Pain as art or painful art?

Bob Flanagan's pain journal
How can pain heal?
How can suffering push the boundaries of compassion?
Was this guy just complaining or was he on to something?

He died drowning in the fluid of his own lungs. He used his lifelong terminal illness as a medium for voice and art. Some might call it masturbatory, but I think it lives on the in the trenches between total self indulgence (I mean, what/who doesn't?) and total humanitarian effort. That makes it edgier somehow. The conditions of his emergence make possible this kind of art. Only a nicely privileged white guy would have the balls to spend years of his life exhibiting and flaunting his pain- and because of that, we learn something. About him. About ourselves. Thanks Bob.