What follows is a rewrite / re-edit of my Masters Thesis in Visual Art and Design, titled "Visions of Death". This is a document I have wanted to revist for some time, and here, now, some decade and a half after its original publication, I have reworked and added clarity to the text that a younger version of myself could not achieve.
Introduction
In his book, Death Society and Human Experience, Robert J Kastenbaum evokes the 1929 painting, The Treachery of Images by Belgian painter Rene Magritte. It is an image of a tobacco pipe, against the canvas background, and below, in French, "This is Not a Pipe". Magritte, through this juxtaposition of image and language, creates an abstraction. The pipe depicted is just a representation. It is not a pipe.
Kastenbaum's statement may be intentional, or may be direct, but it evokes the same meaning as The Treachery of Images.
'The more we say about death, the more we deceive ourselves and use language to falsify.'1
Why is it then that visual artists feel that they must depict the dead, dying or frail?
In the book Over Her Dead Body: Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic, Elisabeth Bronfen might just tell us why:
‘Representations of death in art, are so pleasing, it seems, because they occur in a realm clearly delineated as not life, or not real, even as they refer to the basic fact of life we know but choose not to acknowledge too overtly. They delight because we are confronted with death, yet it is the death of the other. We experience death by proxy.’2
While images of the dead can be profoundly interesting, and force us to linger for longer than what may be comfortable, they force us to meditate upon our own mortality. Most people experience the ‘death of the other’, through not only images, but their own lived experience. We become aware of death through the departure of others – and, from that point forth, our lives are changed by the knowledge that at some point in the future we will die.
History will continue its march without us.
Any representations, not only those of the dead are problematic. Later, Bronfen explains this keenly, another veiled reference to The Treachery of Images:
‘… the image is the site of death’s presence not only because it refers to the absence of its object of depiction but because our access to the real is always barred by signs and images'3.
Our individual experiences result in unique interpretations of every form of human expression. Our shared experience is not truly shared. Not only must we grapple with signs and images, but we must also constantly unlock the meaning of words, images, metaphor, symbols and signifiers to come to a shared understanding of our surroundings.
While an understanding of our corporeal reality may seem to be shared, any image created by an artist merely invites the viewer to look upon it. We are not chained to chairs and forced to look upon Art. If we were, the world might be a very different place. In Noel Carroll's book plainly titled Visual Metaphor, they explain that visual artists rely on metaphor and symbolism to allow the viewer an opportunity to:
'expand the metaphor through his or her imaginative play'4.
As our experiences are not shared, the details, shown, but not told, may be missed, and may require further explanation or context. We are surrounded by death, and yet, we are not paralysed by it - it happens quietly, in hospital rooms, in nursing homes, on the side of the road, or on the battlefield. Perhaps even, in the bathroom, or the private bedroom.
Returning to Kastenbaum:
(by) 'comparing death to conditions with which we have more direct knowledge...'5
We are enabled to see death as a state that can be more easily represented, interpreted and understood. Perhaps this is why representations of the dead, or references to death in visual culture which exploit symbolism resonate more strongly than those which do not.
Noel Carroll states that:
'A visual metaphor is a device for encouraging insights, a tool to think with, this is not to deny that visual metaphors can provide insight, but only that they do so by way of having a meaning.' 6
The work I have produced for this study exploits three visual metaphors which will discussed in depth. The first looks at the transience of life and the human body itself, investigating the use of decaying foliage and plant matter as a visual metaphor for the fragility of human life.
Through analysis of the works of the Pre-Raphaelite painter, John Everett Millais, in particular Autumn Leaves, Ophelia, and Spring or Apple Blossoms, I will comment on the use of natural decay to refer to life's transitory nature, always one which transitions to death. The work of Millais will be compared to that of Swedish digital painter, Linda Bergkvist, who employs similar techniques to Millais to refer to transience, fragility, and the cessation of life's processes.
The next area of focus will be that of sleep. In a still image, the cadaver is apparently a motionless, lifeless body, and resembles a sleeping figure. The use of post-mortem photography to memorialise and beautify the deceased will also be discussed. An examination of Paul Delaroche's The Young Martyr and Linda Berkgvist's Gone will be undertaken, as both images contain subjects that could be seen as sleeping, were it not for the titles of the works suggesting that the characters depicted are dead.
The use of stone in monuments, and other enduring structures or mnemonic devices that are used to refer to the dead will also be discussed, with a focus on cemeteries and monuments. In particular, The Angel of Grief will form an integral part of this study, as it is a fascinating artefact that is a reproduction, a ruin, and monument that has been copied and re-contextualised throughout history.
Finally, my personal responses to death will be contextualised by discussing the work produced to accompany this text along with a discussion about contemporary American video artist Bill Viola, and the film After.Life (2009).
The investigation and examination of images and the writing of others presented here are interpretive and personal. They relate to my visual art practice of the period in which this text was written, in the year 2010. The work utilised a variety of digital media, including still images, high definition digital video, and projected imagery.
The interpretative responses generated by this research are not necessarily aligned with any research methodology. They were formed with the view of Sussan M Laverty's comparisons of Methodology, meaning that I took the view (in their words) that:
'A methodology is not a correct method to follow, but a creative approach to understanding, using whatever approaches are responsive to particular questions and subject matter.'7
To come to an understanding of images of death, I have examined, investigated, and created images that embody responses to what I felt as this research developed. As I studied the subject matter in depth, as I read books, and absorbed them - and as I responded to them, both on a conscious and subconscious level.
Let's begin.
Chapter 1: Decay, Fragility and Transience.
Rotting leaves, foliage, and other visual devices embodying decay were used by the Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais to refer to the transience and fragility of human life. Here, we will explore several paintings completed by Millais including Autumn Leaves, Spring (or Apple Blossoms), and, of course, his most famous work, Ophelia. The work of Millais will be studied alongside several images created by the Swedish digital painter, Linda Bergkvist who also uses natural decay in combination with other symbols to refer to the fleeting nature of life.
Instead of focusing on the danse macabre visual language of the medieval era in which individuals were depicted dancing in a fatal embrace with a skeletal form8, the work of Millais was filled with beauty and enriched by symbolism drawn from the everyday life of the nineteenth century and Victorian literature. In “Ars Longa, Vita Brevis: Life, Death, and John Everett Millais”, Roger Bowdler argues that Millais used subjects of death, doom, and love to imbue his work with ‘resonance and meaning’9. He notes that all of Millais's work (except for portraits) are concerned with the fleeting nature of life, and to understand this is ‘to understand Millais’s career as a cohesive whole’10.
In reference to an unfinished piece, The Eve of the Deluge (which in its own right, is an evocative name for a piece of Art), Millais noted his intention was to assert the ‘awful uncertainty of life and the necessity of always being prepared for death’11. This point of view is communicated through several pieces painted by Millais, and while The Eve of the Deluge may have never been completed, other work completed before the artist's death pursues this objective.
Bowdler cites many examples of Millais’s work that displays sensitivity to death, dying and decay. The Artist attending the Mourning of a Girl (1847) is described as ‘modern death, shorn of all literary or historical elaboration’12. This painting depicts Millais and another figure looking at a corpse in an open casket. The image is quite ambiguous, and it is uncertain who the girl is, or indeed why the artist is present.
A later piece, The Dying Man (1853-54), again confronts the subject of death. Instead of adopting the passive stance of The Artist attending the Mourning of a girl, Millais focuses on the individuals that surround the dying man. The central figure of the painting (the titular dying man) seems to be isolated from his apparently compassionate surroundings, with his eyes, as Bowdler observes, being ‘fixed on the flames as he ponders the extinction of existence’13.
While the early work of Millais displayed some sensitivity to the subjects of death and dying, it is in his later work where an analogue between the natural world and the transience of human life begins to emerge. In Autumn Leaves (1856) Millais contrasts the transitory and vibrant nature of youth with rotting foliage which can be seen to symbolise death. In the background of Autumn Leaves a figure wielding a scythe is apparent, which in combination with the setting sun, can be seen as a startling visual reference to the concept of life's transience.
The colour of the leaves surrounding the character in Linda Bergkivst's digital painting Gone, echoes that of Autumn Leaves, however, it is not only the use of decaying leaves that make Bergkvist's image referential to death, as will be later established14. In Bergkvist's image, gone she also seems to suggest that its subject is sleeping. A deeper examination of this notion will occur in the next chapter.
While Bergkvist's use of decaying foliage is far less subtle than that used by Millais in Autumn Leaves, the artist still employs the same symbolic devices, allowing the viewer to link decomposing leaves and the transience of human life. Another key difference between Autumn Leaves and Gone is that the character in Gone is deceased, while the subjects in Autumn Leaves are still very much alive.
While it would be difficult to call Autumn Leaves a frightening image on its own, its themes of transience, temporality, and the decay of life are things that I find unnerving. The use of symbolism by Millais to soften the impact of his thematic concerns, Along with his use of beautiful subject matter and considerable painting skill, allows Autumn Leaves to still resonate strongly, without ever directly depicting death.
Millais's use of a scythe and nature as symbolism does not end with Autumn Leaves. By using the same subject matter and symbolism in both Autumn Leaves and Spring or Apple Blossom (1859) Millais shows the effect of time on an individual, and allows the scythe to become again, from Bowdler's discussion on his work:
'a startling pictorial device and one which makes explicit the underlying meaning of his numerous later depictions of young persons: beauty, like life and innocence, will pass away forever.'15
The use of a scythe by Millais in Spring is a direct reference to death, plays on the concept of the Grim Reaper, which is widespread throughout Western culture.
In what is arguably Millais's most well-known work – Ophelia (1851-2), the artist represents Shakespeare's tragic character using an (at the time) unconventional technique. Millais chose to depict Ophelia's off-stage suicide, which is described by Ron M Brown in the book The Art of Suicide as part of her ...
'hidden identity: imperfect, fluid, weak, fragmented',16
in which:
'nature, life, death, and woman is 'confused.'17
In Kimberly Rhode's text, Degenerate Detail, John Everett Millais and Ophelia's Mudy Depth, she describes the impact the painting had, in that it:
'subverted popular expectations for the rendering of one of Shakespeare's most beloved female characters and skewed the reading of her character to one that leaned toward transgression.'18
The character of Ophelia resonated with nineteenth century sensibilities and was a vehicle for Millais to express his concerns, as Kimberly Rhodes asks,
'What better way to express devotion to nature than to paint a subject absolutely subsumed to nature through the act of drowning?'19
Ophelia, however, is much more than an image of a woman drowned. Ophelia exploits the knowledge of its audience to generate a strong symbolic link between the decay of the natural world, depicted beautifully in the flowers surrounded the tragic figure, and her shattered mental state. In this image, Shakespeare's heroine is rendered as someone who is not only among decay, but one who embodies decay.
By changing forever the way in which Ophelia was viewed by an English audience, Millais showed a character who was not only inwardly but outwardly tragic, lovelorn, and troubled, but as one who could perhaps be cherished and even forgiven for the transgression of her suicide. In my view Ophelia invokes pity, even if her rendering by Millais was viewed in the nineteenth century with the belief that Ophelia was:
'surrounded by flowers that are more beautiful than she.'20
The despondence or apathy evident in Ophelia is apparent in Linda Bergkvist's digital painting, All That I loved is Gone, that contains references to environmental degradation, showing nature decaying around the human figure, with the character's state of mind arguably reflected in text which accompanies the piece:
She said,
"The moon has fallen into a sea of dirt, and all that I loved is gone."
They said,
"There is still the sea. The clouds. The earth."
She said,
"The ground slides, filthy and bedraggled, into the melting earth, and all that I loved is gone."
They said,
"There is still the sea. The clouds."
She said,
"The sea is but a stench - it devours but it does not live. All that I loved... is gone."
They said,
"But the clouds. We still have the clouds."
She said,
"The clouds are veils of sulphur and acid rain."
They said,
"We love the rain."
She said,
"All that I loved is gone."21
While the text accompanying All that I loved is gone is important to assess the artist's intent, symbolic visual references are present to help guide the viewer's interpretation. The first of these are the fish that are depicted in the piece. While one fish appears to be normal (the one to the right of the figure), the other two are represented in various states of decay – one as a complete skeletal form, the other as a mix between skeletal 'deadness' and life. The remorseful expression on the subject's face in Bergkvist's painting is another indicator of the transience of nature, and is strengthened by the text which accompanies the piece.
While Bergkvist does not use natural decay as often as Millais to symbolise the transience of life, her painterly, romantic style mimics that of the Pre-Raphaelites, even if her images are somewhat more fanciful than the uncompromising detail and truthfulness apparent in Ophelia and Autumn Leaves.
In Spoiled (2006), Bergkvist personifies the concepts of nature and humanity as beautiful women, but wraps the image and meaning in symbolism, to the same level of depth as the Pre-Raphaelites. Employing similar techniques to those used in All That I Loved is Gone, Spoiled repeats decaying, dying elements of the natural world, such as birds and butterflies, in various states of decomposition, swarming around the two figures.
Humanity is surrounded by decay in Bergkvist's painting, while the figure intended to represent nature, however, has the same subject matter presented, in a much livelier and flourishing state. The artist notes her intention and for the scene, lacing her description with suggestions of transience and the fragile nature of human life:
'Humanity (is) a naive yet destructive burden, the smile on her lips slight and dreamy as she thinks of the beautiful flowers she will pluck and the lovely birds she will see while all around her these very things now fade away. She's blind to the destruction she causes. She knows that Nature will be there for her, she knows that there will always be the scent of flowers and always the gentle surge of the sea. She is Nature's master in that Nature has no choice but to try to catch her and always try to mend the damage she has done... but she is Nature's slave because she must breathe the air, drink the water and eat the food that only Nature can give her.'22
Both Bergkvist and Millais use natural decay in their work to refer to transience and the fragility of human life. They both produce images which contain beautiful subject matter, but imply deeper meaning through their use of symbolism. While their styles are painterly, their use of symbolism and obsessive detail and intentionality is what interests me most deeply as an artist who uses digital media and the photographic image to produce work.
In the piece Fallen, I have combined several symbols to refer to the transience of human life. I have used clouds as they attached to Christian imagery regarding heaven and the 'afterlife'. It is inevitable in Western culture in which Christian doctrine has much influence that clouds be interpreted as such. Instead of reinventing a symbol completely, I have chosen to capitalise upon one which is widely known and understood.
In combination with Clouds, I have used feathers to hint towards the perceived freedom of birds, and in turn, their fragility among contemporary environments. Birds are constantly under threat. In addition to these symbols, a human limb, closed eyes, and finally open eyes are feature as elements within in the work to reflect various states of transience and being, and awareness. This is in a bid to humanise and personalise the work without directly portraying a certain subject in a specific scenario like Bergkvist and Millais.
I am interested in the viewer linking symbolic elements together to 'put together' the puzzle of the image in their own way, based on their specific interpretations and backgrounds, which cannot be controlled, allowing the viewer of the piece to have a unique, un-reproducible experience that is deeply intimate and personal - even though the image they are presented is one which is unchanging.
Footnotes:
1: Robert J Kastenbaum. Death, Society, and Human Experience. (Allyn & Bacon, 1995), 37.
2: Elisabeth Bronfen. Over Her Dead Body: Death, femininity and the aesthetic. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), x.
3: Bronfen. 119.
4: Noel Carroll “Visual Metaphor” in Aspects of Metaphor. ed. Jaakko Hintikka (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers Group, 1994), 211.
5: Kastenbaum, 38.
6: Carroll, 212.
7: Susann M Laverty, “Hermeneutic Phenomenology and Phenomenology: A Comparison of historical and Methodological Considerations' International Journal for Qualitative Methodology.(2003): 28.
8: Nigel Llewellyn. The Art of Death: Visual Culture In The English Death Ritual c1500-1800. (Reaktion Books, 1991), 19.
9: Roger Bowdler “Ars Longa: Vita Brevis, Life Death and John Everett Millais” in John Everett Millais: Beyond the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, ed. Debra M Mancoff (Hampshire: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and the Yale Center for British Art, 2001), 207.
10: Ibid.
11: Ibid.
12: Ibid, 209.
13: Bowdler, 209.
14: Bergkvist's gone also seems to suggest that its subject is sleeping. A deeper examination of this notion will occur in the next chapter.
15: Bowdler, 214.
16: Ron M Brown, The Art of Suicide (London: Reaktion Books, 2001), 181.
17: Ibid.
18: Kimberly Rhodes, “Degenerate Detail: John Everett Millais and Ophelia's 'Muddy Death'”, in John Everett Millais: Beyond the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, ed. Debra M Mancoff (Hampshire: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and the Yale Center for British Art, 2001), 43.
19: Kimberly Rhodes, “Degenerate Detail: John Everett Millais and Ophelia's 'Muddy Death'”, 53.
20: Rhodes, 64.
21: Linda Bergkvist, “All that I loved is gone.” http://www.epilogue.net/cgi/database/art/view.pl?id=28062 (Accessed 4/11/10).
22: Linda Bergkvist, “Spoiled.” http://www.epilogue.net/cgi/database/art/view.pl?id=95136 (Accessed 9/11/10)
We generally see death as the end today, but that was not always the case.
We have a clue in the modern celebration of Halloween. Originally the celebration of Samhain. It marked the last day of the old year rolling into the first day of the new year.
The first day of winter was the start of the cycle, they saw death coming before life, death brings life and is the beginning. Not as we see it now, life before death and death is the end.
An refreshing perspective imo
Things must die in order for other things to continue living. It is a beautiful cycle. Not something we should be afraid of.
Wow, so interesting! I saved this content between my favorite because there are a lot of interesting thoughts and bibliographic references I'd like to study in deep! Well done, thanks for share. ❤️
Thank you! I hope the references are still around. Linda Berkgvist has appeared to disappear from the Interent, sadly. I really love her work.
I've always enjoyed studying an artist's progression through his/her own mortality and the reflected changes in their work. I think often people use "high talk" about art to hide behind, sort of, to dehumanize it a little in a way, perhaps because looking at what it is really, man's primal scream of despair (but triumph, also) in the face of death, may be too much to bear...
I really enjoyed. I look forward to the rest of this (what a unique idea to blockchain it).
I tried to be as simple as possible when writing this. I always loathed the density and the unique vernacular used by "real" art writing.
Best to make it as accessible as possible - but this writing /was/ for a thesis, so I hope it still has some academic rigour to it!