Wanted: Someone who is willing to die in an art gallery

While I would not personally want to spend my last days in an art gallery, I think that this is much better than Habacuc starving an animal to death in the name of art.

dcuisinot, I do think that Habacuc and Schnieder are dealing with death very differently.

What Habacuc did and still plans to do is absolutely disgusting, I don't see how you can be human and watch an innocent creature die slowly and involuntarily.

I have a feeling that there will definitely be someone who will actually agree to be in the exhibit, in which case it's his free choice to die however way he wants to. I think that saying it's "art" might be pushing it a little too far. Depicting death in a painting or even a photograph is art because it usually evokes emotion and captures a moment in time, a story, a cause, or some sort of bigger picture.

In this case, Schneider wants a dying person in the gallery so that people can "admire the way the light plays on the flesh of a person breathing their last." Those gallery visitors are going to witness a person's death who has no emotional attachment to them whatsoever and who merely acts as a display of paling flesh.....

It's just too strange and inhuman of a concept to me

If I was very ill, I'd give my life to anyone who would want to make me into art.

to each his own. death is death. being in the medical field, it's just another fact of life. doesn't matter how when or why, it just is.

less disturbing than the artificial insemination/abortion art hoax... some people give their bodies to science, why not give it to art?

This is as close to art as The Real World or Flava of Love is to good television. What people call 'art' nowadays blows me away.

i love art and i find it in places where people would think im totally wierd for finding it beautiful...but i dont think this is art.
it seems more like a freak show...i cant imagine dying and having complete strangers stare at me while i gasp for air...like being in a display case and everyone is just as awkwardly scared as you are...
...but i guess if that person is willing to do so, then thats cool too...i wouldnt wanna stop someones creative flow

Art should be beautiful. It is ugly to make death a spectacle.

4free, death should be beautiful, too. Unfortunately for many people, their deaths come in ways that are ugly and un-prepared for. At least in the art gallery, the dying "art subject" would be able to prepare for his death and share it with visitors. Depending on how it is done, his death could be a beautiful and moving experience for many people.

I fully agree that death should be beautiful too. My fear and emphasis is on the likelihood that this death is likely to become a gimmicky spectacle, hardly a fitting or graceful way for life to end.

in a similar vein there is a "penis museum" in Iceland where one can view the preserved penis's of a hundred plus creatures - the museum had been looking for human donors - as i recall , a german guy has volunteered , pending his demise .

It doesn't sound like the artist wanted it to be a "beautiful" sight to see at all, I guess that would be a different story...it just seems entirely voyeuristic.

i've been to one of the Plastination exhibitions - kids absolutely love the stuff - and if i was a parent with a terminal illness i'd get plastinated so my kid could show me off to his friends - like : " heres my dad ! cool huh ? he wasn't about to just rot in a grave - he'll be around forever ! "

I agree, the human bodies exhibit is TOTALLY incredible.

This guy is good in the way that he moves controversy into the realms of science and artistic prowess. Different to think of death as a spectacle rather than a morbid act - two words that sometimes certainly go together very well.

To me this seems a little unscrupulous and unreasonable. Lets watch you die because its an art. While I love the poem "Lady Lazarus"(Sylvia Plath), i dont believe that someones last days should be a spectacle for onlookers. He has spent over 10 YEARS on this project? Something about this doesnt seem right. While Im not stating that this isnt art, it seems as we become more modern, people began mistake anything as art. I definitely believe art should evoke emotion and make us question ourselves (as this does) However, many are no longer focused on the skill of works of antiquity, but rather feel they can do anything in the name of art. Maybe Im wrong, maybe in only some cases im right. But alot has changed.

--Jade

Maybe i would feel different if the "spectacle" aka a human, wasnt going to be "gawked at by the general public". I dont know.

PS Did you no Habacuccs dog died after several days?

HABACUC WAS ASKED TO REPEAT HIS "ART FORM" THIS YEAR

GO TO http://www.petitiononline.com/ea6gk/petition.html
TO PROTEST AND SIGN A PETITION TO STOP IT.

I feel uncomfortable with this, but I feel even more intrigued by the issues it teases out about death, art and societal norms.

Art is relative, as is beauty. Life is art and death is a part of this grand master artwork so we have to accept it.

I don't know why people are tempted to refashion death as 'beautiful.' Death is natural but by no means beautiful.

Of course, my comment turns on what we mean by beautiful. If you're of the opinion that 'beauty', like 'goodness' and 'truth', are mere social conventions then I see no reason why ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING might be considered 'beautiful.' But if you hold to a universal notion of beauty that speaks to the innate value of creation (both human and divine), then you should very well have a problem with Death...as Death marks the end of our conscious experience of Beauty and Worth.

To say that death is beautiful is to render the common meaning of the term useless. If death can be beautiful then it could equally be ugly. And if it could be simultaneously ugly and non-ugly , we just killed Death (and common sense in the process).

I declare this TOTALLY LAME.

Why? Because it's not art at all. It is nearly guaranteed that if you live to adulthood you will see someone near death or dead. Whether it's a grandparent or friend, etc. There is nothing new about witnessing death of a loved one or a stranger.

Art should be about bringing something new to the table. I can see Schneider now: "And for my next trick, a guy typing at a computer." or "People eating!" Oooh wow. Try again, dude.

BooksBrown-

''as Death marks the end of our conscious experience of Beauty and Worth.''

This is where I differ, Death doesn't necessarily mark the end of our ''conscious'' experience, who's to say that we aren't being absorbed into ''consciousness', consciousness is not limited to the confounds of the human mind, ''consciousness'' represents the vast organization of reality, and death, which is nothing more than a transition or a transfer of energy or ''location'' may, and could be considered a beautiful transition from the human into the divine. As conscious beings ''The social rule'', may be overridden by our innate ability to recognize and distinguish beauty from ugliness, but who are we to dictate life? and ostracize the constituent that is death ? because of our mis-conception of its purpose?

larllero

I agree with you larllero, it's the exploitation of death for profit, and mabey it's Ol' Greg's last card up his leave, a washed out artists last leap for glory, a cry for attention.

Mobius,

I agree with you that we might still exist after our body passes, but that doesnt get at the heart of my comment.

By allowing just anything to be beautiful then we have nothing 'ugly' by which to contrast beauty.

Death might be natural and have its rightful place in our psychological terrain, but I dont see the need to label it as beautiful. You can accept death, and that might be...uh, nice...but that is different from saying that Death (itself) is beautiful. Is sickness beautiful? Is suffering, beautiful? They might be necessary and part and parcel of our shared experience, but these are not beautiful. They lack beauty (or pefection), as Augustine might say.

People should be free to live their lives and pursue their interests as they see fit as long as they do no harm to another. If Schneider can find someone who wants to do this and people actually want to view something this distasteful it should be up to them. This is nothing like what Habacuc did when he starved the dog to death. One is voluntary, the other is torture.

There's something about death and destruction that draws people in. Art or no, for the same reasons we gawk at a car crash or obsess ourselves with the latest celebrity freak out, I'm sure there will be a certain allure that will draw an audience in.

I must admit that I am partly curious, despite being partly disgusted.

Most of us have already, or soon will, go through the process of watching someone we love die. It's a sad, private and powerful part of life. It's not appropriate for idle spectating.

perhaps a different medium would've been more appropriate, cinema, a series of paintings, I dont know, something that takes actual skill or ability. Death is a part of life and shouldn't be taboo'd, but this seems like it's more about garnering attention through controversy. Controversy is not art.

Put this guy and the chick who want's to get pregnant and abort, over and over as 'art' in a space shuttle and get them off this planet!

Go Patsarts Go ! these people cannot seriously think there is any beauty in this 'art'.

the question is would you go the show

i mean i check the abe vigoda website almost daily

this bloke is sick sick sick, i only hope no one comes forward for his so called art. but then there are always others just as sick

I'm not saying that death as in decay and decomposition is beautiful, I'm saying that the transition itself may be beautiful, the relocation of consciousness, although consciousness is ubiquitous there is still a transitioning process, and based on ones attitude towards it, it may or may not be beautiful or pleasant...But our perspective on death may be a social convention too.....:)

Ditto Hawkmang // making very good use of the word distasteful here. Us citizenry are so anesthetized by today's constant explicitness that we now see such exhibitions as conventional.

its how you display something that would make it art
just blantantly showing a guy dying in a display case....thats not art

whose elders ? the ones in america ? it would seem that germany is deprived of aesthetically enlightened elders these days .