Arts & Societies | Issue 134 is out

Thibault Boulvain

Art in the time of influenza: some points for consideration

That the so-called “Spanish flu,” which claimed millions of lives worldwide between the spring of 1918 and the latter half of 1919, left almost no trace in art is surprising, to say the least. It is this mystery that has been plaguing art historian Thibault Boulvain, and which he has set out to unravel, using Egon Schiele’s final painting, The Family (1918), depicting a couple and their child on the brink of disappearance, as a starting point. This question prompts a broader one: what do we expect from an image of illness? And to what extent might a work of art resist interpretation—especially when we try to draw from it meanings it may not possess, or even be aware of?

Thibault Boulvain is Assistant Professor in Art History at Sciences Po. He is the co-convenor, with Laurence Bertrand Dorléac, of the seminar “Arts et Sociétiés”. He is the author of numerous texts, including Art in the Time of AIDS: 1981–1997, published in June 2021 by the Presses du reel, which was awarded the Lucie and Olga Fradiss Foundation Prize in 2022.

In line with his previous research, he is currently focusing on artistic and visual representations of the “Spanish flu,” as well as, more broadly, on depictions of illness from Antiquity to the present day. He is also currently researching “the ‘Mediterranean effect’ in art from the Second World War to the present.