Art and Death (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781845116637)

This highly sensitive and beautifully written book looks closely at the way contemporary Western artists negotiate death, both as personal experience and in the wider community. Townsend discusses but moves beyond the 'spectacle of death' in work by artists such as Damien Hirst to see how mortality - in particular the experience of other people's death - brings us face to face with profound ethical and even political issues. He looks at personal responses to death in the work of artists as varied as Francis Bacon, Tracey Emin and Derek Jarman, whose film 'Blue' is discussed here in depth. Exploring the last body of work by the the Kentucky-based photographer Ralph Eugene Meatyard, and Jewish American installation artist Shimon Attie's powerful memorial work for the community of Aberfan, Townsend considers death in light of the injunction to 'love they neighbour'.

Author: Chris Townsend
ISBN-10: 1845116631
ISBN-13: 9781845116637
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Language: English
Published: 08/01/2008
Pages: 168
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 8.10h x 5.70w x 0.50d