Hanna Bervoets
Author
Listen, if they ask where it hurts and you say everywhere, you’re done for – because nobody hurts everywhere. And if they ask when you get tired and you say all the time, you might as well leave – because nobody can be tired all the time.
It’s not that they think you’re lying, but that because there’s nothing they can do, you’re the problem. And problems are only welcome as long as there are solutions.
You take a taxi home. In the hallway, you sit for a little while on the bottom step. The little window in the front door is too high for you to look through. You grab the banister to pull yourself upright.
Sander Begeer
Professor of Diversity of Autism at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
A scratchy jacket can be taken off; an annoying radio can be switched off; an overstimulated head or body cannot. Autistic people can get overwhelmed by stimuli because their brains appear to process stimuli differently. Expectations play an important role in this process. Our brains are constantly trying to predict which stimuli are likely to occur based on previous experiences. This prediction may diverge from the sensory information we actually receive. This applies to all of us, but autistic people appear to be more sensitive to sensory information and less focused on the predictions. As a result, they process the information more slowly and sometimes miss the context, giving rise to uncertainty and stress. But the unfiltered way in which autistic people encounter the world can also lead to lower bias, keener perception and an intense experience of beauty.
Charles Kang
Curator of 18th- and 19th-Century Drawings
Allegorical imagery gives visual form to an abstract concept through the human figure. Here, a seated man, face contorted and hands clutching his chest, represents physical pain – as the French inscription Douleur corporelle confirms. One of 16 related drawings by Pieter van den Berge in the Rijksmuseum, the sheet probably belonged to a larger series on physical and emotional states.
The artist offers no external cause or attribute for the pain, instead conveying it through gesture and physiognomy. Douleur corporelle is also a category in Charles Le Brun’s influential system for representing the passions, published in 1698 and translated into Dutch in 1703. Le Brun focused primarily on facial expression, whereas Van den Berge makes the entire body expressive. Three other drawings in the group likewise bear French inscriptions corresponding directly to Le Brun’s terminology.
