„Einfühlung” • Empathy • Empatía

What Is Empathy? A Definition: "The ability to understand another person’s circumstances, point of view, thoughts, and feelings. When experiencing empathy, you are able to understand someone else’s internal experiences" (Kristalyn Salters-Pedneault).

« How do I know that I know what I know – about you? This is clearly a question about epistemology, about knowledge. But it’s a special kind of knowledge, about others.
The ability to understand what another human being is thinking or feeling is most commonly known as empathy. The word empathy comes from the German [E]infühlung, which literally translates as “feeling into.” For thousands of years, empathy has attracted the attention of great thinkers in many fields of study » (Richard Lopez).

For isn't man is a tree of the field?
Cf. Deuteronomy 20:19 ; The Human Tree
Kim Graham, Man-Tree (Jotuntre), 2007

EMPATHY is the capacity of entering into, and so fully understanding (as if losing one's identity in) the spirit of a person, a work of art, etc. —Mariano Akerman

Mariano Akerman, Shape and Meaning: German Art, montage, 2010

“Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted. [...] Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning. [...] Two things awe me the most: the starry heavens above and the moral universe within.” —Albert Einstein.

Something in common

Awareness is not necessarily empathy: I was complaining because I had no shoes, until I saw somebody that had no feet. —Persian proverb

I am a man, nothing human is alien to me. —Terence
Kevin Christy, "You Remind Me of Me," NYT, 2008

"Most people are [...] strongly sensitive to rapport, to charm, to the social music in the person making the pitch" (Benedict Carey, You Remind Me of Me, The New York Times, 12.2.2008).


A cluster of illuminating definitions
• Daniel Batson: "A motivation oriented towards the other."
• D.M. Berger: "The capacity to put one's self in another's shoes."
• Jean Decety: "A sense of similarity in feelings experienced by the self and the other, without confusion between the two individuals."
• Nancy Eisenberg: "An affective response that stems from the apprehension or comprehension of another's emotional state or condition, and that is similar to what the other person is feeling or would be expected to feel."
• William Ickes: "A complex form of psychological inference in which observation, memory, knowledge, and reasoning are combined to yield insights into the thoughts and feelings of others."
• Heinz Kohut: "Empathy is the capacity to think and feel oneself into the inner life of another person."
• Carl Rogers: "To perceive the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy and with the emotional components and meanings which pertain thereto as if one were the person, but without ever losing the 'as if' condition. Thus, it means to sense the hurt or the pleasure of another as he senses it and to perceive the causes thereof as he perceives them, but without ever losing the recognition that it is as if I were hurt or pleased and so forth."
• Roy Schafer: "Empathy involves the inner experience of sharing in and comprehending the momentary psychological state of another person."
• Simon Baron-Cohen: "Empathy is about spontaneously and naturally tuning into the other person's thoughts and feelings, whatever these might be" (+).

Don Quijote y Sancho Panza sobre Clavileño el Alígero
Pintura de Manuel Monedero

La empatía (del griego antiguo εμπαθεια, formado εν, 'en el interior de', y πάθoς, 'sufrimiento, lo que se sufre'), también llamada inteligencia interpersonal (Howard Gardner: Teoría de las inteligencias múltiples) es la capacidad cognitiva de percibir la condición de otro individuo a partir de un sentimiento de participación emocional en la realidad que afecta a esa persona.

Anselm Kiefer, Shulamit, detalle, 1983

• "Siempre que alivies el dolor de otro ser humano, tu vida no será en vano"—Helen Keller.

• "El gran don de los seres humanos es el poder de la empatía"—Meryl Streep.

• "La empatía es la capacidad de pensar y sentir la vida interior de otra persona como si fuera la propia"—Heinz Kohut.

Mariano Akerman, Forma y Significado del Arte de Alemania, montaje, 2010

En otras palabras, empatía es ponerse en el lugar del otro pero teniendo presentes sus deseos, prejuicios, valores, motivaciones, recursos, habilidades, etc. Empatía implica comprender qué y cómo otra persona puede estar sintiendo en un momento dado, al considerar lo que ella tiene dentro de sí misma, e intentar sentirlo como propio. Para ello es necesario ser conscientes de todo lo que ha podido vivir una persona para llegar a sentir como siente, a actuar como actua, y a pensar como piensa (adaptado a partir de esta nota).

¿En su lugar no haría usted lo mismo?

Empatía es la capacidad de compenetrarse, de entender plenamente la naturaleza y condición de una persona (tal como si se fuese esa persona, pero sin llegar a perderse en ella). Lo mismo es aplicable a la obra de arte, cuando se la contempla y se comprende su razón de ser, colcándose el espectador en el lugar del autor, considerando el punto de vista del mismo y el contexto en el que la obra en cuestión ha sido realizada. Es entonces cuando se da la empatía. —Mariano Akerman

Vincent van Gogh, Casas en Auvers-sur-Oise, 1890

Käthe Kollwitz, Madre con mellizos, bronce, 1927-37

Wassily Kandinsky, Composición IV, 1911

René Magritte, El sabor de las lágrimas, 1948

Barbra Kruger, Pensando en ti, c. 1980

Francis Bacon, Autorretrato, 1973

Max Baur, Querubín, Stadtschloß de Potsdam, 1928-44
Deutches Bundesarchiv Bild 170-272

Paul Klee, Insula dulcamara | Isla agridulce, 1938

Mariano Akerman, L'essentiel est invisible, 2006

Akerman, De la importancia de lo auténtico, 1988

Akerman, Templo de Inclusión, 1987-88

¿No es acaso el hombre un árbol del campo?
Kim Graham, Árbol-Hombre (Jotuntre), 2007

Links
• Empathie
• The Swiss-German Project
• Creadores suizos y alemanes modernos

The Gestalt Program

Slideshare : Mariano Akerman

Hans Hartung

Born in Leipzig, into an artistic family. He studied the work of painters such as Corinth and Nolde, and also learned the basis of French modern art. He studied in the Fine Arts Academies of Dresden and Munich. To prevent succumbing to provincialism, he left in 1927 his native country, and after a bicycle trip through Europe, he moved to Paris.
He lived with Anna-Eva Bergmann and established himself in the French town of Leucate and then in the Balearic Island of Minorca. His first exhibition was held in 1931 in Dresden and his last bonds with Germany were broken as he was rejected from Nazi Germany on account of being a "degenerate" whose work was influenced by that of Wassily Kandinsky. In 1935 when Hartung attempted to sell paintings while visiting Berlin, the police tried to arrest him. He was able to flee the country with the help of his friend Christian Zervos.
After returning to Paris in 1935 as a refugee his wife left him, causing him to become depressive. His friends tried to help him with his financial difficulties, but his paintings were becoming more abstract and did not sell well.
In December 1939, he became a member of the French Foreign Legion. He was closely followed by the Gestapo and arrested for seven months by the French police. After they learned he was a painter, he was put in a red cell in order to wear off his vision. After being released, Hartung rejoined the Legion to fight in North Africa. He earned French citizenship in 1945 and was also awarded the Croix de Guerre.
His work during this period is characterised by suspended areas of colour superimposed by calligraphic bunches of lines. Involving swirling and energetic linear motifs, Hartung’s mature style found an eager public after the war. A successful showing of his work in Paris (1947) was followed by exhibits elsewhere in Europe and in the United States, Japan, and Latin America. In 1960 he was awarded the Grand Prix of the Venice Biennale and an entire room of the French Pavilion was devoted to his work. Hartung had a decisive influence on the postwar generation of abstract painters in Europe. His later works became progressively calmer and more stable. Many of his works are titled by letters and numbers.

1951

1956

Hartung: "In my opinion the painting which is called abstract is none of the "isms" of which there have been so many lately, it is neither a "style" nor an "epoch" in art history, but merely a new means of expression, a different human language - one which is more direct than that of earlier painting" (Art Directory).

Hartung: "Before the blank canvas I feel the need to make a certain spot, a certain color, or a mark. The first marks lead to others. Colors lead to signs which in turn suggest marks whose roles might be to support or to contradict what already exists as much as to stabilize the painting. In any case, I act at first with complete liberty. It is the work, as it goes along, that limits my choices."

L158, 1968

Pintor alemán nacionalizado francés, conocido por sus obras abstractas de trazos caligráficos negros sobre fondo de colores. Nació en Leipzig en el seno de una familia de físicos. Su abuelo era también pintor autodidacta y compositor. Entre 1915 y 1926 estudió lenguas clásicas en el Dresden Gymnasium y filosofía e historia del arte en la universidad y en la Escuela de Bellas Artes de Leipzig. Más adelante ingresó en la Academia de Bellas Artes de Dresde. Durante el verano de 1926 viajó en bicicleta por Francia, Italia y España. En 1931 expuso por primera vez en Dresde. En 1937, en una exposición colectiva en el Jeu de Paume, París, conoció al gran escultor español Julio González, que habría de ejercer una profunda influencia en él. González le brindó todo tipo de ayuda y le animó a emprender su propio camino artístico. Durante el periodo prebélico Hartung se instaló en París para evitar el régimen nazi, y expuso en varias galerías. En 1938 participó en una exposición anti-nazi en la Galería New Burlington de Londres. En 1939, fue encarcelado en España y posteriormente se alistó en la Legión extranjera en el norte de África. En 1944 fue gravemente herido durante el sitio de Belfort y perdió una pierna. Después de la guerra se nacionalizó francés y en 1947 hizo una exposición individual importante en París. Desde el principio se mantuvo alejado del movimiento de la Bauhaus, al que consideraba como una mera moda pasajera. Sus pinturas, puramente abstractas, reflejan su opinión sobre la representación de la realidad: la expresión libre y pura debe trascender la realidad. La pincelada rápida constituyó una característica básica de su método de trabajo. La velocidad en el proceso creativo era, según sus propias palabras, "una necesidad espiritual". Recibió varios premios, entre los que se incluyen el Premio Guggenheim en 1956 y en 1960 el Gran Premio Internacional de la Bienal de Venecia (M.E.).

Pintores de Alemania
Creadores suizos y alemanes modernos

The Human Body in Modern Art

Egon Schiele, Male Nude (Männlicher Akt), 1910
watercolor and charcoal on paper

Marcel Duchamp, Nu descendant un escalier n° 2, 1912
Nude descending a Staircase #2
oil on canvas, 147 × 89.2 cm
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Pablo Picasso, Nude by the Sea, 1929

André Kertész, Distortion, photograph, Paris, 1933

Salvador Dali, Autumnal cannibalism, oil, 1936. Tate Gallery, London

Hans Bellmer, Doll, 1936
Painted aluminum on bronze base, 66 x 25.4 x 27.9 cm.
Zwirner & Wirth, New York

Jean Dubuffet, Will to Power, 1947

Alberto Giacometti, L’Homme qui marche II, bronze, 1960
Fondation Maegth, Saint-Paul de Vence
Walking Man | Man Striding

Henry Moore, Working Model for Reclining Figure: Festival, 1950

Louise Bourgeois, Janus fleuri, 1968
Bronze and golden patina, 25.7 x 31.8 x 21.3 cm

Francis Bacon, Seated Figure, 1989
Oil on canvas
The Estate of Francis Bacon, London

Resources
Fases de lo Grotesco
La imagen grotesca del cuerpo

Franz Xaver Messerschmidt

Franz Xaver Messerschmidt (1736–1783) was a German-Austrian sculptor most famous for his "character heads", a collection of busts with faces contorted in extreme facial expressions.

Messerschmidt was a skillful Bavarian craftsman who was headed for a career at the Habsburg court in Vienna until he exhibited symptoms that denied him advancement and sent him deep inside himself to explore his own (and often extreme) emotional states, which he sculpted in marble, carved in alabaster or cast in lead alloy (1771-83). Around 1771, as his health apparently deteriorated, he started working on his "character heads", using himself as a model. He created a series of heads with grimacing faces. He produced the life-sized busts rapidly, 69 within a 13-year period. Collectively, Messerschmidt's "heads" display a range of emotions and, although they are not self-portraits, many resemble the artist.

He never intended to exhibit or sell them. Yet, he may have made them as physiognomic studies, perhaps inspired by experiments enacted by his friend, the controversial physician Franz Anton Mesmer. Messerschmidt probably also knew of Johann Caspar Lavater, who popularized "physiognomy"--the notion that human character is discernable by a person's physical appearance.

The Gentle Quiet Sleep

Apart from The Gentle Quiet Sleep, there is no classical ethos in Messerschmidt's sculptures, but an expressionist quality that introduces him as a lost soul of the European Enlightenment. The bust form can be reminiscent of the classical art of ancient Greece and Rome, the Messerschmidt's heads are idiosyncratic, capricious and self-centered. Moreover, the artist's facial expression is often ambivalent. Seemingly, Messerschmidt is a sculptor that falls somewhere between the Baroque and the Classicism, as his statues combine baroque expressive movement with classical clear forms and aggressive characterization with prosaic reproduction (M. Donner).

The Vexed Man is one of the series of 69 portrait busts or "character heads." The bust portrays a middle-aged man with a sour expression, which seems to fall somewhere between a grimace and a scowl. The most telling aspect may be the furrowed brow above squinting eyes and a scrunched nose. But natural cracks in the bust's alabaster surface seem to echo the topography of his skin, both softened by age yet hardened by the extreme expression. The man's receding hairline, wrinkles, and sagging jawline contrast with tensed cheek and neck muscles. Although the character seems to express irritation and annoyance, it is not certain whether Messerschmidt intended that interpretation, because he did not give the bust a title. A contemporary wrote that Messerschmidt told him that by making the character heads, he hoped to ward away spirits that invaded his mind (Getty Museum).

According to Jonathan Jones, Messerschmidt's work is "not so much the depiction of physiognomy as of the unfathomable self, alone and confounded, puzzled, grimly amused and fantastically assured of his own fascinating monstrosity." It repels curiosity even if commanding it. Messerschmidt, Jones states, exhibits himself as a freak, and laughs at medical or philosophical attempts to understand him.

Possibly, the character heads may be manifestations of madness. Yet, considering the artist's declared digestive problems, the may also have to do with constipation.

Indeed, it appears that for many years Messerschmidt had been suffering from an undiagnosed digestive complaint (now believed to be Crohn's disease), which caused him considerable discomfort. In order to focus his thoughts away from his condition, Messerschmidt devised a series of pinches he administered to his right lower rib. Observing the resulting facial expressions in a mirror, Messerschmidt then set about recording them in marble and bronze. His intention, he told Friedrich Nicolai in 1781, was to represent the "canonical grimaces" of the human face using himself as a template.


Animation by Edward Rose and Nick Reynolds

It is likely that Messerschmidt inteded to depict his physiological state and its facial response as he used bodily stimulation (Herb Ranharter).

With the Heads, with sometimes bizarrely grimacing facial features that express human emotions like fear, disgust, irritation, joy, pain, or sadness, Messerschmidt radicalized the genre of the portrait bust and at the end of his artistic career broke once and for all with traditional forms of depiction. The physiognomic search for emotions and a transparent inner being was, however, reduced to the absurd by seemingly arbitrary combinations of various forms of expression. Although the details of the movements of facial muscles are rendered realistically, many of them cannot in reality be reproduced simultaneously, and their effects are often exaggerated. The heads are, contrary to all experience of reality, symmetrically constructed; the forms of expression and movements of the heads are stylized by defining wrinkles and muscles. Likewise, the hair and eyebrows are not realistically depicted but instead follow the principles of ornament or drawing. Thus Messerschmidt abandoned a connection to reality, but in the process the expressive power of his art increased considerably (Städel Museum, Frankfurt).

Artists such as Francis Bacon have been inspired by Messerschmidt’s work.

Online resources
Digital Belvedere | Slovak National Gallery | Kuriositas
Nicolai, Friedrich. Description of a Journey through Germany and Switzerland in the Year 1781, trans. Herbert Ranharter, The Paris Review, 30.9.2010
Schmid, Theodor. Franz Xaver Messerschmidt's Heads, 2009
Eitner, Lorenz. The Grand Eccentrics, ed. Thomas Hess & John Ashbery, Collier Books, 1971 (cited by John Coulthart, "The Art of Messerschmidt," Feuilleton, 23.6.2006).
_____. The Grand Eccentrics (cited by Dennis Cooper, CD, 6.4.2011).
Jones, Jonathan. Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, Guardian, 28.1.2011


• La joie de vivre: images of Messerschmidt's heads

Hurva Synagogue

¿Kahn’s project versus Meltzer’s restoration?

"A painted horse is not a zebra," expressed once Louis I. Kahn. Were he alive today and regarding the new Hurva Synagogue, ¿would the celebrated American architect say those words once again if contemplating Nauhm Meltzer's restoration today?

Now that things have been clarified regarding certain misrepresentation y other historical aspects concerning the Hurva Synagogue, we may compare Kahn’s 1968 project with Meltzer’s 2003 restoration.

As it was presented in 1968, Kahn’s initial project had a great impact in Jerusalem, where many admired it and some were astonished because of its magnitude and symbolism.* The project was appreciated, but there were also objections. To build or not to build Kahn's Hurva that was the big question all along the 1970s. More than forty years were going to be necessary to have "the Ruin" restored, only in 2010.

Today the building has been completely restored, and if we considering Jerusalem’s difficult reality, then Meltzer has been responsible and sensitive in doing his job. Moreover, his restoration doesn’t diminish the great evocative character of Kahn’s design (developed 1968-1974). As it happens with Leonardo’s sketches showing temples that remained unbuilt, also Kahn’s Hurva Synagogue Project remains magnetic and powerful as a design.

It is perhaps of little use to make efforts in indicating which proposal is the best. The point is not some 'either this or that.' Besides, Kahn’s project and Meltzer’s restoration need to be contemplated each in its respective historical context. Clearly, each of the architects did the best he could and he did so under difficult conditions. Kahn envisioned what would have been an ideal synagogue; Meltzer was requested to build a real one, responding to communitarian needs.

It is noteworthy that when Kahn’s project was being developed the Hurva was itself literally in ruins and there were neither Great Synagogue of Jerusalem nor Israel Museum.

Unfolding extraordinary compositional creativity and symbolic daring, Kahn concieved in a single design what would have been a Great Synagogue of Jerusalem and Israel Museum at once. Kahn delineated a most important project, but one that if ever built would have needed to be dimensionally adjusted to the living conditions that characterize Jerusalem, otherwise would have entailed a major urban modification in the Old City.

The important principles that Kahn had considered along his career continue inspiring architects up to now. Especially his respectful approach to what he called "Beginnings" and the History of Architecture as such. Memory and poetry are fused in Kahn’s architectural configurations with vision and wisdom. And regarding the magnitude of the Hurva Synagoge Kahn projected, he probably would have adjusted it to the needs of the environment. For no other architect has ever been so interested in "what the building wants to be" as Kahn opportunely was. And, above all, Kahn’s Hurva would have had Monumentality.

The restored synagogue lacks of monumentality, yet it fits the always hypersensitive environment of Jerusalem. As Meltzer aptly notes, the old Hurva, with its neo-Byzantine typology, was a synagogue as there was no other in Jerusalem, not even in the whole Holy Land. That building even served as a model to other synagogues abroad (source).

Kahn’s design fused the achievements of Modern architecture with a poetical dimension that were not oblivious of the very origins of Hebrew architecture, which the Pennsylvania architect believed were in king Solomon’s Temple. It is probably because of all this that his Hurva Synagogue Project had become an architectural paradigm and keeps on being perceived as a prominent configuration. Besides, Kahn’s design is a remarkable example of inclusion (or what Robert Venturi used to call the "both-and" phenomenon).

Jerusalem is a city closely related to Tradition. With its Hurva Synagogue Project, Kahn had envisioned an architectural masterpiece, one somehow comparable to the Dome of the Rock. Jerusalem’s major Teddy Kollek opportunely expressed his satisfaction concerning Kahn’s project, yet he did not really encourage its construction.

The 21st-century followers of the 19th-century rabbis preferred to restore the synagogue, having it as their predecessors had built it in the past. No architecturally innovative temple has thus been built. They have just rebuilt “the Ruin” once again. The local needs, however, do not deprive Meltzer’s building of a certain global symbolism, although this is quite far from the one in Kahn’s proposal.

The building restored by Meltzer has modest dimensions and its decoration is austere. The architect from Jerusalem architect has proven to be sensitive about the history of the building and its environment. He did a subtle job.
Undoubtedly, Melter’s greatest achievement is to have finished with the insipid arch that during almost three decades served as a reminder of a ruined synagogue. And positive in this sense is the fact that the transitory arch erected in 1977 has finally been removed to give subsequently place to a built temple.

Kahn proposed and Meltzer reconstructed. Each in his own way has contributed to build Jerusalem. The History of Architecture is composed by facts, being these both projects and buildings. The history of the Hurva Synagogue is additionally significant in its own, and not only from an architectural viewpoint. Given the contrasting events which have marked its history and existence, the Hurva (as both concept and building) will always constitute a symbol of resonant significance.

_____
* "The Evocative Character of Louis Kahn's Hurva Synagogue Project, 1967-1974," in: The Real and Ideal Jerusalem in Jewish, Christian and Islamic Art, ed. by Bianca Kühnel, 1998, pp. 245-53.

Additional resources
• Kahn, Order Is, 1960
• Reinventing [?] Jerusalem, Documenta, 21.7.2011

• También en español: Ricca y su publicada tergiversación (8.7.11) y Sinagoga Hurva: ¿El proyecto de Kahn versus la restauración de Meltzer? (20.7.11).