BOSTON, MA.-While art is inextricably linked with emotion--whether evoking an emotional response or seen as artistic self expression--most significant artistic movements since the 1960s have avoided the explicit depiction of human emotions. Emotions come out of the closet in the Institute of Contemporary Art's newest exhibition Getting Emotional, which features 32 international artists whose diverse work explores the expression of feelings. Through paintings, videos, photographs, and sculptures, these artists depict emotions in a variety of ways, from intimate moments between individuals to the physical manifestations of human feeling. Getting Emotional is on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art through September 5, 2005.

"From sensitive superheroes to the proliferation of drugs like Prozac, scientific research and pop culture are saturated with a range of feelings," says Nicholas Baume, Chief Curator at the ICA. "As the expression of human emotion has become an increasingly important facet of contemporary life and culture, it has fascinated many of today's artists."

Artistic movements such as Pop, Minimalism, and Conceptualism have typically valued objectivity over subjectivity and criticality over expression. Yet for many artists working over the past fifteen years, emotion has become an increasingly important resource as well as subject. Getting Emotional questions how artists can depict humans experiencing emotions without resorting to sentimentality, and whether this expression of feeling can be the stuff of sophisticated, and significant, art.

"The place of emotion in art has historically been a difficult dialogue to engage," says Baume. "It has often been seen as problematic or irrelevant, but as the works in the exhibition attest, emotion is a key aspect of contemporary art and an important concern for artists."

Artists such as Chloe Piene, Bill Viola, and Paul Pfeiffer create work that depicts the body in emotional states, both subtle and extreme, and often present them without any indication of what emotion is being expressed or why. In works like Piene's Black Mouth, an arresting video in which a mud-covered young girl screams in slow motion, the viewer is struck by the sheer physical force and expressive power of the human body.

Other works explore individual expressions of emotion. Subjects are shown experiencing particular moods or feelings in the paintings of Elizabeth Peyton, the contemplative sculpture of Ricky Swallow, and the photographs of Bas Jan Ader. These works that explore individual reflections on different states of emotion are often theatrical. For example, in Sam Taylor Wood's Crying Men, a series of photographic portraits of Hollywood actors such as Forest Whitaker and Michael Gambon, the subjects are asked to perform by crying for the camera.

The emotions involved in interpersonal relationships are undertaken by artists such as Nan Goldin, Catherine Opie, and John Currin, whose Two Guys depicts an tender moment between a gay couple. Darren Almond's video installation Traction features, on one screen, his father speaking about physical injuries he sustained as a result of his work, and on another, his mother's reactions.

Finally, Getting Emotional explores collective emotion on many levels, from responses to national tragedy to political rallies. Andy Warhol's portrayals of Jackie Kennedy in states of both grief and happiness that she experienced publicly evokes the shared emotions of national pride and loss that are associated with John F. Kennedy's presidency and assassination. Sam Durant creates artworks incorporating texts from protest signs of the 1960s, while the rave-goers of Andreas Gursky's May Day II merge into a single mass.

The artists in the exhibition include Marina Abramovic, Bas Jan Ader, Darren Almond, Janine Antoni, Cecily Brown, Louise Bourgeois, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, John Currin, Marlene Dumas, Sam Durant, Nan Goldin, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Andreas Gursky, Peter Hujar, Emily Jacir, Christian Jankowski, Barbara Kruger, Glenn Ligon, Ron Mueck, Chris Ofili, Catherine Opie, Elizabeth Peyton, Paul Pfeiffer, Chloe Piene, Jack Pierson, Ed Ruscha, Doron Solomons, Ricky Swallow, Sam Taylor-Wood, Bill Viola, Kara Walker, and Andy Warhol.

Getting Emotional is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue including an essay by curator Nicholas Baume and contributions from several distinguished authors including Jennifer Doyle, Assistant Professor of English at University of California at Riverside and author of the forthcoming book Sex Objects: Art and the Dialectics of Desire, and Wayne Koestenbaum, Professor of English at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and author of Jackie Under My Skin: Interpreting an Icon and The Queen's Throat.