Painting & Living During a Pandemic

Painting & Living During a Pandemic: Part 1

I keep hearing in the news, especially among sports news outlets that this pandemic year will go down as the “*” asterisk year. But in my mind I have been thinking about it as the “Abandoned Year”. The year that all of us had to drastically alter our lives to protect ourselves and our communities from the unspeakable. Living through a Pandemic such as Covid-19 makes it easier to preoccupy ourselves with the “now” and not necessarily in the good sense. We think more in terms of what we are missing out on in our daily lives.

But for me it helps to look back on history and see how our ancestors handled similar crises. Another passion of mine is genealogy. And genealogists know that if they encounter a death of loved one during the years of 1918 and 1919, it was most likely due to the so called “Spanish Flu” (unfairly attributed to the Spanish who were the only ones cataloging the deaths due to Influenza during WW1 because they were neutral in the War). Such a revelation in one’s family tree is not as uncommon as one would think. It got me thinking about how as an artist I can express my own grief over this period in a body of work and such soul searching led m to ask, “What kind of work was made as a result of the Spanish Influenza?”. It turns out there is quite a bit.

As difficult as it is to see and read about how people are suffering today and how they suffered in 1918, I know from personal experience that a health crisis can often awaken you to your higher purpose. Today is the 2nd anniversary of my surgery to remove a very large benign brain tumor which you can read more about here. Luckily I am well past that now and so when I look upon these images of Pandemics, I see much more than suffering. I see perseverance and transformation.

The paintings shown in the introduction are by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch. The larger one is his self portrait painted while he himself had the Spanish Flu in 1919. Notice how gaunt he is, what he is wearing and the bed in the background - suggesting that this is most likely how he spent most of his days. I personally love the palette of this painting and its thinned out color wash application. The smaller image painted in the same year is his self portrait after his recovery.

Egon Shiele, “The Family” 1918.

The artist most closely associated with the Spanish Flu was the Austrian Egon Schiele. In 1918 Schiele was at the top of his art career (he appears above in this 1918 self portrait with his young family). Tragically, he would first lose his mentor, the artist Gustav Klimt and then his beloved wife and their unborn child to this pandemic (she was 6 months pregnant in this painting). Schiele himself perished from the disease only 3 days later at the tragic age of 28, on October 31, 1918.

The following drawings are both documentations and heart breaking portraits of his wife Edith Schiele and Gustav Klimt. The former drawn while she was dying, the latter drawn posthumously.

Egon Schiele, Portrait of his wife

At this point you may be asking what could possibly be the transformative moment that came after the Spanish Influenza? Here is the moment where I can finally give you a little encouragement - it was none other than the “Roaring 20’s”, a period of tremendous growth and widespread prosperity in North America, Western Europe & Australia. That my friends is our silver lining. We can get through this difficult period and be better for it as a society because we have done it before.

Join me next week as I continue exploring this theme of “Painting and Living During a Pandemic”. I will share with you what I have been up to since we all went into lockdown in March.

Thanks for the visit. Stay healthy & happy!

-Suzanne