{"id":1554,"date":"2021-04-26T20:24:28","date_gmt":"2021-04-26T20:24:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dartmagazine.com\/?p=1554"},"modified":"2022-03-15T00:16:00","modified_gmt":"2022-03-15T00:16:00","slug":"mortality-a-survey-of-contemporary-death-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dartmagazine.com\/?p=1554","title":{"rendered":"Mortality: A Survey of Contemporary Death Art"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Steve Rockwell<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Lynn Stern, Spectator #14-94a<\/em>, 2014\u20132015. Archival inkjet pigment print, 32 x 43 in. Ed. 1\/6. Courtesy of the artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mortality: A Survey of Contemporary Death Art<\/em> was to have opened spring 2020 in Washington, D.C. The intended exhibition venue was Katzen Art Center\u2019s American University Museum. Its cancellation is a familiar, shopworn story over a grim span of time when it comes to public events of any kind. To say that it was a disappointment doesn\u2019t quite cover it. When considering the energies, hopes, and labors expended by so many people over a considerable time, something vital within the its participants was cut off. In its reaping, the fruition of it produced an unfortunate synchronicity with Mortality<\/em>, the exhibition theme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Curated by Donald Kuspit with assistance from Robert Curcio, the exhibition that was not-to-be maintains, nevertheless, a robust afterlife in the pages of its catalog. Like the general public, I never got to see the exhibition as it would have been mounted. My responses, while not visceral to the works of the artists represented, arise from the images provided and the statements that accompany them. In that respect, these and my supporting researches breathed life to my efforts rather as digital avatars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Anonymous artist, Skull Bracelet and Key Chain<\/em>, 1990. Sterling silver, dimensions variable. Courtesy of Robert Curcio. Photography by Sebastian Piras.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Not surprisingly, our relationship with Death in its personification, is variously seen as a dance, courtship, or even marriage. Kuspit chose Death Mon Amour<\/em> as his essay title, yet, I assume that author is not suicidal. Could this just be his blunt acceptance that death is never more than a breath away \u2013 in that sense, our closest friend? Like grains of sand in an hour glass our time on earth is meted out particle by particle, its remaining specks mercifully obscured. Without exception, we are lively patterns in the cloth of existence, \u201cwhere time and chance happens to us all,\u201d as the writer of Ecclesiastes pointed out. Much as the notion of something universal presents a Gordian knot to philosophers, each must confront their mortality in the end, just the same. We know this to be true intuitively, the image of an impersonal skull being its testament. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The selection of the works in the Mortality<\/em> provide a meditation on the dynamic tension in art between figuration and abstraction. Kuspit uses the word \u201cobscene\u201d in reference to abstraction. The word generally implies something offensive to the senses. Yet, making something abstract may be seen as a dying, the removal of physical existence, and the blanching out of the concrete and corporeal. The author notes that abstraction is that which \u201cis hidden behind the scenic representation it supports.\u201d In terms of Plato\u2019s philosophy, it could be regarded as the idea that wafts behind the veil of fleshly depiction. With Clement Greenberg’s abstract expressionism, painting was made \u201cpure,\u201d any reference to visual imagery purged and eradicated. Erasure in the broad sense is a death, where the visible world is annihilated as if by a culturally-detonated atomic bomb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vanitas works of art inherently raise the flag of impending oblivion. Citing Ecclesiastes again: \u201cI have seen everything done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.\u201d Kuspit’s own presage is a call for accounting and evaluation of what is meaningful. His curatorial intent was fulfilled in having the works in Mortality<\/em> “read convincingly as abstractions \u2013 even as they convey the nihilistic meaning of death.\u201d A requirement for the artist was in his words, a nuanced juggling of these two faces, never using one to deny the other. My own consideration necessarily draws its nourishment from the underpinnings of a digitally-laced matrix, not a full sensory engagement with the Mortality<\/em> works \u2013 not its living body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"John
John Grande, The Residue of Time, <\/em>2016. Oil on canvas, 30 x 60 in. Courtesy of the artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The decay and deterioration of New York City billboards fascinates John Grande. This sloughing away of the papery skins of advertising is a bit like the application and scraping away of makeup, the faces of billboards perpetually promising the new and fresh. Their creases and tears constitute a restless ephemera, mirroring our own mortality and vulnerability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"In

Bill Claps, It\u2019s All Derivative, The Skull, Negative<\/em>, 2014. Mixed media with gold foil on canvas, 15 x 16 1\/4 in. Courtesy of the artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the It\u2019s All Derivative<\/em> series by Bill Claps, the sentence is tapped out in Morse code \u2013 the mechanically generated impulses, a repetition of blips from which life has been drained, reduced to a lifeless miming having lost the hope of birthing the new. A leering skull is a triumphant witness to the failure of genuine originality in the creative act.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Paul
Paul Brainard, Cyborg Space<\/em>, 2010. Oil on canvas, 26 x 32 in. Courtesy of the artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The landscapes of Paul Brainard\u2019s \u201cfractured schizophrenic existence\u201d are ticker-tape slashes and pulses pumped through the senses as intravenous drips. Big-city dwellers in particular are vulnerable to the integration of body circuitry and machine in their daily routines. In his Cyborg Space<\/em>, Brainard poses the problem of parsing this mingling of lifeless pixel and living neurone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Danielle
Danielle Frankenthal, Tree of Life<\/em>, 2019. Acrylic paint on acrylic resin panels, 48 x 36 in. Courtesy of the artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Danielle Frankenthal admits that her paintings are ambiguous. Which tree is being depicted? She understands that one represents knowledge of good and evil and leads to death, while the other connects to eternal life. While these are Biblical trees, she also cites Buddha\u2019s Bodhi tree, which leads to enlightenment and release from the cycle of life. The artist considers the promises that each present. Jesus gained immortality, Frankenthal admits, through a sacrificial death. It is not clear if Buddha\u2019s awakening is merely an end to the cycles of suffering and nirvana just another death.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Noah
Noah Becker, Tune Out #2, <\/em>2017. Acrylic on board, 42 x 32 in. Courtesy of the artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For Noah Becker, how a painting is completed is crucial. As in life, the work of art has a birth, life, and a concluding gesture. This sense of finality is poignantly conveyed by a gilded skull as in Tune Out #2<\/em>. If a bite of the apple brought death, then the gleam of gold may deliver hope of immortality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Left:
Left: Donald Baechler, Skull & Crossbones<\/em>, 2009. Acrylic and fabric collage on canvas, 24 x 24 in. Right: Skull<\/em>, 2009. Acrylic and fabric collage on canvas, 24 x 24 in. Courtesy of Donald Baechler Studio.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Interestingly, Donald Baechler eschews the narrative and \u201csymbolic load\u201d of skulls, while pleased to grandfather said associations through his own research. Yet, it\u2019s difficult to stem the flow of pirate imagery, knowing that the source is clearly a sailor tattoo. In that respect, Baechler is rather a channel or clairvoyant through whom the lore of culture is transmitted, here assuming the pose of departed spirit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Jinsu
Jinsu Han, Dream Fiend 5C<\/em>, 2009. Plastic model, steel, wood, epoxy resin, ABS plastic, copper, silver cup, speaker, radio receiver, motor, feather, steel wheel and chalk powder, 30.7 x 25.6 x 19.6 in. Courtesy of Marc Straus Gallery.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The mechanized sculptures of Jinsu Han are built to make art. Through clever, but otherwise crude assemblages of junk and an assortment of spare parts, Han has succeeded in manufacturing a series of artist automatons. Each are programmed to demonstrate the law of perpetual change. If they could speak, it would be the mantra of Heraclitus to perpetuity: “All is Flux, Nothing is Stationary,\u201d In Han\u2019s universe, the robot artist will no doubt prevail, with the flesh and blood counterpart just flotsam in the rinse cycle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Chris
Chris Jones, The Trader<\/em>, 2016. Book and magazine images, board, and polymer varnish, 34 x 23 x 22 in. Courtesy of Marc Straus Gallery.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Sculptor Chris Jones comes close to achieving the concrete realization of memory. In our minds, slippery image fragments tend to flit from place to place, mingling and morphing into unexpected constellations. In the work of the artist, fragments culled from magazines and books are surgically grafted into fantastic, labyrinthine heaps. Rich in detail and association these works evoke a sense of the tableau vivant at a state of decay and corruption. The Trader<\/em> sculpture by Jones is a vanitas in every sense of the word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Trevor
Trevor Guthrie, Myself as a Specimen<\/em>, 2009. Charcoal, graphite on paper, 55 x 57 in. unframed. Private Collection.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Striking singularity is a dominant feature in the charcoal on paper works produced by Trevor Guthrie. In a fragmented world, the artist displays a monk-like dedication to the transcription of verisimilitude of the images he produces. His “symphony of mistakes\u201d cohere at a distance. Presented perhaps as a balm to a public riddled with a \u201csickness of the soul,\u201d Guthrie hopes that his patient application of flickers of grey may untangle a mystery to someone. As the artist labored, some of life\u2019s enigmas revealed themselves, though by his own admission they remain unsolved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Chris
Chris Klein, Phantom of the Opera: Mask of the Red Death<\/em>, 2019. Acrylic on canvas, 30 x 60 in. Courtesy of the artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The subject of Chris Klein\u2019s inclusion to the Mortality exhibition is topical. Titled Phantom of the Opera: Mask of the Red Death<\/em>, it depicts the costume worn by the actor for the Masquerade scene in the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical. The scene was inspired by the 1842 Edgar Allan Poe short story, The Masque of the Red Death<\/em>. Its plot line is worth a perusal in the context of our Covid 19 times: “And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Bobbie
Bobbie Moline-Kramer, All That Remains <\/em>(4 of 11 panels), 2010. Oil, graphite, gesso and wood burning on wood, 10 x 10 in. each. Courtesy of the artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bobbie Moline-Kramer conveys the themes of family fragmentation and loss by combining the symbolism associated with trees, birds, and wood. Birds imbue expressive form to something difficult to depict visually otherwise \u2013 the soul. The birds in her All That Remains<\/em> series of wood panels perch somewhat uneasily on stick-like branches. The vicissitudes and fluctuations between rest, nest, and flight have correspondences with most family trees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"David
David Ligare, Still Life with Skull and Polaroid<\/em>, 1983. Oil on canvas, 20 x 24 in. Collection of the artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

David Ligare\u2019s Still Life with Skull and Polaroid<\/em> puts on a brave skull face. Whether withered laurel leaf or fresh, the crisply-painted profile of the Ligare skull tilts defiantly upwards, catching the sun\u2019s rays full-frontal. The pose is one of Stoic victory, struck with a full-throated acceptance of the fleeting parade of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Frank
Frank Lind, Vanitas<\/em>, 2017. Oil on panel, 20 x 14 in. Courtesy of the artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Vanitas<\/em> by Frank Lind is offered uncorked to the viewer, yet discretely. Employing a range of painterly Low Countries genre licks, the effect is slightly soft-focus \u2013 not quite a crisp, hyper-detailed Jan van Eyck requiring magnifiers. The skull in Lind\u2019s oil on panel coaxes a reminder to \u201cGather ye rosebuds while ye may.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Frodo
Frodo Mikkelsen, Untitled (Skull #3)<\/em>, 2018. Silver-plated mixed media, 9.6 x 5.9 x 7.9 in. Courtesy of the artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Hardships may come, but Frodo Mikkelsen promises to smile even in death. Pop detritus has been the fodder for Mikkelsen\u2019s career from the start. Color and glint at its most intense seems to have been the spark that lit his work. It\u2019s this brand of joie de vivre that must be keeping the fireplace in his cranial cabin burning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Left:
Left: Lynn Stern, Spectator #14-65<\/em>, 2014\u20132015. Archival inkjet pigment print, 32″ x 29″. Ed. 1\/6. Right: Spectator #14-70<\/em>, 2014\u20132015. Archival inkjet pigment print, 32 x 34.5 in. Ed. 1\/6. Courtesy of the artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The photographs of Lynn Stern send shivers, carrying with them a sense of profound apprehension. In the Doppelg\u00e4nger<\/em> and Spectator<\/em> series in particular, shrouded skulls rise into view from below in an eerie kind of resurrection, grainy and imprecise in an indefinable hue. Are they dusted in sepia, umber, or pewter? The 19th century writer George MacDonald may have said it best in his book The Portent<\/em>, \u201c…an airy, pale-grey spectre, which few eyes but mine could see.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Michael
Michael Netter, Regeneration<\/em>, 2016. Mixed media on canvas, 48 x 60 in. Courtesy of the artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Successive cultures are necessarily layered into the surface of the earth like coats of paint. Masterworks may also reveal multiple compositions, one superimposed over the other. Michael Netter likes the notion of covering and discovering, much as it occurs in the archeology he references. As in archeological digs, his Regeneration<\/em> painting share the qualities of a burial pit. The view we have here is strictly celestial \u2013 all gold, silver, infused with blue throughout. The spirits of the departed souls in this particular mound of bones are at rest in heavenly realms.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"

Stephen Newton, The Wake<\/em>, 2018. Oil on canvas, 26 x 24 in. Courtesy of the artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Stephen Newton rendered his Wake<\/em> painting in clumpy oil on canvas with utmost simplicity. We take in the work as we might a freshly-baked oatmeal biscuit. There are no ambiguities with a coffin on a table below a window showing grass and sky. The pleasure of its ingestion is having been spoken to directly. That’s meaningful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Sigrid
Sigrid Sarda, Lothario\u2019s Vanity<\/em>, 2014-2018. Wax, human hair, cotton, bone, gold leaf, crystals, opals, 21 x 31 x 14 in. Courtesy of the artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Sigrid Sarda\u2019s Lothario\u2019s Vanity<\/em> interlaces the busts of a man and a woman in a spill of crystal. The woman is somehow a gush of the man\u2019s chest cavity, the eyes of both closed as if united in a moment of ecstasy. It seems that the woman has been released from the man\u2019s rib cage, if but for a moment. This cycle of obsessive desire is an unbroken chain of little deaths, with a yearning for life\u2019s fulfillment at each turn of the wheel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Sonia
Sonia Stark, Three Female Skulls, With Lipstick Smear<\/em>, 2020. Oil and pastel on arches paper, 26 x 19 in. Courtesy of the artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Sonia Stark\u2019s Three Female Skulls<\/em> perform a dance of the red veil. It’s a gestural smear, binding and tugging of each into a danse macabre, a jig that unites us all. Their invitation is to the living, \u201cCome join us. Feast on pleasure while there is time.\u201d  Those now stripped of flesh rest in the certitude of cessation of blood\u2019s pulsation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Paul
Paul Pretzer, Dead Idiot<\/em>, 2019. Oil on wood, 17.1 x 15 in. Courtesy of Marc Straus Gallery.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

If there is an empty space between comedy and tragedy, that would be where Paul Pretzer would stick a piece of fruit or mouse with a dangle or a hover. His Dead Idiot<\/em> awaits in the hope of a punchline that never delivers. As it is here, it\u2019s a buzzing bee that never lands, whose sting arrives too late to be of any consequence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Diane
Diane Thodos, Skull<\/em>, 2007. Oil on linen, 55 x 41 in. and Weeping Skull<\/em>, 2007. Oil on linen, 55 x 41 in. Courtesy of the artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The traumas of history that Diane Thodos refer to: war, market collapse, depression, and the rise of neofascism may be embodied collectively as a Leviathan, dipping in and out of consciousness with abandon. As the artist noted, the sense of angst and helplessness which accompanies their meander found a demonstrative force in German Expressionism, inspiring her art. The impact of the splintered Thodos skulls on the viewer is bone-crushing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Conor
Conor Walton, Lego Mondrian<\/em>, 2019. Oil on linen, 10 x 14 in. Courtesy of John Kelley.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When Conor Walton describes his practice as \u201cdancing along cultural fault-lines,\u201d it brings to mind something acrobatic that one might attempt on the rim of an active volcano. The artist seeks answers to questions that Gauguin famously raised: \u201cWhat are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?\u201d Considering the subject of Walton\u2019s Lego Mondrian<\/em>, barely 20 years separate Mondrian\u2019s arrival at his iconic grid from the time of Gauguin\u2019s query. Art then became transgressive very quickly, if not polemically dangerous. Today, art excites very little passion publicly. The land mines these days have been dug deep into the social and political landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"

Michael Zansky, Three Studies for Marathon<\/em>, 2006-2017. Oil and acrylic on carved plywood, 26 x 21 in. each. Courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The skulls rendered in Michael Zansky\u2019s Three Studies for Marathon<\/em> exhibit uncommonly protean bursts of energy. Missing hands and arms, Zansky has opted to weaponize legs and teeth in his animated figures. In the first study. Lock-jawed mandibles chafe at the constraints of the bounding frame, nearly losing its contorted head in the process. Next, an abyss awaits the subject’s jacked-up leg, the yawn of its evenly-cleaved skull a gaping sink-hole. Exits within and without the figure have turned to voids \u2013 the torso having wound into a straight-jacketed fist. The successful leap occurs in the third panel. It\u2019s bridged with a wide-scissored gallop, the skeletal Marathon runner biting hard into the wood of the brush \u2013 the goop of its bristles rising like gelled smoke. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Robert
Robert Zeller, The Courtship<\/em>, 2019. Oil on linen, 48 x 60 in. Courtesy of the artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A Gothic strain undergirds Robert Zeller\u2019s painting practice. Ravens, skulls, and ruins would naturally tie his literal associations to Edgar Allen Poe. The artist welcomes the narrative aspects of his craft, appropriately embracing a Surrealist aesthetic. Zeller leaves the threads of his storylines open-ended, its forms woven into the many-layered, ethereal backgrounds. The tales we might educe from the artist\u2019s oils on linen works are whispers floated from an unseen world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Steve Rockwell Mortality: A Survey of Contemporary Death Art was to have opened spring 2020 in Washington, D.C. The intended exhibition venue was Katzen Art Center\u2019s American University Museum. Its cancellation is a familiar, shopworn story over a grim span of time when it comes to public events of any kind. To say that … <\/p>\n

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