Odes to Empathy

Empathy is not some trendy made up twenty-first century vocabulary word. It goes way back and is rooted in many examples of art and cultural phenomena. Nineteenth century poet Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself, 33 (1882) is an ode to identifying with others’ anguish so deeply and fully that their pain becomes his own. In one of the verses he writes, “Agonies are one of my changes of garments. I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.”

The arts teach empathy, because they are a vessel through which we are able to step out of our personal psyche and into the internal realm of another person or group of individuals. We maintain our own perspective as an artist, while simultaneously experiencing others’ emotions from their vantage point. An actor taking on the role of a character, builds an understanding of that character’s entire persona. An artist depicting a person, develops a sensibility for their subject’s internal and external world. A writer needs to be able to connect with a slew of differing characters and develop distinct traits, backgrounds and narratives for each one. The practice of making and partaking in art prompts an interconnectivity of differing perspectives, experiences and cultures.

Exhibiting empathy is what Corita Kent did when she took Whitman’s poignant words, and visualized them. First in a pop art style composition called News of the Week (1969), which is a rebuttal to the Vietnam War. Using the medium of screen printing, she merged together photographs, that depict a haunting of a Vietnamese prisoner, as well as a historical diagram of a slave ship. The inclusion of Whitman’s poem offsets the dismal imagery, by providing a message of humanity a call for mutual care.

Later Kent returned to the poem with an abstract graphic evoking the mood the stanzas expressed, in her serigraph, agonies (1976). Kent wrote the phrase from Whitman’s poem in delicate script, and juxtaposed it with a deep black gestural mark. The reflective form of expression suggests the feeling of distress.

Making art is an activity that connects the artist to the world, and brings heterogeneous people and concepts together. Kent elaborates that “Creativity belongs to the artist in each of us. To create means to relate. The root meaning of the word art is “to fit together” and we all do this every day. Not all of us are painters but we are all artists. Each time we fit things together we are creating, whether it is to make a loaf of bread or a life.”