“Illness, insanity, and death…kept watch over my cradle and accompanied me all my life,” Edvard Munch, the Norwegian artist, whose art was marked by a strong sense of fatality, darkness, and despair, had observed, having lived through the Spanish flu. His Self-Portrait with the Spanish Flu made in 1919, depicts a resting man who seems to be fading away, featureless, and worn. Even his surroundings are tired and waning; it is one of the few works of art exploring what was until then considered one of the most terrible pandemics of the modern world. From the moment the ravages of COVID-19 seized India, experts rushed to strike a comparison with the Spanish flu. All sorts of models predicting the future of a post-Covid world—its impact on economy, society, education and health regulations—were developed. What sort of art would come out of the pandemic? How would it impact a possible cultural revolution? Questions which perhaps stem from the cyclical nature that pandemics have had on the creative spirit in the past—the Renaissance in Florence came...
