Solitary Bodies and Emotions: Contemporary Plastic Art in the Context of Individualization Society

Abstract

This article follows the trail of Weber’s comprehensive sociology and uses the hermeneutical method as well as the iconological applied to 11 contemporary works of plastic art which can be described as significant and representative of contemporary art. It pursues two specific objectives: (a) analyzing the construction of loneliness both in contemporary plastic art and within the society of individuality and separateness, through human bodies and emotions; and (b) attesting how this theme has evolved in artistic practices from simple to reflexive modernity. Artists have indeed placed solitary men and women in the geographical and symbolic center of their compositions, additionally providing a contrast with a spatial and temporal environment which marginalizes them. We conclude that, for contemporary art, subjects are neither fully fledged individuals nor citizens in their own right and that they do not voluntarily live in an individualized society, but rather in one defined by separateness.