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Body And Death

Introduction
This paper presents works of three artists from different cultural backgrounds as an empirical case to examine the response of the public to art work dealing with body and death. In modern Western society youth, beauty and integrity of the body are of major importance. Age and death are often made taboo and excluded from personal life as long as possible. Art works which present the dead body or consist of bodily fluids/body parts, are causing insecurity and a feeling of uncanny by the viewer. It seems to be accepted by people to look at skeletons, they are representing the inorganic remains of former life. The organic parts ("flesh") of bodies seem to be strongly associated with life and integrity of the body even in death.

The Morgue by Andres Serrano (born 1950, New York, USA)
The portraying of dead persons in paintings, drawings and prints has a tradition going back to the 16th century. To a majority these portraits were mostly of members of the ruling class. During the 19th century the invention of the new medium photography made post-mortem portraits available for a wider public. These photographs were often giving the illusion that the deceased person was merely sleeping. They were kept as a memorial in photo albums or exposed on the walls of the family's living rooms. After the 1920's the custom of post-mortem portraits became less frequent, due to the changes in the attitude of the modern society towards death. Boerdam and Martinus stated:
The disappearance of photographs of the dead could be an illustration of the theory developed by Elias that more and more aspects of life are put out of sight "behind the scenes".
Today people are frequently confronted with death in an impersonal way by the media. The violent death is shown in reports of war, terror or accidents. It is the death of strangers and the individual person does not have to associate with dying or death. Since the 1970's corpses became again subject in contemporary...