'Ars Moriendi' or, 'How to Die Well' at the Johannesburg Art Gallery
by Jacki McInnes
To say that the western psyche has long held a perplexing and contradictory attitude to death would be to understate things a bit. Religion functions to provide a panacea to the distressing inevitability but does little to engage with the philosophy of death. And likewise, whilst we all accept, in the conceptual realm at least, that death will come to ourselves and our loved ones in due course, we have nevertheless perfected neat tactics of avoidance of the topic in real terms.
But avoidance becomes increasingly difficult in the post-traumatic era we currently live in. Two world wars, genocides of inconceivable magnitude, and what can accurately be described as a plethora of devastating natural disasters have permeated collective consciousness, producing a chronic, low-grade sense of impotence and vulnerability.
This experience of increasing brutalisation seems to have a paradoxical effect on our psyches. On the one hand we cannot but be aware of the frequency of disasters occurring around us. Yet, simultaneously we manage to compartmentalise each new humanitarian catastrophe, always believing 'this won't happen to me'. The subconscious effect of living in such an environment must find an outlet, however, and increasingly it is transforming the cultural activities of our society. The exhibition 'Ars Moriendi', the conception of Jeanine Howse and Clive Kellner of the Johannesburg Art Gallery, draws on art works from both the historical and contemporary permanent collections of the gallery to investigate how our collective psychic trauma is manifested in visual art.
As would be expected, the exhibition includes a goodly quota of traditional religious imagery of death - from fifteenth century painted lime wood altar pieces, through to the didactic etchings of the early nineteenth century. The inclusion of these does little to articulate a contemporary reflection of death in art but does provide an historical standpoint from which to assess the way in which this imagery has changed. Early religious pictures served to instruct a largely illiterate populace on the importance of a spiritual preparedness for death and what to expect of the Afterlife, whereas symbolic figures such as the Grim Reaper and examples of memento morihave an altogether more philosophical objective: by presenting death as a sentient entity, the viewer is more able to accept it in tangible and accessible terms.
Symbols such as these are still prevalent in contemporary art and in fact, the dancing skeleton and grinning skull actually seem to be enjoying a resurgence of popularity. Wim Botha's Apocalimbilicus depicts an adult skeleton holding the skeleton of a child in its arms. It references Albrecht Düat;rer's Apocalypse series of traditional woodcuts from 1498 and seems, especially in view of its title, to set up a somewhat bewildering juxtaposition of birth and death. A maternal tenderness is readily readable in the 'body-language' of the adult skeleton but the fact of both parent and child's obvious demise forces the viewer to acknowledge both human states - alive and dead - at once.
Pieter Hugo's photographs from the series Rwanda 2004: Vestiges of a genocide exploits the macabre but undeniable beauty of the human skeleton, but his portrayal of corpses is about as far removed from the realm of the symbolic as can be imagined. These pictures become instead the all too real visual documentation of man's violence against man. Interestingly, one is struck by the similarities between the postures of the corpses in Hugo's work and more symbolic depictions of death in art. Whether this was a conscious strategy or not remains unclear but either way, work that might have been relegated to the category of gory photo-documentation is elevated to the level of an eloquent discourse on trauma, tragedy and death.
'Ars Moriendi' must be commended for the deliberate way in which selected art works have been positioned to take full advantage of thematic play-offs between the historical and contemporary depictions of death. One of the more unlikely couplings occurs between a sixteenth century engraving by Albrecht Düat;rer entitled Knight, Death and the Devil shown together with Empire - a 2003 video by Kendell Geers depicting the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre. In D&uumalt;rer's work a brave knight rides past the Devil at the side of the road. With eyes staring fixedly forward, the knight appears to uphold the virtues of honour and duty and to ignore the taunts and temptations of evil. The message is echoed in the rhetoric of 9/11: America, or more specifically President George W. Bush, will leave no stone unturned in his quest to seek out and destroy the terrorist enemy.
Crucifix iconography is prevalent and again, historical works serve to set up a dialogue with a more contemporary handling of the theme. Jane Alexander's small sculptural work Hit (Poor Walter) (1995) portrays the figure of a black man with arms outstretched and feet crossed like Christ crucified. But dressed in hat, suit and tie the work speaks less of salvation than of the human sacrifices suffered at the hands of a brutal Apartheid mentality. The suited figure is martyred and reminds the viewer that the suppressive policies of our past spared no black person regardless of wealth, respectability or social standing. Wim Botha's Commune: Suspension Disbelief (2001), a life-sized crucifix built up by carving into dozens of tightly packed 'Holy Bibles' suggests a more intellectual reading of the crucifixion of Christ. As with much of Botha's oeuvre, whilst relatively easy to access on a visual level, Commune: Suspension Disbelief presents the viewer with open-ended suggestions and the possibility of many and varied complex analyses.
Of all the interpretations of death portrayed on 'Ars Moriendi', it is ironic that one of the most powerful and disturbing images is that of a reclining male nude. The photograph, taken by Michael Meyersfeld, shows an elderly man lying on a beautifully made bed with eyes closed, arms behind his head and legs stretched out. The title of the work, Acceptance, all but sums up the protagonist's attitude towards his advanced age, his frailties and his physical imperfections. And yet this work seems to articulate the epitome of our western abhorrence and avoidance of death. As long as the images presented to us are of the already-dead, we are able to cut ourselves off from them. Such is our conditioning that we do not regard the dead as an extension of ourselves but as unrelated, other, in another realm. But when we are presented with an image that so obviously describes our transition to inevitable death, we are far less able to ignore our own role in this human drama, and our psyches recoil.
Jacki McInnes is a curator, art writer and artist
Opens:
Closes: June 8
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