Tag Archives: Death in art

The Art of the Die-In

Meaningful visual images stir emotions

Imagine this: You’re out for a walk in your favorite park. As you stroll along, you notice that there are more people about than you’re used to seeing. Suddenly, the woman in front of you keels forward and drops to … Continue reading

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The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic

The grandmother of performance art throws her own funeral

One can’t talk about avant-garde art without mentioning Marina Abramovic. The Serbian artist carved a name for herself in the art world through her cathartic, sometimes disturbing performances. Her goal is to create art that makes us slightly uncomfortable, and … Continue reading

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A Moment of Life and Death

Sixteenth and seventeenth century Dutch vanitas paintings weave life and death into a single, still moment

Life is fleeting, and death apparently eternal. Still life paintings that came out of the Netherlands in the late 1500s through the 1700s, known as vanitas, gather symbolic objects of death into a memorialized moment, halting the processes of both … Continue reading

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Between the Abstract and the Real

Death, architecture and the public imagination

How do we come to terms with something as abstract as death? Our own heavy, very real flesh will one day be in another indistinct form. The sacred bodies of our loved ones are subject to the same fate. What … Continue reading

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Fed by the Shadow of Death

Renaissance painters were masters of light, life, death and shadow

The cultural bloom of the Italian – and wider European – Renaissance was fed by the shadow of death. The bubonic plague was carried by fleas traveling on rodents, who then hitched rides along the expanding trade routes in the … Continue reading

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