dying for art
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- jkmohr
hah
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PRIZE-winning German artist Gregor Schneider has caused an uproar by launching a search for a volunteer willing to die for art.The enfant terrible of the German cultural scene is looking for someone whose dying hours will be spent in an art gallery with the public admiring the way the light plays on the flesh of a person gasping for the last breath.
The 39-year-old artist has been concerned with death for much of his career. He gained critical acclaim for a sculpture, Hannelore Reuen, of a dead woman.
He has been hatching his latest idea since 1996, and now has a pathologist and art collector to help to find a candidate who wants to become a work of art in the final days of his or her life.
"The dying person would determine everything in advance, he would be the absolute centre of attention," said Mr Schneider.
"Everything will be done in consultation with the relatives, and the public will watch the death in an appropriately private atmosphere."
Death is commonly seen as the last taboo, although artists have been trying hard to demystify it.
Gunther von Hagens, nicknamed Doctor Death, has been travelling the world with an exhibition of plastinated corpses, showing genuine human bodies in living poses, playing chess or on horseback. The Wellcome Collection in London has an exhibition of portraits of people pictured before and after death by two German photographers.
The Schneider project, however, seems to have gone too far. It is being compared with watching executions in the US.
The influential gallery owner Beatrix Kalwa spoke for many German curators who rule out the idea of giving space to Schneider's artistic endeavour.
"Existential matters like death, birth or the act of reproduction do not belong in a museum," she said.
"There is a fundamental difference between portraying these acts in an art form, and showing them in actuality."
The head of the German hospice foundation that provides care for the terminally ill, Eugen Brysch, said: "This is pure voyeurism and makes a mockery of those who are dying."
But Schneider argues that death is already undignified and that his aim is to restore its grace.
The Times
- jkmohr0
oh, and a link.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,2…
- ukit0
i guess this is the next logical step
- Mr_1000000
Sign me up!
- blingy0
So he means someone who is already dying right?
- jellyneck0
Art is essentially dead. This is nothing but a cry out for attention to fulfill the ego of this supposed "artist". Just as the fucking asshole who killed a dog in the name of art, this person wants to go a step further. Fuck them and fuck their flawed concepts. This is not art. Art died long ago. This is bullshit.. plain and simple. I no longer want to be a part of it.
- jellyneck0
Wait.. I take it back. Art is not quite dead....... there's one last piece yet to be made. Maybe this fucker can create it.
Hang a framed blank canvas in the gallery and title it "portrait of the artist". Have this asshole come in with a loaded revolver and blow his worthless brains out onto the canvas. Maybe it'll be the highest selling work of art ever.
- ukit0
^ That's pure brilliance jellyneck. Do we have any volunteers?
- utopian0
I am also "dying to see good art" not a dissertation on art!
- ovsm0
if the subject is willing, it could be made into a beautiful ceremony.
i don't see why the 'artist' should take any credit though.
- drgs0
so who would die for design?
- nobody with any sensekelpie
- I die a little bit more each day, keep watching this space...neue75_bold
- hahakelpie
- Bluejam0
Gregor Schneider should fly the fuck out to some of the more desperate places on this planet where death is a daily occurance and make a point about that. but then again, by holding 'it' in a gallery he can probably afford to sit back, drink complimentary champagne and stuff his face with finger food whilst watching the art crowd stroke their chins and letting out a collective 'ooh'
- formed0
why doesn't one of these pathetic artist's starve themselves? That would make sense.
Win-win
They'd be famous and we'd be rid of the glory hounds.
- kelpie0
much like the miscarriage art girl, this is so clearly never going to happen and so clearly only being publicised to provoke exactly this type of reaction from people that this thread right here is as much his "piece" as the project he's trying to get off the ground (yeah right).
Art has eaten itself so wholly that now the reaction to pieces of proposed conceptual art is the art itself.
fuck.
still; anything that gets people ranting about the death of art and foaming at the mouth has to have some shread of worth at least, in an environment where so little makes any dent on anyone.
You just added to this guys value