Man is afraid of not only of sex: there is also death.

Deliberately provocative title, connecting us to a topic approached a few articles ago (for those wishing to resume the speech from the beginning: https://www.gooseart.info/en/post/pleasure-ennobles-man-art-eroticism-society ) in reference to the fact that the human being, despite the "progress" he has made it, seems to prove a sort of fear of his own free expression.

Let's face it, man is terrified of freedom, but he does not want to admit it and for this reason he is angry at those who try to live it or to represent it. It's a story at least as old as the world. By the means of this article, we want to bite more than we can chew, or better said to put gasoline on the fire. The choice of the most pleasing expression is yours.

So: I think that death is a taboo at least as powerful as sex, perhaps more. Death is something inevitable, very democratically it affects everyone sooner or later. Perhaps because of its character of inevitability, and for the mystery that lies within and behind it, it is somehow removed from the list of topics to be represented or talked about.

This is how it is perceived by the common "morality", but art is known, not infrequently it makes a mockery of popular sensitivity and tries to go beyond, to open doors that many would like to close forever. For centuries art, has entered death, and never ceases to scandalize. No matter what cultural level is supposed to have been reached, death is still something scary (perhaps today more than in the past?) and artistic representations mirror us.

The magnificent Caravaggio, "David and Goliath" (in all versions 1599, 1607 and 1610) with that head detached from the body, caused a scandal, so true. So dead.

More than 100 years before, we were scandalized (and moved) at the sight of the Dead Christ by Mantegna (dated between 1470 and 1483), so pale, so dead, he too. And between these two masterpieces, rivers of works, paintings, sculptures, dull looks, bodies have flown. The subjects of so much art are so cold and motionless that part of human sensitivity would like to cover so as not to see, no matter if magnificently represented by geniuses of art of every age.

There are things we don't want to see, and art shows us. What do we do? Do we look at it?

Do we, inhabitants of the contemporary age, or as many say "post-contemporary", we who are so "ahead", are we able to look death in the face? Is Antoine Wiertz's outdated work "L'inumation precipitée" (1854) easily accessible today?

One thing is certain, the dialogue continues, like a ritual that repeats itself endlessly: art shows death, and the viewer must deal with it (and should do so even if he did not look). The "game" works even without corpses, think of "Little electric chair" (1963) by Andy Warhol, whose evocative charge is a wave that hits everyone's smile.

As much as one can pose as people of exquisitely artistic interest, it is difficult not to feel a lump in the throat in front of the images of Desiree Dolron, her photographic portraits (strongly post-produced reaching pictorial effects) of young lives finished, in the true sense of the term. Paleness is plentiful on the lifeless bodies of his slender figures.

A monographic article on art and death could occupy me all my life! This overview is enough to make us reflect on the permanence of something ancient that dominates and surpasses us. Eternal dynamics such as the life-death relationship that try to manifest themselves in the space of art, often creating transformative shocks, perhaps evolutionary.

The author of these ancient words was for sure of evolved conscience, but still unattainable for many, including me: "The evil, therefore, that most frightens us, death, is nothing for us, because when we are there, she is not there, and when she is there we are no longer there": Letter on happiness to Meneceus, III century BC.

So, let's open our eyes, look up and admire the art that tells this phenomenon in which we all participate. Sooner or later.

Miriam Fusconi