For this reason art becomes an exercise of freedom. Actually De Dominicis wanted to cover it entirely with pure gold, but even so naked, gently resting on the ground, with its beak nose in the air and that golden antenna-rod or gnomon?
Some of the features of this philosophical idea have been universally represented in every historical period. The inclusion of the skull represents the brevity of human life and especially the fact that death will touch us all, whether you are rich or poor and its knowledge compared to divine omniscience , but it is also a symbol of strong magical connotation, especially in Indian and Nepalese culture: see, for example, the skull wreaths worn by some Hindu gods such as Shiva or Kali or the Tibetan god Kurukulla.
Death indicates — without a doubt — the ultimate end to the physical existence of the human being. All cultures base their existence on the dead ones: they talk to us from their tombs in books, dreams, legends, portraits, mausoleums and monuments.
The traces that we leave during our existence and after death inspire the work of several contemporary artists. The Swiss Olaf Breuning , puts dozens of skeletons or skulls in gardens or rooms as if they were expecting something.
Marc Quinn uses blood and other materials to reflect on death, how life works, an about body mutability. These are works of art to enable a communication with those who have already died, to make people acquire familiarity with their own mortality, to take away the scary nature of death. Artists, and not only them, have often sought the opposite of death in the passion of erotism. She kisses it, owns it on a lush lawn to emphasize the naturalness of the act.
You can literary make love with death — as well as with your fears. The Serbian artist lies down naked with a skeleton on top of her. The living and dead body are almost perfectly aligned. The ribs of the skeleton press upon her chest. Her breathing is accentuated and amplified. According to Abramovic, the human skeleton is a metaphorical representation of «…the last mirror we will all face» , referring to death and temporality, which are recurring themes in her work. In this work Abramovic presents a video showing herself brushing a heap of huge animal bones, which are then placed, once cleaned, in the museal space at the side of the screen.
She proposes the idea of a body reduced to inanimate matter. The exhibition of the bones becomes relation between representation and fruition by the spectator of the horrid and the sublime. The horrid here plays a role of social criticism Abramovic is talking about the horrors of ethnic war in the territories of the former Yugoslavia as well as of transcendence, in relation to religion and the exorcization of death. In this site-specific work, humongous skulls cmx70 — presumibly the leftovers of the seven dwarfs — are placed on the ground, each of them with their skull vault entirely covered with tattooed messages for the living.
They become desecrating presences, surreal objects in which the spectator becomes part of the sculptural space. The brothers illustrate that humanism , in the sense of the French philosopher George Bataille whom they revere , is deceptive. They present the violent part of humanity, to recall that everyone is capable of tormenting others and thus carrying human reason to its grave.
In Paolo Canevari the skull is instead used to denounce the desensitizing effect of mass media. The representation of the skeleton grin and of slouching motility of the skeleton intrinsically hold the paradox of death celebrating life, similar to the carnival representations Halloween , thus becoming a grotesque integral part of the daily anthropological panorama.
It is not difficult to understand how, at some point in our history, the skull and the skeleton have become a symbol of challenge, dangerous living, of a provocation for its own sake, sometimes even losing the intrinsic value of spiritual research as in fashion and paraphernalia. Recent neo-baroque and neo-gothic artistic trends use the shape and image of the skull and skeleton by re-proposing them as anti-icon par excellence , since taboos of death and its representation have been overcome or modified.
The pirate symbol has become a must: you can find it on big stars t-shirts and foulards, carried by teenagers on the neck and bags, reproduced in jewels of prestigious brands for ladies. There is a profusion of bones and skulls everywhere, even embroidered on shoes. As the contemporary speaks of inconvenient catastrophes, terrorist attacks, environmental disasters, wearing a deathly icon has a paradoxically skirmish value and an apotropaic function: it protects against dangers.
The fascination with the image of the skull and the skeleton and other apocalyptic icons is not just a way to make love with death or make fun of the fear of mortality inherent in Western culture. Besides the obvious contrast between good and evil, it is a way to ironize on the dilated paranoia, to challenge an increasingly dominant, vigilant status quo.
A challenge then used a lot by the subculture of heavy metal , punk or hard core bands that made the skull a public property, and also lucrative merchandise: flags, pins, t-shirts, stickers, etc.
Then the skeleton was considered a place where the soul indwelt. Nevertheless, more fundamentally it symbolizes death. To dream of a skeleton represents feelings about something in your life that has been totally stripped of all power, vitality, or importance. Skeletons may also reflect a fear of death.
Negatively, dreaming of skeleton may also represent lingering memories about failures or unpleasant changes. The most obvious meaning of a skull is death. A skull ring is a way of embracing and understanding your fate. While the skull acts as a reminder of death, it also carries an important message. Your time is limited, so you should make the most of it. Because sugar is so abundant in Mexico, the sugar skulls are the perfect way for families, both rich and poor, to celebrate the lives of their loved ones.
Believe it or not, not all sugar skulls are eaten. For the Aztecs—the larger cultural group to which the Mexica belonged—those skulls were the seeds that would ensure the continued existence of humanity. They were a sign of life and regeneration, like the first flowers of spring. But the Spanish conquistadors who marched into Tenochtitlan in saw them differently.
These skulls are meant to show the joy and happy memories you remember when you think of a lost loved one. It was seven years later that what remained of his body was disinterred and returned to the capital by a particularly devout and adventurous monk. While such removal was streamlined somewhat over the centuries, it still remained a momentous undertaking.
This time, the corpse was salted, wrapped in waxed cloth, and sealed into a stitched-up cowhide to save the noses of those who bore his bones. As such powerful markers of death, the medieval bones could also be made into more fantastical things.
Writing in the early 15th century, his poetry formed a central part of an emerging late medieval interest in the macabre. But rather than presenting his poem as a mournful lament, Lydgate goes on to extract broader moral ammunition from this supposedly ghastly situation.
The piece continues as a tragicomic rumination on the power of dying, phrased through a series of unfolding dialogues between people of different social status—from an Emperor and King down to a laborer and a child—with a strange, skeletal personification of Death, who beckons them in turn to dance. To the modern mind, a poem like this or the many surviving medieval artworks depicting frolicking skeletons and gruesome skulls can all feel rather graphic.
They encourage us to presume that the medieval past was unrelentingly grim, with the bones meeting the eye uncomfortably often.
But mediated by a firm belief in religious afterlives and the strong healing power of medicine, these representations would be unlikely to have had the same shocking impact on their original owners as they have on us. True, there is no doubt that medieval bones were morbid things, irrevocably associated with death, the pain of grief, the sorrow of mourning.
But to see this as a backwards medieval obsession is wrong. More apparent to medieval men and women would have been the sophisticated range of ways one could approach bones: fearful yes, but also respectful, hopeful , even playful — much like our Halloween decorations today.
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