“Do not seek death. Death will find you,” said Dag Hammarskold aka the man who really knows how to cheer up a room.
I’m not one for mulling over my end on this mortal coil- complex and contradictory as we typically are about it all. Imaginary conversations with my maker have little room in the life of a girl who seldom manages to stop after just the one glass of red, and who eats baked beans from a can one week of every month because she bought yet another plane ticket she can’t afford i.e. living wild and free is way more fun than death and dying, especially when it comes to swapping stories about it at brunch.
But, despite initial reservations about passing a snowy Sunday afternoon exploring such matters, I was simply too curious to miss a trip to Euston Road’s Wellcome Collection, currently home to the mood-enhancing Death: a self-portrait.
Divided over five themed rooms- Contemplating Death, The Dance of Death, Violent Death, Eros & Thanatos and Commemoration, the collection showcases 300 works that ultimately force us to question the value of art in communicating ideas about death and the body. Long review short? It’s bloody brilliant.
The eclectic pieces range from historical artifacts and scientific specimens, to war art and an ancient Incan skull collection. The accompanying guide was absolutely right- it was disturbing, macabre, and moving. Also? Kind of hopeful, too.
Much of what is on display is demonstrated in black and white sketchings- curious, considering life and death are exactly that, but the way we feel about death every shade of grey between.
It’s hard not to talk about The Art at an exhibition of The Art without sounding wanky, but in hushed whispers my friends and I all agreed the effect of each room built on the physical response of the last. Cerebral as discussion might be, you can’t argue with the gut reaction of going from war art to death as quasi-erotica- the hairs on the back of my neck were on end.
Small criticism might be that by the end of the collection images of Mexico’s Day of the Dead lacked a real context, and seemed disparate from the 280 previous treats leading up to what could have been a truly smashing finale. The Guardian-esque Death infographic on the way out might have reminded me how many people died of cancer last year, too, but didn’t make me think about my own mortality as much as Solider raping a nun in room number 3.
Upcoming Death-related events include a two-day symposium What Makes a Good Death? over the first weekend of February, and later that month Mortal: A Drama, a specially commissioned performance from young people in response to the exhibition.
You should go. The exhibition really is remarkable.
Death: A self-portrait runs at The Wellcome Collection until 24th February. Free entry.
