Death in Art

A few weeks ago I visited the Dutch Masters exhibit at the met. It was an impressive collection, though I have to admit that art from the 1600 doesn’t entirely seduce me- however I do find it fairly interesting. One work that caught me attention was Pieter Claesz “Still Life with a skull and Writing Quill”. It is a traditional Dutch, vanitas still-life exploring the popular theme of the transient nature of life. Conventional symbols are used to represent death, as a reminder of its inevitability, as well as the brevity of life, and the futility of pleasure.

It was painted in 1628, known as the age of Rembrandt, where artists, philosophers, and laymen were all very well acquainted with the fact of death. Death was more abundant; with less medical knowledge and unhealthy lifestyles people died earlier and more frequently. For this reason philosophy and religion also played a larger and more influential part in everyday life. Today, with the surge in medical knowledge and technology we seem to suppress the reality of death. It becomes a concept that we choose to edit from our daily thought, causing us to feel increasingly immortal. This is even reflected in the art world, as subtle depictions of death are sparse. In their place, we see unrealistic and overly dramatic visualizations of death in the media, which only makes death seem more artificial. Pieter Claesz work “Still Life with a Skull and Writing Quill” may seem metaphorically simple, but today it serves as an unexpected reminder of the simplicity of the universal quality of death.