Second Artist/concept Pain.

Pain:

For my second post I've decided to use the concept of pain. While still focusing on my article on The Ebola virus, I began to think of the theme of Pain and suffering, the pain of the virus itself seems excruciating, but also the pain of loss, the loss of your loved ones, it is a deep and powerful pain that no one can truly be rid of. The only thing we can do is keep moving. Families are throwing their loved ones in the streets in fear of contracting the virus, it must be very upsetting to toss the corpses of the ones closest to you in the streets, with no proper way of disposing of the bodies themselves. The bodies are left on the streets, as passers by just stay clear of what is now just seen as a contaminated cadaver, no longer a human being. The bodies are then sealed when a clean up crew comes along, these guys are well protected of course, the bodies are covered up and then lobbed onto the back of trucks. I guess there's no dignified way of doing things at such drastic times.

I've picked a few artists which I feel expressed powerful pain in their works.

Frida Kahlo: 1907-1954

Frida Kahlo is a renowned surreal artist and feminist icon from mexico, with a sassy and fierce nature she was a woman who demanded respect, she smoked, drank, cursed, uncaring of what people said. She had great respect for herself and her fans, she went through alot of hardships in her life, she contracted polio when she was six, leaving her bedridden for nine months, and was left with a damaged leg leaving her with a limp, her father urged her to play soccer, go swimming and even take up wrestling, to help in her recovery, these were all strange things for a girl to be doing at the time. Frida  was also in an accident when she was 18, she was in a bus that collided with a car, severly damaging her spine and pelvis and was confined to a hospital for weeks, she then returned home to mend her broken spine, collar bone pelvis and ribs. Frida had to undergo many surgeries after the accident, over 30, while the only thing she could do was wait, and so she began to paint, she finished her first self portrait the following year. 

She married a muralist named Diego Rivera, a man 20 years older than she was. This marriage was one of passion and conflict, as they both loved and respected each other, but also at the same time couldn't stand one another. This relationship went through marriage and divorce, getting back together and separation, they both had other lovers, Rivera had relations with her younger sister, through this familial betrayal she cut off her trademark long black hair.

Frida went through two miscarriages in her lifetime, but because of the accident she was unable to give birth causing more heartbreak in her life, as she so desperately wanted children. Her artwork contains her grief and pain that she had endured in her lifetime, she was strong and will forever be remembered as an iconic female throughout the world.
Her art spoke nothing but pain and suffering, the honesty was unbelievably refreshing, so morbid and yet so intensely vulnerable, I felt as though she had nothing to hide, saying this is me, accept it or leave it, but know who I am.

A Few Small Nips

Henry Ford Hospital

The Broken Column

Thinking About Death

The First artist I cam across was Dario Puggioni.

The majority of his work is dark and deals with ideas of pain, his ideas are derived from subjects such as suffering caused by poverty, uncertainty for the future, inability to communicate, and an alienation immersed in the mass and desperate loneliness of the human race.”

David Alfaro, this striking piece,
which holds so much grief and sadness, leaves an impression on you, making you want to console this poor being, clearly under so much pain.

"The Sob" David Alfaro 1939

 This is a an example of sculpture, Haroshi uses old unused skateboards to create his work, and isn't it just fantasic? You can actually feel this mans hurt, he seems to have an interest in creating his work around the skateboard community. I don't even know how he would create such a piece.

Agony Into Beauty.