000). Being and Nothingness: The Experience of Phenomenological Ontology (V. I. Koljadko, Trans., Preface and Notes). Respublika.
Scheler, M. (2020). About the Essence of Philosophy: Works from Different Years (A. N. Malinkin, Trans.). Tsentr Gumanitarnykh Initsiativ.
Scholtz, S., Becker, M., MacMorris, L., and Langenbucher, A. (2022). Monet: The Cataract and the Water Lily. In Curiosities in Medicine ( 207–209). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14002-0_56
Schopenhauer, A. (2001). Collected Works (Vols. 1–6). Teppa-Knizhnyi Klub; Respublika.
Sgarbi, V., and Algranti, G. (2005). Evil: Examples of Cruelty: Exhibition Catalogue (V. Sgarbi, Comp.; F. Ambrosio, Ed.). Skira.
Sgarbi, V., and Algranti, G. (2005). Evil: Exercises of Cruel Painting: Exhibition Catalogue (V. Sgarbi, Comp.; F. Ambrosio, Ed.). Skira.
Sholokhova, S. A., and Yampolskaya, A. V. (Comps.). (2014). (Post)Phenomenology: A New Phenomenology in France and Beyond. Akademicheskii Proekt.
Sichel, P. (1998). Amedeo Modigliani (E. Shal'nevoj, Trans.). Feniks.
Sontag, S. (2014). Regarding the Pain of Others. OOO Ad Marginem Press.
Symmons, S. (2021). Sacks, Giants, Owls, Cats: It's a Mad World In the Graphic Art of Francisco de Goya (1746–1828). Forensic Science International: Mind and Law, 2, 100061. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fsiml.2021.100061
The Gospel: The Books of the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament (Edition No. 01.481). (2017). Svet na Vostoke.
The Week. (2021, April 17). Francisco de Goya: The Black Paintings. The Week.
Valdes-Socin, H. (2021). The Syndrome of Toulouse-Lautrec. Journal of Endocrinological Investigation, 44(9), 2013–2014. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40618-020-01490-4
Venturi, L. (2020). The Impressionists: Diaries and Letters (P. V. Melkova, Trans.). AST.
Vetlesen, A. J. (2010). Philosophy of pain (E. Vorob'jova, Trans.). Progress-Traditsiya.
Vigil Morant, J. (2018). Sparks Over Saturn: A Revision on Francisco de Goya's (1746–1828) Disorders. NeuroRegulation, 5(2), 52–56. https://doi.org/10.15540/nr.5.2.52
Vollard, A. (1995). Renoir (N. Tyrsa, Trans.). Respublika.
Wittgenstein, L. (1999). The Blue Book (V. Rudnev, Trans.). Dom Intellektual'noi Knigi.
Yakimovich, A. K. (2018). Goya. Molodaya Gvardiya.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Irina Vladimirovna Deeva, Anna Ivanovna Kravchenko
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
With the licence CC-BY, authors retain the copyright, allowing anyone to download, reuse, re-print, modify, distribute, and/or copy their contribution. The work must be properly attributed to its author.
It is not necessary to ask for further permission from the author or journal board.
This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.
