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US Events Death and tragedy as art

birdup.snaildown said:
@December Flower

I think most people would agree with you. Personally, I always thought it was creepy that people didn't find Pompeii creepy. Visiting the frozen figures as a tourist is worse in my mind than being able to see the beauty in the events of 9/11. I should've chosen something else. I didn't mean to start a thread about this. 9/11 is too close for a lot of people.
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Dude, Pompeii is magical. Absolutely divine to see, for anyone who's even remotely interested in our past.
There's a serene 'vibe' around that place. It's literally frozen in time.
My first time I was high on shrooms, because it was my school class's graduation trip, and it was a 16 hour busride.
That might ofc have changed my view of that place, I know I wasn't looking forward to it, but seeing it changed everything.

I've seen much of the remains of the Roman Empire, but Pompeii is just the crown piece, in my opinion.

My great grandfathers fought in WW2. Wrong side, unfortunately.
 
The Wizard of the Creek said:
Hiroshima shadows are something you might find “beautiful” @birdup.snaildown?

aaafb7103d753a916cc20bb3f9db4a47.jpg


I dunno, that type of morbid fascination is interesting to some people. Those types of images always tend to disturb me at a basic level (at an atomic level so to speak).
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I’ve seen the Nagasaki museum and I will never forget it. I found it to be very solemn experience.
 
I think part of people’s responses to this question of the grotesque in art will depend on how formally they respond to aesthetics. Or to put it another way how the respond aesthetically to form. For pure formalists the content of the image or object is immaterial as art, so long as it’s formal features (line,shape, balance, proportion, etc are pleasing). There is an argument that people have an essential neurological response to such things that allows a shared experience of what we commonly call beauty. So a nicely lit and arranged photograph of a violently murdered corpse might be argued to be beautiful if it possessed those formal characteristics.

It’s a very old fashioned idea in art (early 20th century UK/mid 20th Century US). Now contemporary artists seem to the think the content (usually emotional) of the artwork transcends all formal concerns and that Formalism is kind of elitist art snobbery.
 
Atelier3 said:
I think part of people’s responses to this question of the grotesque in art will depend on how formally they respond to aesthetics. Or to put it another way how the respond aesthetically to form. For pure formalists the content of the image or object is immaterial as art, so long as it’s formal features (line,shape, balance, proportion, etc are pleasing). There is an argument that people have an essential neurological response to such things that allows a shared experience of what we commonly call beauty. So a nicely lit and arranged photograph of a violently murdered corpse might be argued to be beautiful if it possessed those formal characteristics.

It’s a very old fashioned idea in art (early 20th century UK/mid 20th Century US). Now contemporary artists seem to the think the content (usually emotional) of the artwork transcends all formal concerns and that Formalism is kind of elitist art snobbery.
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Yeah, I hate to say it but death and tragedy are more modernist pursuits. You have the filter of the photograph and craft relating to the image. Artists went into concentration camps and painted scenes as part of the WW2.

But context is always important, art is a group activity so if someone considers say 9/11 art, then they are alone in their opinions and so 9/11 is not art.
As well you have to gallery-ize art and stick it in a museum or context it by art degrees or done in a university or have art students watch you cut yourself etc.

You have to consider post-modernism in that death and tragedy are deeply ironic, so there is part satire and comedy in bad taste and corpses. Death references itself as banal and unfashionable. Its been done to death, etc. No one wants to see it, so why show it, etc.? I mean just look at South Park and "they killed Kenny.." etc.

Performance art has tried to art-ify the act of death in someone got shot as part of a group performance art work. But say shooting Andy Warhol is just some crazy bitch trying to get attention and not art.

I mean now you sort of have to fast forward to video game culture where death is infinite in MMOs where you just reload your save, or you lose coins or something. The art in death is simply a process barrier that is Frustration itself. Or we enter into Schrodingers cat territory where we are both alive, dead, and exist in a quantum state where we are infinitely transitioning between alive->dead->alive and everything in between.

Lastly, perhaps most importantly look into the Big Lebowski and nihilism, where you have real people rejecting the universe and what we are experiencing is simple falsehood. Fundamental belief in that is true tragedy. There is no beauty in the world, because what we experience does not exist.

I mean you can party and rock out, but when Death comes knocking, you can't see Beauty any more. I don't really see the irony in that. I mean, I do. But its just game over, man. Game over.
 
jpgrdnr said:
Yeah, I hate to say it but death and tragedy are more modernist pursuits. You have the filter of the photograph and craft relating to the image. Artists went into concentration camps and painted scenes as part of the WW2.
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I think death and tragedy can still be subjects of contemporary art. However, whereas modernist art still recognised say the nobility of sacrifice or at least explored it carefully, contemporary art throws such concepts into the garbage while replacing with the nobility of victimhood. So the death or tragedy of certain groups is still a valid subject from art so long as it is treated post-structurally via the lived experience of the artist-victim.
jpgrdnr said:
But context is always important, art is a group activity so if someone considers say 9/11 art, then they are alone in their opinions and so 9/11 is not art.
As well you have to gallery-ize art and stick it in a museum or context it by art degrees or done in a university or have art students watch you cut yourself etc.
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No single person can convert the everyday (or the exceptional) into art. It takes a system of gallerists, institutions, publications, artists, critics, academics etc to formulate and produce a consensus first whether some thing is art and then whether it is good art. This group has the collective power to turn anything into art - even 9/11 - as was well proven by Marcel Duchamp with his Pissoir.
jpgrdnr said:
You have to consider post-modernism in that death and tragedy are deeply ironic, so there is part satire and comedy in bad taste and corpses. Death references itself as banal and unfashionable. Its been done to death, etc. No one wants to see it, so why show it, etc.? I mean just look at South Park and "they killed Kenny.." etc.
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See my comment on victimhood above. Death still has a place on art and contemporary art (as a stage/development beyond postmodern art, has lost all sense of irony or parody. It is deadly seriousness about the lived experience of the supposedly marginal.
 


There is nothing beautiful about death, terror and destruction. That's not to say people can't make meaningful art to express the event onto a canvas. Destruction is a form of creation.

Most art I've seen inspired by death does not glorify it. It captures the emotion. Sadness is not something to ignore, but it is something to remember lest you forget it can happen again.
 
I've been trying to get my head around this since it was spun off from the trial thread. To no avail.

I fail to see how 9/11 could be deemed as beautiful or artistic. Even if the aftermath was left intact and uncovered and viewed by a generation 1 000 years from now.

As for it being compared to Pompeii: Pompeii was a natural disaster. Not sure I'd deem it (Pompeii) as beautiful or artistic but can understand the historical interest and fascination. Same as with Egyptian mummies and the like.

If it floats your boat: there's some outfit somewhere (their name escapes me now) that, with the family's consent or as an express wish of the deceased prior to their demise, somehow preserves the body and poses it for a keepsake. Or they slice it up into thin layers to be used for anatomical studies. Or they create ornaments or things like bookshelf ends. Come to think of it: I think there's a museum in Japan that has similar on show. There's a video about this all. Maybe I find it and post it for the sake of interest.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not calling you out or questioning you re: 9/11 because of some emotional attachment or allegiance. Those days are gone. But I still don't see as how it could be deemed as beautiful or artistic or energizing. But hey: each to their own obviously.
 
It's interesting to me to experience death in real life (like a funeral) in the same way that I find it interesting to experience things of that nature vicariously through the artist. Experiencing something on a personal level isn't the same as having an emotional reaction to someone else's work, but it overlaps... There are tragic moments in dramatic films that make people cry and, often, they want to relive that moment over and over again. Why do we like seeing people ripped to pieces in horror films?

When 9/11 happened, I was thoroughly (much more so than I am now) detached from the world. I saw it like someone witnesses the events of a dream. It didn't seem real to me. Like some kind of nightmare I might've had as a child.

People like watching apocalyptic films about the destruction of the human race. If you think about how many zombie and alien invasion films that have been made in the past ten years, we're kind of obsessed with it.

I'm not saying I get out the popcorn and watch news footage from that day. I'm just saying: there clearly is an overlap. (How could there not be?)

There is something infinitely more powerful about watching someone die in real life rather than in a movie. Death is more powerful than death in art. Love is more powerful than love in art... And so on, and so forth.

Art is a reflection of life: life is beautiful; death is beautiful.

dalpat077 said:
Pompeii was a natural disaster.
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9/11 was a disaster that erupted from human nature.

We're all just animals trying learn how not to be animals.
 
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Here.

It's called "plastination".



Some museum in Germany (dunno of they're closed as a result of COVID or if business has died) (no pun intended).

Fascination PLASTINARIUM - Go on a voyage of discovery!

In the PLASTINARIUM we explain individual body systems and their vital functions and the effects of a healthy lifestyle.
www.plastinarium.com www.plastinarium.com


If you want to see (roughly) how it's done (starts at 28:07 i.e. sorry it's not YouTube so no option that I know of to start the video in the right place).




Art? Wouldn't have it in the house if you paid me! 🤣

If course and if it's your thing: there's always those lampshades that came out of the camps or Pol Pot's skeleton collections.
 
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dalpat077 said:
plastination
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I think this post references the exhibit you mentioned. It’s Chinese in origin and is exhibited around the world.

US Events - Death and tragedy as art

I wouldn't want to be in Minneapolis if he's found innocent. I would be interested to hear opinions from Americans about whether or not you guys think the riots might influence juror's decision making. It seems to me to be one of those cases that is impossible to be unbiased. There is enough...
www.bluelight.org www.bluelight.org
 
cduggles said:
I think this post references the exhibit you mentioned. It’s Chinese in origin and is exhibited around the world.

US Events - Death and tragedy as art

I wouldn't want to be in Minneapolis if he's found innocent. I would be interested to hear opinions from Americans about whether or not you guys think the riots might influence juror's decision making. It seems to me to be one of those cases that is impossible to be unbiased. There is enough...
www.bluelight.org www.bluelight.org
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Oops. My bad. Interesting though. Didn't realize it had become such a thing. I saw that video (above) years ago. Thought it was some or the other fad at the time i.e. had to look all of this stuff up again this morning (only to then realize/remember it was "plastination" and therefore the same thing as what you posted).

Nah. Dunno. From an anatomical and educational standpoint I get it. But art?

Then again: I ain't the artsy type. I've actually bought precisely two pieces of art (originals), only because they appealed to me, in my entire life. And they were some type of post modern paintings of storks. Not of somebody's entrails! 🤣

Just looked the artist up now (of course and like an idiot I don't have them anymore) The injustice though: when I met the dude (late '80's or very early '90's) he was going around to office blocks trying to sell his work and was homeless. Only discovered today that he'd been painting for years prior to that and a handful his works somehow ended up overseas and on auction (albeit not for much though it would seem but still). Oh well. Such is life.
 
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