Sublime

Figure with meat Francis Bacon 1954

Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that paradoxically offers its spectator pleasure. Victor Hugo wrote, "Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them."




Saturn devouring His children Goya 1820

Goya painted this on the wall of his home, late in life, and was apparently suffering. We could say this was a sort of catharsis, a cleansing experience bringing pity and fear into their proper balance to achieve the sublime.




Self Portrait "deuil" Michael Kehrlein 2008

I painted this after the the death of my brother, a large painting, 5 by 5 feet, to purge the pain i felt.


Mother and Child divided Damien Hirst 1993

The impossibility of achieving or retaining an idealised (lost) unity (often coupled with a fear of fragmentation)







Therese Kehrlein Ansel Adams 1940

My mother...