Sketching Death in Art

Bodies, Dying, Death

• The art of the past reminded people of the coming end like:

• Grim reaper (dried-out skeleton)

• Danses macabre (memento mori)

• Baroque Vanitas (beautiful bodies)

Chosen Subject

• The theme of death as the place, where the confrontation of science and art is more reflective than anywhere else

Social Background

• Death has to be an integrated part of individual and social life in our society

• Death now is clean and has been removed from our life to hospitals and nursing homes

Leitmotive• An uncomfortable subject for a

great number of people, much lied about. Even in our language we often refer to people having “passed away” or “departed” – rather than died.

First Impressions

• In 1987 Hans Bankl M.D. professor of anatomic pathology invited to sketch bodies

Department of Pathology St. Poelten

Challenge

• The principal concern – through the art – is to imbue the public

• To make the zone of death visible

1987 - 1992

• A lot of pictures arise to a cycle called „Body without Soul“

Area of Investigations

• The autopsy room as an artist´s space is standing in a long tradition which started in the 2nd half of the 11th century.

The confrontation with death as the center of

artistic remarks

Working in the Autopsy room

The Dead Body• Death seems to have become more

far. Now we study discease and no longer death

• Death is regarded as a phenomenon that is not very well understood. The cadaver is still the body and already the corpse

Sitting close to the body to record the last

examination and the act of autopsy

Confrontation instead of Disgust

It is hard to find a more realistic of death than in

an autopsy room

There is no taboo in the art, death must be

accepted

Shock is not the Focus with Blood in the Limelight

Problems of Sketching Death in Art

• The artistic work is fraught with difficulties: to show something that does not exist anymore - life.

Eyewitness

• An artist has to show something missing, a loss, a deficit

Analytical Confrontation

• Death is one of the taboos of our society, as is sex

• Death....when it is documented, seems abstract, unreal

Body without Soul

• Over the last 12 years men, women and children have been portrayed in the cycle “Body without Soul“ before the coffin finally closes

Everyone dies his own Death

• The individuality is in the flesh, the exact unexchangable condition of everyone.

• Only a dead person itself is a dead person

The Dying of the Others

• Nowbody learns about his own death, but everybody can learn about death of the others.

• Death is the climax of life. With death everything is gone and nothing

Temporal Life

• The temporal life, always a usual life, individual, unique, irreplaceable is a final life.

• It ends with death, nothing more and nothing less

Death has many faces

Age of Life

• There is a difference of life but not of the end, of the destruction

• Dying is a natural accident

The younger the dead person is, the more death will touch

the living one

Art and Death• One of the biggest confrontations

is the studying of the human body. There is a vast difference between a living and a lifeless body, the latter is missing something - the elan vital

The last Print

• To record the last attempt of human individuality before the onset of final decay

• to make a last print before the body will be cremated or decomposes

The Taboo of Death• There is a need to avoid any

confrontation because people are afraid of death

• The collective repression of death has a far reaching consequence (quality of life)

The Color of Death

• The fable world of the interior of the body

• The brilleance of the color

• The landscape of organs

• The point of view of the art

New York

The Mount Sinai Medical Center

Mount Sinai School of Medicine

1992 - 1993

• Alan L. Schiller M.D. professor and chairman of Pathology gives his permission to paint various aspects of autopsy pathology

Alan L. Schiller M.D.

Mount Sinai Morgue

• Creating a large painting (triptychon) to grace the entrance of the autopsy suite of the Hans Popper Department of the Atran Laboratory

Sketch of the painting

Mount Sinai Morgue

• The inception to create the large painting on canvas was in november 1994 at the Michael Kisslinger Gallery Soho/New York. It took over a month till the work was finished

• The paint is dark-blue and the color refers to coldness, emptyness and peace

Coats

• More than 20 coats were needed to get the brilliance of color and the beauty of the appearances in the interior of the body

Working at Night

• By day in the harsh lighted autopsy room at Mount Sinai Medical Center, by night in the empty gallery surrounded by a dark room and the paintings of „Body Without Soul“

Difficulties with the Artworks

• A taboo is hurt

• The confrontation is painful

• Shock instead of happiness

The Uncertain Certainty

• At the beginning of life death has already started.

The three Parts of the Tripthychon

Left Part

• The acrylic painting shows the rigidity of fingers and arm

Middle Part

• The deep black inside the body is contrasted with the glistening reds and oranges of the organs

Right Part

• The expression of the face

• The sufferings are over

• The worn-out,

The Uncovering of the Picture

Unnatural Death

Hacked to DeathJunk Objects

New York in 1992/1993

Serial Photo Production

• Parts of collected junk objects in the streets of N.Y. City like shop-window dummies, dinnerwagons, bodybags ...were the impression for this cycle.

Someone is at the wrong place at the wrong time

Thrown away like the life, objects tell the story

of its works and days

A hunt for circumstances, a hunt for how, where, when,

why, a reconstruction of the scene of a crime

Sometimes a whole biography is there in the

cast

The wounds and scars gathered in a lifetime

The way people die is a reflexion of the way

they live

The rich die differently from the poor, the ignorant from the

educated

Death remarks the end of the physical body

The Final The Death of the Self

Diagnosis

• I have to die

• You have to die

• All have to die

Therapy

• Confrontation for everyone

• The Taboo of death is a deception

• We have to study death and not only disease

CURRICULUM VITAE1957 Harald Koeck born in Salzburg/Austria

1981 – 1986

• Salzburg International Academy of Fine Arts - graphic arts

• Salzburg University of Salzburg Arthistory

• Salzburg Exhibition Art Gallery Weihergut

• Salzburg “Craft of Illusion” drawings for the book of Gerhard Amanshauser

1981 - 1986

• Salzburg Exhibition at the House of Art

• Salzburg “100 Years Spring Palor” at the House of Art

• Vienna Exhibition at the Theatre of Courage

• Vienna Academy of Fine art Friedensreich Hundertwasser

• Ulm (Germany) Kornhaus Gallery

• Budapest (Hungary) Kilato Gallery

1988

• Vienna Stubenbastei Gallery

• St. Pölten General Hospital - the project “Body without Soul” at the Department of Pathology – Professor Hans Bankl

1989

• Hamburg (Germany) Airport Gallery

1990

• Vienna Exhibition “Body without Soul” Austrian Culture Center Palais Palffy

• Melbourne (Australia) Gryphon Gallery Unversity of Melbourne

• Vienna Exhibition “Body without Soul” Medical Center

1991

• Vienna documentary video “Body without Soul” and presentation at the Center Auditorium of the Medical University

• 1992 Vienna Exhibition at the Federal Museum of Pathology and Anatomy (Narrenturm)

• Eisenstadt Exhibition Museum of Austrian Culture (Death Triumphant)

1993

• New York City (USA) - project “Unnatural Death“ – Homicides, Suicides and Accidents

• New York City Mount Sinai Medical Center Pathology Prof. Alan Schiller (paintings and drawings in the morgue)

• New York Exhibition Gallery Kunstschalter

• Kassel (Germany) coffin installation at the Museum of Sepulchral Culture

1994

• New York City Death in Art - guest lecture University of New York Fashion Institute of Technology

• New York City Triptychon “Mount Sinai Morgue” wall painting at the entrance of the Hans Popper Department of Pathology

• New York City “Body without Soul” Michael Kissinger Gallery

1995

• Vienna Exhibition Congress of Medical Ethical General Hospital of Vienna

• Vienna Red Ribbon art installation “Children with AIDS” Gerngross store

1996

• Belarus (Russia) “Little Blue Man” Rememberence 10 Years Cernobyl

• Vienna Exhibiton “Unnatural Death in New York City” photographics

1997

• Vienna Production of the movie “Thoughts about Death”

1998

• Vienna Art therapy project for children with drug problems

1999

• Purkersdorf Art teacher at a privat college

Sketching Death in ArtEnd