Body And Death

Introduction

This paper presents works of three artists from different cultural backgrounds as an empirical case to examine the response of the public to art work dealing with body and death. In modern Western society youth, beauty and integrity of the body are of major importance. Age and death are often made taboo and excluded from personal life as long as possible. Art works which present the dead body or consist of bodily fluids/body parts, are causing insecurity and a feeling of uncanny by the viewer. It seems to be accepted by people to look at skeletons, they are representing the inorganic remains of former life. The organic parts ("flesh") of bodies seem to be strongly associated with life and integrity of the body even in death.

The Morgue by Andres Serrano (born 1950, New York, USA)

The portraying of dead persons in paintings, drawings and prints has a tradition going back to the 16th century. To a majority these portraits were mostly of members of the ruling class. During the 19th century the invention of the new medium photography made post-mortem portraits available for a wider public. These photographs were often giving the illusion that the deceased person was merely sleeping. They were kept as a memorial in photo albums or exposed on the walls of the family's living rooms. After the 1920's the custom of post-mortem portraits became less frequent, due to the changes in the attitude of the modern society towards death. Boerdam and Martinus stated:

The disappearance of photographs of the dead could be an illustration of the theory developed by Elias that more and more aspects of life are put out of sight "behind the scenes".

Today people are frequently confronted with death in an impersonal way by the media. The violent death is shown in reports of war, terror or accidents. It is the death of strangers and the individual person does not have to associate with dying or death. Since the 1970's corpses became again subject in contemporary photography. Andres Serrano created The Morgue (Cause of Death) in 1992. An acquainted forensic pathologist allowed him to photograph corpses under the condition to keep their identity unknown. The series of photos consists of close-up images of hands, feet, faces and torsos of human bodies, which expose the cause of death and their dying. One of the images Fatal Meningitis is made in the style of Victorian post-mortem photos and portrays a child, who seems to be asleep. The majority of the photos are showing death as an act of violence, like Burnt to Death, Knifed to Death, Jane Doe Shot by the Cops or Rat Poison Suicide. Serrano's primary intention is not to shock the viewer, but to show a place were the living normally does not have entrance. He stated in an interview:

I wanted to see death myself. First and foremost I want to see things for myself and find other ways to see it, too .

Morgue confronts the viewer with death in its suddenness, loneliness, and finality, but it also tells the story of dying of the individual and its suffering. Serrano's work confronts the viewer with its harshness and lack of compromise, but still enables the viewer to escape ("after all it is only a photograph").

Andres Serrano's photographic work uses issues which are ignored or made taboos by the public and by doing so he tests the limit of acceptance. It is not surprising that his art causes passionate discussions and arguments in the public.

His photography Piss Christ from the series Immersion, which presented a crucifix immersed in urine, caused a political scandal in America. The touring exhibition, where this image was on show, was partly sponsored with $15,000 by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). This circumstance caused a general debate escalating in the demand from right wing conservative senators for strict controls of publicly

funded art. The Times published an editorial by Richard Grenier regarding Mapplethorpe's and Serrano's work:

Expressing myself in the constitutional way that makes us so different...Stalin's Russia...and Deng Xiaoping's China... I'd burn the guy up... If I wanted to do more then win over the Supreme Court, and craved the support of the entire intellectual community, I'd set fire to this Mapplethorpe, and not just as self-expression, but as performance art...And I'd do my darndest to get a $ 15,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, like Andres Serrano .

Leichentuch and Muerte sin fin by Teresa Margolles Sierra (born 1963 in Culiacбn/Sinaloa, Mexico)

Teresa Margolles has a definitive association with death. Her atelier is the morgue and the dissecting room. She founded the SEMEFO (Servicio Mйdico Forense) together with other artists in 1990. The group is very much influenced by the Viennese Actionismus. One of its founder, the artist Hermann Nitsch (born 1938) , tried with his Mysterienspiele (Theatre of mysteries) to overcome our culture of images. The morgue represents not only the place of death but also shows the violence, burial and bears witness of political instability in one of the world's largest cities.

Margolles career started in the 1990's. Her work Lengua (The Tongue) includes a young heroin addict's pierced tongue which was conserved and exhibited. The piece Entierro (Burrial) contains the remains of a miscarriage. It was given to Margolles by the mother who expressed the wish, that the dead body of her baby would not be disposed of the hospital but preserved in a work of art.

Margolles work often excludes the image of death as one is used to see in the media on a daily basis. Her art confronts one with death not only on a visual basis, but also other senses such as smell, feeling and taste are provoked. This was the case in

Margolles' work "das Leichentuch" (Shroud) exhibited at the Kunsthalle in Vienna 2003. It had been shown in Berlin previously, without any major disturbances, but caused an outcry in Vienna. The far right party condemned the art work and accused Margolles of cruelty, cynicism and being disrespectful to the dead and that the limits of provocation had been surpassed.

Theresa Margolles' exhibition Muerte sin fin (in the Museum fÑŒr Moderne Kunst (Museum of Modern Art) in Frankfurt am Main 2004 created a nearness of death without showing actual images of death. For example her art work: Vaporisation and In the air, where mist/ bubbles, made with water of the morgue that had been used to wash the corpse before the autopsy, filled the museum space.

Margolles shows, due to her nearness