Sketching Death in Art

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Sketching Death in Art
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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)

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Chosen Subject

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

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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

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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.

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First Impressions

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

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Department of Pathology St. Poelten
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Challenge

• The principal concern through the art is to
  imbue the public
• To make the zone of death visible

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1987 - 1992

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

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Area of Investigations

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

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The confrontation with death as the center of
artistic remarks
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Working in the Autopsy room
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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

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Sitting close to the body to record the last
examination and the act of autopsy
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Confrontation instead of Disgust
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It is hard to find a more realistic of death than
in an autopsy room
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There is no taboo in the art, death must be
accepted
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Shock is not the Focus with Blood in the
Limelight
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Problems of Sketching Death in Art

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

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Eyewitness

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

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Analytical Confrontation

• Death is one of the taboos of our society, as is
  sex
• Death....when it is documented, seems abstract,
  unreal

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Death has many faces
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Age of Life

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

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

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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

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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)

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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

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New York

• The Mount Sinai Medical Center
• Mount Sinai School of Medicine

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1992 - 1993

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

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• Alan L. Schiller M.D.

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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

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Sketch of the painting
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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

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

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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

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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

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Difficulties with the Artworks

• A taboo is hurt
• The confrontation is painful
• Shock instead of happiness

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The Uncertain Certainty

• At the beginning of life death has already
  started.

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The three Parts of the Tripthychon
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Left Part

• The acrylic painting shows the rigidity of
  fingers and arm

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Middle Part

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

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Right Part

• The expression of the face
• The sufferings are over
• The worn-out,

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The Uncovering of the Picture
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Unnatural Death

• Hacked to Death
• Junk Objects
• New York in 1992/1993

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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.

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Someone is at the wrong place at the wrong time
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Thrown away like the life, objects tell the story
of its works and days
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A hunt for circumstances, a hunt for how, where,
when, why, a reconstruction of the scene of a
crime
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Sometimes a whole biography is there in the cast
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The wounds and scars gathered in a lifetime
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The way people die is a reflexion of the way they
live
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The rich die differently from the poor, the
ignorant from the educated
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Death remarks the end of the physical body
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The Final The Death of the Self
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Diagnosis

• I have to die
• You have to die
• All have to die

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Therapy

• Confrontation for everyone
• The Taboo of death is a deception
• We have to study death and not only disease

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CURRICULUM VITAE

• 1957 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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)

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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Sketching Death in ArtEnd