Art of Death: May 2008 Archives

My girlfriend's mom died of cancer last year. This year she (Tyler Clark Burke) created a series of work dealing with the unfortunate event.

I made this show for my mom Valerie who died suddenly a year ago. She actually hated her name and went by Val, not Valerie.

My aunt was on vacation in Florida and she went to a psychic in Cassadaga, a community known for its psychics. It is in the middle of Florida, not near the ocean, so if I were to claim an area for its psychic qualities, I would choose near the water. I mean, if I were making things up, I would choose near the water and maybe even a place on an island. Hopeful skeptics like me find these sorts of things confusing, but the woman who did my aunt's reading (I type the word reading with a cringe, my fingers cringe somehow) said crazy things. Crazy true things. She also asked my aunt if she had been seeing a lot of crows, which was an incredible question since my aunt lives in Vermont and was literally inundated with tonnes of crows. Maybe even a crow problem. The psychic told my aunt that my mom Val was sending these birds to Pam (my aunt), I think to make peace, and that the crows were very good. Not dark.

I've been looking for crows everywhere for almost a year, even if the idea scared me a bit.

I've been a bit obsessed with birds, which is funny also because my mom hated her name and--strangely--birds (long story, I presume). Regardless, I just made tonnes of birds, tonnes of crows, murders of crows, and I hung them all up yesterday.

This morning, hung over, weary from the week and wary of today, I saw a black shape in my window. I tried to figure out what it was, if it was on the plant or in the tree outside, and it was a bird. A crow. I think it was a crow. It was an all black bird and I've been drawing many. There were no other colours or markings. I went to get my camera and it flew away.

The German feuilletonists were quick to react negatively to Gregor Schneider's proposal to create an artwork showing someone on their deathbead, opines Brigitte Werneburg in the Tageszeitung. Werneburg reminds readers that Schneider is not the first to attempt to capture death with art. She cites Bill Viola and Sophie Calle, who both made films about the death of a parent. For Werneburg, Schneider—who is looking for a willing volunteer—is closer to Joseph Beuys, albeit "the Big Brother Version" of Beuys's social sculpture. Werneburg notes another similarity with German history: Schneider was born in Rheydt, just like Joseph Goebbels, "a master not only of propaganda but also self-propaganda." Haus Lange Museum in Krefeld, Germany, where the artist proposed to create his work, declined to comment. According to a report in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, German politicians, the Protestant Church, and the National Association of German Undertakers are all indignant over the proposal.

Yet there may be some bright news for Schneider's morbid project. TheFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung's Andreas Rossmann reports that Father Friedhelm S. J. Mennekes, who led Cologne's Artstation St. Peter from 1981 until recently, believes that it's "not taboo" to think about death. In fact, in 2006, Father Mennekes recalls having lengthly conversations with an artist about doing an exhibition "in this sphere." "The question of exhibiting a dead person was posed at that time," Father Mennekes told the FAZ. "We took distance because it was too close to the church and we believed that it belongs in the museum." He sees the museum as a parallel space to the church "for reflecting and thinking" that is predestined to debate "the existential perspectives of meaning of man."