Death a picture album... And a past exhibition

I purchased the book "Death a picture album" it was for an exhibition by the Wellcome Collection featuring images from the collection of Richard Harris: a former antique print dealer from Chicago.

I hope this book will be a tangible way to find artists who have worked with death as their theme.

Below is a review of the exhibition at the Wellcome Collection, London 2012 by Laura Cumming for The Guardian

"What does Death look like? He is a dapper gent in evening dress, arriving late to the party. He is a skull in a hood with a scythe. He is a shadowy figure stealing past the window – your window – or a skeleton in a dark cloak with an hourglass, perhaps even playing upon a bony violin. Why, everybody knows what He looks like.

Except that we do not, of course; for there are no images until artists become involved. Unlike writers, who can personify Death merely by using a capital letter, artists have to give Him some sort of appearance.

This may be semi-abstract, as in Goya's etching of a corpse hauling himself back out of the grave to point at the single dire word Nada – nothing – written on a sheet of paper. Or it may be forcefully figurative, as in Dürer'sFour Horsemen of the Apocalypsethundering along with savage glee, pitchforking the living into oblivion.But either way it requires a narrowing of focus, some sense of definition or form, perhaps even a face by which Death may be recognised, feared or confronted.

This personification is the subject of a tremendous show opening at the Wellcome Collection this week, which includes Dürer, Goya and many other death-depicting artists in its wide and sometimes frightening array. Death: A Self-Portrait has the famous war etchings of Jacques Callot, where the garrotted bodies dangle from distant trees like dead crows on a wire. It has works by Hogarth, Ensor and Warhol. It has the dark visions of Otto Dix.

There are also curiosities galore, including a bone chandelier in which femurs, clavicles and wrists seem to emulate the clinking of crystal in their awful swaying music; an ivory tusk carved with Dürer's Horsemen; a lacework of autopsy drawings turned into a vast doily and a whole cake-stand of porcelain figurines of dancing couples in which one partner is hale and hearty and the other pale and skeletal but still dancing merrily towards death. These were adored by 19th-century Germans.

Indeed this seems like a very northern European show at the start – all those gothic memento mori and protestant warnings against vanity and vice. The monkey preening in the mirror while Death creeps up behind him; the bubble-blowing toddler resting one dimpled Dutch hand on a skull. But there are universalities (what else?) with Death, so that the skeletons dancing across Kyõsai's fabulous Japanese watercolours – leaping, whirling, flying – reappear in the wooden Tibetan icons got up in pleated skirts and apparently performing the Highland fling.

And though there is a strong religiosity to the earlier works, when Death carries scales to weigh our souls, this eventually turns to secular morality. The rich man and the poor will die alike. A life well lived is a force against Death. In Thomas Chambers's two-part print, the good man is tucked up in bed, untroubled by his conscience as a kindly Death arrives on wings; while the bad man, wine glass overturned, foot swollen with gout, is absolutely terrified at the hint of a shadow.

But some of these works reveal a weirder fascination with death, as in the photograph of Victorian anatomists with a flayed corpse beneath the whimsical caption "when will we meet again?"; or the charnel house of Ex Libris plates in which skulls are depicted wearing laurels or nightcaps while silently mouthing the words of their bedtime reading.

Gallows humour shades into something altogether more sinister, though, in the bizarre Antikamniacalendars featuring cowboy, clown and banjo-playing skeletons. Spryly drawn by Louis Crucius in the 1890s for an American pharmaceutical firm, these images must surely be among the very few dead-heads ever used in advertising; in this case a painkiller which, by coincidence, turned out to be fatally toxic.

If death has an embodiment, so to speak, it is the skeleton over and again, that pale surrogate that lives inside us all. Skeletons look good in prints (the works in this show all belong to the American print collectorRichard Harris) being so black and white and linear, no flesh to differentiate, no character beyond their sharp articulations, like three-dimensional drawings.

Two of the most striking works here apply flesh to bone. A portrait of a French soldier shows him vertically bisected: bodied forth on one side, skeletal on the other. It is one thing (and strange enough) to have yourself painted, quite another to contemplate your death in the same image; though such intimations of mortality are perhaps implicit in photographic portraits.

James Ensor catches sight of Death in an extraordinary self-portrait in which he appears to be both vividly alive and yet melting away. The head is dwindling to cranial bone, the eye sockets are emptying as you look. What's remarkable is that, despite this degeneration, the likeness is perfectly sustained. Death shall have no dominion.

One experiences this art – as so often at the Wellcome Collection, and so rarely elsewhere – in the most visceral ways. Revulsion, anxiety, uneasiness, sorrow, perhaps shock, certainly awe: the etchings of Otto Dix, for instance, inspire them all. The climax of the show is a death wall of black-edged prints in which figures rush to escape Death in the form of warplanes, hooks or obliterating black flags descending from the clouds.

Dix's Death is the great war itself. He imagines what it might be like to die beneath collapsing buildings, in cellars, in soil; he himself knew what it was like to eat scraps in the trenches alongside the yawning mouth of a corpse. He sees the skull in a gas mask, and the teeth-chattering conversations that seem to continue between two sets of lifeless mandibles. Saddest of all, he draws the inchoate form curled up dead in a pit, dark inversion of the beginning of life.

Dix's pictorial ideas appear endless, as unparalleled in his time as Goya before him. If it were not for this teeming inventiveness it would be hard to keep looking, stilled as one is by the horror. So it is almost a relief to come upon the eccentric anonymous photographers of the 19th century who took a brave look at Death, not quite in the face but from a semi-humorous angle, appearing with a skeleton as one of their number.

Why would anyone collect such images? Harris has said that it is his way of making peace with Death. But the show is presumably his own self-portrait, I suppose, revealing a man who keeps on trying to look Death in the eye. But Death has no eyes, no face, no personality. Death is only death, after all, an event in the sequence of life. All of the artists in this show are bent on giving it a face but in the end its blankness is most perfectly represented by the German artist George Grosz in a small collage of figures – young and old, male and female, the whole lot of us, in short – each with the same bright skull for a head.

It is both solemn and jaunty, this little jeu d'esprit, as if to say that we're all in this together. And Grosz has added an extra skull beneath the sole of a well polished shoe: step forward and tread on death."

Rothwell Holy Trinity Church

After looking through " The Empire Of Death" I discovered there was a crypt below Holy trinity Church in Rothwell, this  was quite quite fortunate as Rothwell is only a 40 minute car drive from Leicester.  I went on the church's website to find that the crypt is open to the public on every second Sunday of the month.

 

There was at one time several English charnels but many of these have been lost, but the one at Rothwell, rediscovered in c. 1700, has been preserved, with the bones placed in their current arrangement in 1912. 

The bones are dated between two distinct periods: one group between 1300 and 1400, appear shorter and whitish in colour. The second group was deposited in the late sixteenth century; those bones are longer and show a brownish discolouration due to putrefied skin and the tannin in oak coffins. 

It was quite the experience, going into the church then venturing down a very small stone staircase into the crypt with nearly all the walls containing skulls on shelves and two massive piles of bones and skulls stacked up in the centre of the room. 

The crypt was cool with a dampness in the air, the man who was a part of the church was giving an informal tour to a group and said he's been down there quite a bit by himself and "finds it quite peaceful" where as another woman who works there refuses to go in the crypt at all . I guess it's because death, and certainly the crypt itself is a very subject thing we interpret it in different ways; some through preference, fear, experience and in some cases our ignorance. 

           The left side of the room 

   

Paul Koudounaris

I've been looking at two books by critically acclaimed author and photographer Paul Koudounaris.

His first book explores the charnel houses and ossuaries situated through Europe, while his second book looks at the the spectacular jewelled skeletons known as the "catacomb saints" 

These books are interesting in how they explore not only the subjects but how today's society view them in contrast to the contemporary people back then viewed "catacomb saints" for example in the the late 1500s with numbers of the saints peaking in the late seventeenth century and then gradually tapering off through the nineteenth/18 hundreds. 

The "catacomb saints" came to be after the Protestant Reformation in which many catholic relics were destroyed in German speaking regions of Europe. 

"These skeletons were appointed with the most expensive garniture not simply as a luxury but as a dazzling display of the rewards offered by God to members of the Catholic Church." 

Here is an extract from the Empire of death;

"To understand the great charnel houses we must first acknowledge that death itself is not a fixed concept. The French sociologist Jean Baudrillard, one of the greatest cultural theorists of the modern era, defined death as being simply the line of demarcation that separates the dead from the living. Within that axiomatic statement is an important implication: the line can be fluid. The process of living inevitably brings the cessation of life, but death as a concept is an intellectual construction that can vary from society to society and era to era." 

Self Directed research

I've been intrigued for some time now in how today's society deals with death, in that its something we brush under the carpet and only warrants a discussion when "grandma dies" as it were. 

We view the living and the dead as two very distinct entities, but this was not always the case and there are still some exceptions such as the Mexican ' día de los muertos'  day of the dead where departed loved ones are celebrates and in some parts of Mexico  relatives clean the bones of their descendants hence keeping an interaction between the living and the dead and the memory of ancestors alive. 

From the outside looking in- this behaviour can appear cult like  and very unchristian... But is it? 

practises that were Christian and catholic fell by the wayside by general society as the way we became to view death changed 

How we see death as an end was once seen as merely a transition and the charnel houses -although of course serve as a reminder of mans mortality that we will alll become bones and dust- highlighted this belief aswell. 

" what we were you are what we are you will be" often wrote in German as " Was wir sind, das werdet Ihr/Was Ihr seid, das waren wir"

 Variations of this phrase once adorned many of the charnel house walls in Europe with the exact phrase  used in the ossuaries of Naters and St. Peter Mistail, Switzerland. 

I think exploring this theme could make for an interesting project. 

Print making assessment

The White Whale in "Moby Dick"

Is an elusive creature of almost mythical status like the unicorn, and almost as impossible to capture. The crew of the Pequod see the harpoons still sticking out from the albino whale by failed other attempts made by other men that came before them. The harpoons are like failed dreams of other people; we hear about people who have taken the same course of action as we and failed. Still it does not diminish the desire to capture one's dream.

The white whale is symbolic of 'art' to me. At times I've felt that I couldn't succeed in my dream to pursue art and got led into different paths, but the alluring call has always brought me back to my obsession that is art.

In the image I chose to portray the white whale rising up from the depths while the Pequod sails along on a seemingly calm day. To capture that experience that we all must take in pursuing things be it: education, careers, love, dreams etc.

It's a journey and the not knowing of how it's going to play out for you. Also metaphorically 'the sea' being this deep and vast journey that we all embark on, and into the great unknown with dreams of glory and tales of ruin, exciting and terrifying all at once. 

Influences and inspiration

My work is influenced by a variety of sources not exclusively from just other artists.

I try to make my work aesthetically pleasing but i also like there to be a story or a narrative behind it.

Just how a work of art can be of greater value ( not just in monetary terms) if it has good providence.

I'm interested in history be it fact or fiction, folklore or an old wives tale, I like narrative and asserting a visual art element from that

For my print project i was inspired by the 1851 epic novel "Moby Dick or; the White Whale" by Herman Melville. The novel deals with many things such as mans obsession; Captain Ahab relentlessly pursues the white whale because it severed his leg to the knee and sank his ship on a previous voyage. but really he's projecting human characteristics on an animal incapable of having such traits. 

The novel also contains diversity and exploration of class and social status, good and evil, and the existence of God, things which i believe are still very relevant in our day and age.

I also like to use symbolism within my work to convey a message or a meaning that I can get across visually.

For the sculpture piece pictured above I chose light and dark and also hollow as my theme.

The skull symbolizes the light that is taken from us in death; our life and the hollow empty shell that remains.

I also used burnt out matches to emphasize the extinguishment of that light.

Again, how I mentioned that I like to work from a narrative. I used a recurring line from song by 'The editors' called 'All Sparks' I felt that the song had a certain mood and i tried to capture that in my piece, the video whilst i didn't take direct influence from it it did help influence my piece with the use of light being extinguished at the end of the song.  

http://youtu.be/6x26O237kP8

I also like religious iconography because it has rich symbolism and find it visually pleasing.
below are some pages from my "Journey project" where I went around the churches situated around Leicester city center and drew the various iconography. I aged the book, and used old photographs, money and postcards etc to give it the feel and appearance that the viewer is looking through someones old journal and is being taken on a journey of some sorts by themselves.

     I also like films and find inspiration from that media, the above book was influence in part by the "Grail Diary" from Indiana Jones and the last crusade. "The diary contains intricate drawings, notes, data, maps and descriptions of obstacles that will bar the seekers way, the culmination of years research, which are clues to the where abouts of the the Holy Grail, which is hidden in a lost temple, Indiana is drawn into the search when his father mysteriously disappears and all he has to go on is his father’s ‘Grail diary’."

                                     A page from "The Grail Diary"


Another source of inspiration came from the musician Peter Doherty who has been keeping journals for most of his adult life and the journals were compiled in a book that was published a few years ago called " the books of Albion" i was interested in how he kept small mementos, newspaper clippings and also collages of Polaroid photographs which he stuck into his journals.

An artist who has recently been of interest to me is Joseph Cornell.
his use of collaging and his shadowboxes inspired my sculpture project

Journey Project

This Journal is my Piece for the "journey project" I drew from the Churches around the city centre in Leicester.

I wanted it to feel to the viewer as if they were looking through an old explorer’s journal and to make each page different and interesting which makes the viewer feel as if they were apart of the journey.

I tried to keep the sketches reasonably loose which some of the detail left out just hinting at what’s there to keep that sketchbook looking appearance. I also used short annotations to work with the pictures and to emphasise a journey by documentation and capturing elements that one make take from being there at observation.

I aged the pages using coffee granules and water in a spray bottle, spraying the pages then wiping them with a cloth or using a hairdryer to manipulate how it would stain.

I used various old things such as photographs, postcards, cigarette cards and money etc. within the pages; while they are not all around the exact same time period I feel they all flow and give the book a more authentic aesthetic and a vibe towards it.

I aged the leather covers using sandpaper and a craft knife and grounded in charcoal into the crevices that were left by the process. In the critique for this project I was given good feed back by my peers with a few thinking I actually used an old book.

I felt as if everyone enjoyed looking through the book and it spurred me on to continue with the book and not change the scale in which I was working or my methods. The only criticism I felt that I received was a photocopy of a photo of my Granddad that I had forgot to “age” and thus clashed with the page. I took note of this and made sure this was not to happen again.

I enjoyed this project and enjoyed making a false history for the book giving it a little life of its own. If I could improve this project I would probably use more different types of media and experimentation but still making the book flow and not look too disconnected by doing so.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Journey Project

the "Grail Diary" featured in the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Film is really inspiring to my project.
"The plot, in this the last in the original trilogy of Indiana Jones films, centres on the search for the Holy Grail, the most sought after Christian relic. Dr. Henry Jones, Indiana’s father, has devoted his life to seeking out the relic and his diary is central to the plot. The diary contains intricate drawings, notes, data, maps and descriptions of obstacles that will bar the seekers way, the culmination of years research, which are clues to the where abouts of the the Holy Grail, which is hidden in a lost temple, Indiana is drawn into the search when his father mysteriously disappears and all he has to go on is his father’s ‘Grail diary’.





I looked at the book " Cabinet of Curiousities; My Notebooks, Collections, and Other Obssessions"
by Guillermo del Toro.

Guillermo del Toro is a film director, screenwriter, producer, and novelist.
I found his notebooks to be very influencial to my journey project. the way he sketches his 'characters' on the page and writes notes all around them is something i find aesthetically pleasing and interesting as the sketches interact with the writing and become one entity that makes up the page.