Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Dying for Art...

Interesting news story:
German artist Gregor Schneider has come up with the idea of putting dying people on exhibition as a way of normalizing the issue of death.
"Unfortunately today, death and the road to death are about suffering. Coming to terms with death as I plan it can take away the pain of dying for us," said the country's most controversial artist.
"I want to display a person dying naturally in the piece or somebody who has just died," he said, claiming this way a taboo could be done away with.
Justifying the bizarre proposal, he added an artist can contribute something to this issue by building places where people can die with dignity.
The artist achieved prominence at the 2001 Biennale Venice Film Festival where he received the Golden Lion award for his "totes Haus ur" or "Dead House Ur", a complex of 22 rooms and dead-end paths, and is of domestic and international renown for his morbid interior installations.
Setting aside the whole voyeuristic aspect, what's especially thought-provoking about this story is that it's a symptom of modern society's desire to hide death. Assuming this guy is sincere (rather than simply sensationalistic), he's certainly reacting against a tendency to deny the reality of death.
Of course, despite this, his approach is fundamentally unsatisfactory - his attempt to normalize death misses one of the central Christian insights about death. It's a scandal. We're not supposed to die. Death is linked directly to sin. Therefore, we can never truly understand it as something we can be neutral towards, something we can treat as fully natural. However, because of Christ's death on the Cross, we can understand the evil of death as being an evil which can be turned to a good end. Meditating on our mortality puts life in its proper perspective; facing the evil of death with hope, confidence and resignation to God's will has ever been the Christian path from this life to the next.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"it's a symptom of modern society's desire to hide death. Assuming this guy is sincere (rather than simply sensationalistic), he's certainly reacting against a tendency to deny the reality of death."

That was my first thought as well.
I'm involved in a stage production based on Alcott's Little Women and the women in the cast and on the crew, young and old alike, are deeply attached to the novel but have trouble explaining to the men, none of whom had read it before, why it is such a deep attachment.
I think it may be because between our society's quest for the All-Pleasant-All-the-Time existence (mourning is actually frowned upon at many Catholic funerals,); the urban and suburban ignorance of the natural life cycle of animals; and generations seldom living together; Beth's death, in the novel, is literally the first up-close encounter many girls have with death.

The idea that what this man is doing is Art, however, is ludicrous.
"Justifying the bizarre proposal, he added an artist can contribute something to this issue by building places where people can die with dignity."
Yes, he could and should, but doing so is not Art, any more than eating, or bathing whihc an artist also could and should do are Art.
Attempts to push the boundries of Art to explore the question of what Art is are excerises in foolishness.
Daniel Mitsui of Lion and Cardinal http://www.danielmitsui.com/hieronymus, asks if we would eat the meals prepared by a chef who felt the need to explore the question What is Food?