A Personal Interpretation of the Human Condition and its Associated Memories as an Inspirational Starting Point for Art

A thesis submitted as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Fine Arts

Mark L. Combs

University of Nevada Reno

Spring 2019

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A Personal Interpretation of the Human Condition and its Associated Memories as an Inspirational Starting Point for Art

INTRODUCTION

The human condition provides characteristics, key events, and situations, which define the essentials of human existence. Birth, growth, emotionality, aspiration, conflict, injury, healing, death, and mortality are all examples. These experiences are all part of what makes humans human. All of these thoughts, feelings, and events can be reflected upon through memory. A military medical career forced me to confront virtually every human condition imaginable, something so challenging that I had to bury my own humanity in order to survive it. My art practice has been pushing and pulling through the events of my life using memories to explore the array of conditions on a basilar level; essentially breaking down my past to rediscover humanity and move forward. By creating sculptures that reflect upon the grim reality of death, I hope to remind people to live their lives now. My artworks intentionally invite viewers to confront their own humanness and consider how ideas of mortality influence how we live. Ultimately my work aspires to make positive changes in our approach to death. This thesis speaks to how I approach these ideas in theory and how I employ the use of materials, finish and presentation from concept to final artworks. It articulates why the human condition and memories are the driving force behind my art practice.

BIOGRAPHY

People are a product of the environments they grow up in. The American people have collectively broken up the country into regions: the East Coast, West Coast, the South and the Mid-West. Often people can be identified regionally in the United States by their accents. We know from studies that statistically people on the West Coast are more liberal and East Coast citizens are more conservative. It is also known that just because you come from a certain region does not make you a part of that statistic. Where we live, whom we associate with and often times our socioeconomic backgrounds define a portion of who we are. This is part of a personal evolutionary Combs 3 process. As people move, their environments transform and their thinking often shifts with the fluctuating circumstances of their new places in life. With this in mind, I find it fundamental to consider an artist’s history as context for considering their artistic creations. It can be significantly informative to reflect upon who an artist is, their background and where they are have come from in order to understand their perspectives. This following brief biography offers insights into me as a person and is intended to inform the reader with enough of my history to enrich the ideas presented about my practice. Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, my formative years were spent on the edges of a blue-collar town, a suburb where most children’s parents worked for the Boeing Aircraft Company and commuted to work. I have always been creative and began drawing a very early age. When classes became a choice, there was always some form of art in my schedule. After high school, I enrolled in a fashion-focused program at a nearby community college, ultimately wanting to develop my knowledge and artistic skills into a career in design. It was not long before I discovered I was on the wrong track, and not at the right school. After finding and being accepted to the appropriate school, I realized that it was beyond my reach and I could not afford it. A week later I met with the United States Air Force Recruiter, three days later I took the entrance exam, and within a month I was on a plane to San Antonio, Texas for basic training. There were no plans beyond my enlistment. There was a six-year contract to fulfill before thinking about what was next. My entire adult life was dedicated to the military. From the ages of nineteen to forty-one I lived the life of a soldier, an Aerospace Medical Service Specialist, better known as a medic. I worked hard to balance my life with a wife and three children while serving in multiple war zones and eventually retiring with honors. The job was vast and required learning the hands-on skills and knowledge of various medical professionals and paraprofessionals. If you can think of a place inside of a hospital, I probably worked there: Intensive Care Unit (ICU), Emergency Room (ER), Labor and Delivery (L&D), Family Medicine, and Pediatrics to name a few. I was a trainer and certifier (one who certifies those in training), an educator, a mass casualty expert, and so on. I could start intravenous lines, perform wound care, evaluate trauma, give injections, complete Combs 4 minor medical procedures, respond to emergencies in ambulances, and provide clinical support. During those twenty-years of service, I saw birth, death, medical emergencies, psychological breaks, drug dependency, full body burns, stabbings, gunshot wounds, damage from explosives, starvation, malnutrition, physical abuse and many other deplorable things. I delivered babies and had people die under my hands during resuscitative efforts. I have zipped up more body bags than I care to count. It was one percent happiness and ninety-nine percent misery and sorrow. These incidents happened both here in America and in the war zones of the Gulf. People are a product of their environment; this was my experience, those are my memories, and that was my environment. It was my job to deal with extraordinary circumstances. How to deal with the emotions of my job was not addressed in the early part of my career; it was just a job. People did not recognize the potential issues this type of job could create. Even doctors, who had prepared with ridiculously intense internships, underestimated the effects of the job. In fact, doctors rarely reported psychiactric issues; they thought it would make them look weak and unable to perform their duties and passed this mentality to the support staff. Later, the “trauma” of working in “trauma” started to become a documented problem and programs were implemented to help. We had post-incident stress debriefings and support groups, but not in the beginning, not before it was too late. By the time I was learning to deal with things as they came up, to talk about issues, I had already stored hundreds of lost soul cases in a part of my memory that I never wanted to access again. I spent so much time learning and trying to be great at my job that understanding the impact of what I was doing never surfaced - until it did. My reality broke and re-manifested as deep-rooted depression, anxiety attacks, and sleep disturbances (a.k.a. nightmares). These conditions, in addition to some other pre-existing chronic medical conditions, made my life unlivable. I was no longer able to function at my job in a positive manner and ultimately forced into retirement. I shut down and my already limited personal communication skills became non-existent. What joy I had attained in the past was left behind. I began to flounder for the first time in my life. Combs 5

After retiring from the military, I worked as a contractor and simultaneously began a series of trials to find the right pharmaceutical combinations to help keep my medical issues at bay. After a year, my employment contract was not renewed and I found myself unemployed for the first time since I was thirteen years old. At this point, I had established that fifteen different medications were required to make my life survivable on a daily basis. For the next year, I just lived on a day-to-day basis. Eventually I felt compelled, mostly out of boredom, to do something more with my life. I enrolled at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas as an Art major and began what would lead me to rediscover who I am through art. After completing my Bachelors of Fine Arts degree at UNLV, I was accepted to the University of Nevada Reno’s Master of Fine Arts program.

CONNECTING MEMORY AND THE HUMAN CONDITION

Humans have been the subjects of studies since the beginning of documented science; this knowledge helped define what the human condition is. Theories of the human condition have been written from nearly every angle: science, politics, religion, art, medicine, philosophy, and psychology among others. The human condition is interesting because it can be used to analyze all aspects of life, from virtually every perspective, which indicates possible universal importance to all people. This “condition,” as it is called, offers a definition of what it means to be human, and it fulfills the need that almost everybody desires - answers. People want answers. We want to know why we feel the way we do, the reason behind the things we need, and literally what makes us tick. Everything we feel, everything we desire and everything we want are in one form or another linked to the human condition. It is such a vast subject that fields of study often present limited areas of focused inquiry and may never investigate beyond individual specific topics. Every area has its own set of theories, some of which are speculation while others are supported by fully documented scientific research. The point is that when we talk about the human condition we can speak about it as a whole, or we can break it down into distinct areas of interest. The areas of interest that push me to create art include what many see as the negative side of the human condition: trauma, death and mortality. These experiences may physically occur or may manifest psychologically as fears, Combs 6 reflections, and/or observations. Whether physical or psychological, our experiences of trauma, death, and mortality can and often are revisited through personal memories. Memories and how they work form a significant basis of my art work.

MEMORIES, HOW THEY ARE USED AND WORK

Memories function as learning tools, coping mechanisms and sources of inspiration. Many of us learn by doing. We save the memories of the things we’ve done that have been beneficial or harmful; we remember the good and the bad and often learn by trial and error. This process becomes a basis of knowledge. The more memories we generate, the broader base we have to draw from. Memories come from our earliest moments in childhood and continue to grow as we age until at some point we reach a state of regression and begin to forget. The fact is that memories are fallible, they are subject to suggestion and can even be manufactured or engineered. Historically, we have seen the latter in instances like the Salem Witch Trials, or the McMartin Preschool case of the late ’80s, studied by Elaine Showalter. In her book Hystories, Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media, Showalter explains the case included “innocent adults who were falsely imprisoned on the basis of children’s suggested “memories” of often lurid and theatrical sexual abuse. In the wake of these accusations, investigators demonstrated that false or altered memories of events, even very traumatic ones, can be endorsed as “real” by otherwise normal people.”1 What is noteworthy is that some memories are real while some may have been manufactured. If a memory remains ingrained, it is somehow important to us as individuals. It becomes part of our base knowledge. This information, whether true or false, has become our own. Memories are complex and create the foundation of our personal existence. Without memories, we are just empty corporal beings.

1 Showalter, Elaine. Hystories, Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media. Columbia University Press. 1998. Combs 7

WHAT ABOUT MEMORY

What stays with us, and why? Arguably, we will forget more things than we will ever remember. What we remember is often a product of repetition and/or situation. By repetition, I’m saying that a thing like names, job duties and math are likely to become so habitual that we forget they are a function of memory. Physical stimulus and pain are also excellent motivators to retain memories. When referring to situational memories, I am talking about incidents that are so emotionally charged that they are forever etched in our minds. The death of loved ones, injuries, the birth of a child, or monumental events such as the assassination of John F. Kennedy or the incidents of 9/11 are examples. Memories like these are so strong they become impossible to forget and can cause undue psychological stress. For me personally, those types of memories have manifested into Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which I do not consider a hindrance but an inspiration. Renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks refers to the process of how he believes people use memories and continue to build their own personal databases:

Indifference to source allows us to assimilate what we read, what we are told, what others say and think and write and paint, as intensely and richly as if they were primary experiences. It allows us to see and hear with other eyes and ears, to enter into other minds, to assimilate the art and science and religion of the whole culture, to enter into and contribute to the common mind, the general commonwealth of knowledge. This sort of sharing and participation, this communion, would not be possible if all our knowledge, our memories, were tagged and identified, seen as private, exclusively ours. Memory is dialogic and arises not only from direct experience but also from the intercourse of many minds.2

2 Popova, Maria. Neurologist Oliver Sacks on Memory, Plagiarism, and the Necessary Forgettings of Creativity. Brain Pickings. February 14, 2013. Accessed on December 1, 2018 at https://www.brainpickings.org /2013/02/04 oliver-sacks-on-memory-and-plagiarism/. Combs 8

Though this quote is not directly speaking about art, it points out that “Memory is dialogic,” meaning that it is dialogue based. I believe art should be a dialogue, meant to create conversations, often designed to evoke visceral verbal responses, an “intercourse of many minds,” as Dr. Sacks put it. “Memory is never a precise duplicate of the original... it is a continuing act of creation,” as researcher Rosalind Cartwright states in her treatise on the science of dreams.3 Memory and art go hand in hand, as both are acts of creation.

CONNECTING ART TO MEMORIES

Art is often the reflection of memories. Historically speaking, many paintings were rendered from the memories of artists or taken from the passages of historical documents, which are collections of beliefs and/or memories. We even create art as “memorials.” Some of these memorials are well-respected representations of a moment in time. Others are emotionally charged like Miya Lin’s 1982 Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C., which is well known and beloved now but, when proposed it, created quite a stir (Image 1). Lin’s memorial piece is an architectural marvel that placed the names of American soldiers that died during an unpopular war on cold dark slabs of stone. Though American born to Chinese immigrant parents, many people protested, not because they did not like the design, but because the artist was Asian. They did not see her as an American. The controversy surrounding the building of the memorial were instigated by people’s ideas and memories of the war that had concluded only nine years prior. The Vietnam War was not popular. it was technically not actually a war, but a “police action” which limited the actions soldiers could take. In the end, it was the Vietnam Veteran who took the brunt of Americans’ dissatisfaction with the war, which further added to the controversy. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall was designed by an Asian artist to remember those who had fallen in an Asian country during a war that was unpopular among the American people. Independently studied, many would conclude that it was pure racism that caused the controversy. Racism is a

3 Popova, Maria. Pg. 1. Combs 9 learned trait. Simply stated, memories created the dispute over the memorial. Even the official Vietnam Veterans War Memorial website confirms the controversy by officially stating:

Several weeks after the announcement, a handful of people began to protest the design. A few of the most vocal opponents, including James Webb and H. Ross Perot, had previously been strong supporters of a memorial. They complained about the walls being black. They did not like the idea that it was below ground level. They did not like its minimalist design. They felt it was a slap in the face to those who had served because it did not contain traditional symbols honoring service, courage, and sacrifice. Some opponents simply did not like the fact that Lin was a young student, a woman, and of Asian descent; how in the world could she possibly know how to honor the service of the Vietnam veteran?

Then, in October 1980, veteran and lawyer Tom Carhart, also a former supporter, testified before the Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) against the design, saying that “One needs no artistic education to see this design for what it is, a black trench that scars the Mall. Black walls, the universal color of shame and sorrow and degradation.”4

Lin’s memorial is an example of how associations and memories can be powerful when presented in an artistic format. Controversy was seemingly unavoidable due to the subject matter; however, Lin’s design was ultimately successful and allows many thousands of people to reflect on their lives, reflect on the significant loss of life, and remember their loved ones.

4 Excerpted from: Never Forget: The Story Behind the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, published in 2008. Updated in 2016 by VVMF on http://www.vvmf.org/the- controversy. Accessed on November 15, 2018. Combs 10

HISTORICAL USE OF IMAGERY TO CREATE MEMORIES

Further back in history, art was used to specifically influence public opinion. The church commissioned art depicting scenes from the bible to reach the illiterate masses of people and move them towards religion. The images of choice were often scenes of death, dying and hellish landscapes playing on the natural fears in order to socially engineer the population. For example, Saint Michael Fighting the Dragon, 1498 (Image 2) is a woodblock print depicting a description from the Book of Revelations (12:7-9): “There was war in the sky. Michael and his angels made war on the dragon. The dragon and his angels made war. The great dragon was thrown down, the old serpent, he who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. He was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.”5 The painting presents an image about the apocalypse which was made to remind people to repent before the world ends, otherwise, they will go to hell. This type of art imagery utilizes the fear of death as a motivator. It is a classic depiction of good vs. evil where good triumphs and sets the example for the rest of humanity to follow, or at least those who are biblically inspired. This painting and others like it could be considered one of the earliest attempts at social engineering due to the way it was used and its intended audience. Similarly, the Dance of Death, a medieval allegorical concept that was often the subject of art and poetry also employed a good vs. evil theme. A series of artworks has been compiled in the book entitled “Dance of Death,”i by Frances Douce, Esq. F.A.S. It features artwork created by Hans Holbein, a talented German painter and printmaker; the art work is featured prominently in Douce’s extended essay. The first paragraph of chapter one explains the use of “Death” in the imagery:

The manner, in which the poets and artists of antiquity have symbolized Death, has excited considerable discussion; and the various opinions of Lessing, Herder and Klotz and other controversialists, have only tended to demonstrate that the

5 Hall, Cynthia. “Before the Apocalypse: German Prints and Illustrated Books, 1400- 1500”. Harvard University Art Museums Bulletin, 4(2), Pg 9. Combs 11

ancients adopted many different modes to accomplish this purpose. Some writers have maintained that they exclusively represented Death as a mere skeleton; whilst others have contended that this figure, so frequently to be found upon gems and sepulcher monuments, was never intended to personify the extinction of human life, but only as a simple abstract representation.6

The interesting portion of this excerpt is that it explains, in the context of the 1890’s, it was never intended to directly represent Death as a person. However, the artwork in the book does, in fact, depict Death in many forms. “The Judge” (Image 3) for example, depicts a court scene where the judge is about to hand out a sentence. Death is lurking just behind the Judge, with his hands on his shoulders as if guiding the decision. The idea that the fear of death is guiding our actions is introduced here. The church, writers, and artists recognized that death was a powerful subject, one universally recognized by the vast majority of audiences. As a result, themed artworks were being produced which capitalized on this idea. Memento mori, a Latin phrase meaning “remember that you will die,” was not only a medieval Latin Christian theory, but an art movement as well.7 The simple memento mori phrase became the subject of paintings, sculpture, jewelry, poems, and song; it even made its way into people’s everyday lives in the form of tableaus, which were often commemorated in still life paintings. Jacques Linard (1597-1645) a French Baroque painter who specialized in still life compositions produced Vanitas 1644 (Image 4)8, a prime example of a memento mori tableau rendered in paint. Common themes in memento mori art include human skulls and/or bones as a symbol of death, flowers for the beauty in life, and candles or clocks to signify that life has a limited time span. Through the use of this imagery, bones became a common visual link to death in art. This recurring element became ingrained in the style and viewers began to recognize its symbolic importance. Clearly this isn’t the only

6 Douce, Francis Esq. F.A.S. Dibden, Frognall. “Holbein’s Dance of Death and Holbein’s Bible Cuts.” George Bell and Sons. London. 1890. 7 Oxford English Dictionary, Third Edition, June 2001. 8 Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum. https://www.museothyssen.org /en/collection /artists/linard-jacques. Accessed on November 15, 2018. Combs 12 reason people associate bones with death; however, memento mori became the foundation for future use by other artists working with themes of death. Memento mori is a reflection on mortality, something that continuously reoccurs within my own art practice.ii I utilize the imagery of bones to reference death, but also to recall the basic meaning of memento mori: remember that you will die. I use it not as a grim reminder that death is coming, but as a reminder to live our lives. After all, death is inevitable so there is no point in putting energy into the thought of it when we could be spending it on something else.

CONNECTING DEATH, MORTALITY AND DECISION MAKING TO MY ART PRACTICE

During research in both my undergraduate and graduate programs, I realized that the majority of my artwork had ties to death and dying and/or trauma and healing. I was using my experiences in the military to create visual representations of these conditions without recognizing the tie between them. Death and mortality became a focal point of my continuing research, which inadvertently lead me to reflect upon my own conditions as a reason for my pursuit of the memento mori artistic style and genre. The research developed into a study of how death and dying had been depicted in art throughout history, how these ideas affect the human condition, and ultimately how they inform the content and meaning I am trying to convey in my artwork. Inevitably when one begins to research death, there is one prominent academic who is routinely mentioned, Ernest Becker. Becker was one of the most prolific chroniclers of death writing about how humans deal with death, how it changes them, and how death is used as a motivator. One of the first things Becker establishes is that death is a learned experience, it is a human condition which is developed through memory. In Becker’s text, The Denial of Death he sums up what he calls “The Healthy- Minded Argument.” Becker writes about how children learn to fear death, a feeling which is then carried into adulthood:

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There are “healthy-minded” persons who maintain that fear of death is not a natural thing for man, that we are not born with it. An increasing number of careful studies on how the actual fear of death develops in the child agree fairly well that the child has no knowledge of death until about the age of three to five. How could he? It is too abstract of an idea, too removed from his experience. He lives in a world that is full of living, acting things, responding to him, amusing him, feeding him. He doesn’t know what it means for life to disappear forever, nor theorize where it would go. Only gradually does he recognize that there is a thing called death that takes some people away forever; very reluctantly he comes to admit that it sooner or later takes everyone away, but this gradual realization of the inevitability of death can take up until the ninth or tenth year.9

In what Becker calls “The Morbidity-Minded” argument he begins to discuss how death alters human behavior:

A large body of people would agree with these observations on early experiences and would admit that experiences may heighten natural anxieties and later fears, but these people would also claim very strongly that nevertheless the fear of death is natural and is present in everyone, that it is a basic fear that influences all others, a fear from which no one is immune, no matter how disguised it might be.10

Becker’s research borrowed largely from various theorists including psychoanalyst Gregory Zilboorg, even though Becker states his theories were documented several decades prior. Becker quotes Zilboorg as saying:

“That most people think death fear is absent because it rarely shows its true face; but he argues that underneath all appearances fear of death is universally present: For behind the sense of insecurity in the face of danger, behind the

9 Becker, Ernest. “The Denial of Death.” The Free Press. Macmillan Publishing Co. Inc., New York. 1973. Pg. 13. 10 Becker, 15. Combs 14

sense of discouragement and depression, there always lurks the basic fear of death, a fear which undergoes most complex elaborations and manifests itself in many indirect ways…No one is free of the fear of death…the anxiety neuroses, the various phobic states, even a considerable number of depressive suicidal states and many schizophrenias amply demonstrate the ever-present fear of death which becomes woven into the major conflicts of the given psychopathological conditions…We may take for granted that the fear of death is always present in our mental functioning.”11

Zilboog’s statement further reinforces the belief that fear, specifically the fear of death can and does alter our way of thinking, can change our course of actions, and literally is the cause of multiple mental disorders. The early theories conceived by Becker and Zilboorg have lead to a modern version of how death motivates the human race, this concept is known as the “Terror Management Theory” (TMT). Terror Management Theory, or TMT as described by Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski authors of “The Worm at the Core; On the Role of Death in Life” is described as a continuation of Becker’s theories about death as a motivating factor in human behavior.12 Similar to Becker, the authors explain that once we are aware of our own existence, we become aware of death as well. They state, “This awareness of death is the downside of human intellect.”13 Their theory defines the fear of death as terror, and terror is what they believe is the underlying motivator for human behavior.

Terror is the natural and generally adaptive response to imminent threat of death. All mammals, including humans, experience terror. When an impala sees a lion about to pounce on her, the amygdala in her brain passes signals to her limbic system, triggering a fight, flight, or freezing response. A similar process happens

11 Becker, 15-16. 12 Soloman, Sheldon; Greenberg, Jeff. Pyszczynski, Thomas A. “The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life.” Random House. New York. 2015. 13 Soloman, Sheldon and Greenberg, 7. Combs 15

with us (humans). Whenever we feel mortally threatened – by a car spinning out of control, a knife wielding mugger, a tightening of the chest, a suspicious lump, extreme turbulence on an air plane, a suicide bomber exploding in a crowd – the feeling of terror consumes us; we are driven to fight, flee or freeze (commonly known as the fight or flight response). Panic ensues.

And here’s the really tragic part of our condition: only we humans, due to our enlarged and sophisticated neocortex, can experience this terror in the absence of looming danger. Our death “waits like an old roué,” as the great Belgian songwriter Jacques Brel noted, lurking in the psychological shadows. This realization threatens to put us in a persistent state of existential fear.14

This theory indicates that we can imagine a threat and cause a response within our bodies. This lays the groundwork for human behavior and how humans respond to external stimulus whether it is real or imagined. In essence, it is the way we handle the terror that alters our behaviors:

We humans all manage the problem of knowing we are mortal by calling on two basic psychological resources. First, we need to sustain faith in our cultural worldviewiii, which imbues our sense of reality with order, meaning, and permanence. Although we typically take our cultural worldview for granted, it is actually a fragile human construction that people spend great energy creating, maintaining, and defending. Since we’re constantly on the brink of realization that our existence is precarious, we cling to our culture’s governmental, educational, and religious institutions and rituals to buttress our view of human life as uniquely significant and eternal.

But we don’t just need to view life in general this way; we need to view our own life this way. The paths to literal and symbolic immortality laid out by our

14 Soloman, Sheldon and Greenberg, 7. Combs 16

worldviews require us to feel that we are valuable members of our cultures. Hence, the second vital resource for managing terror is a feeling of personal significance, commonly known as self-esteem.15

These above passages from Soloman, Sheldon and Greenberg reinforce two previous ideas I raised earlier on. The fear of death is a motivating factor in human decision- making and humans are products of their environments. When one combines the substance of the memento mori genre with the elements of TMT, one can begin to understand the content and meaning I am conveying through my art.

PERSONAL GROWTH AS AN ARTIST: UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT

As an undergraduate college student, I did not take my artwork seriously until I entered my final year when I began to evaluate what it was that I was trying to represent, who the audience was I was trying to reach, and most of all, why I was pursuing art? In my earliest work, I had been exploring my emotions and how to convey them to the audience. Eventually I pursued imagery that not only represented how I was feeling, but began to reflect on the larger themes of death and mortality. I wanted to broaden my ideas and communicate them in such a way that the audience could relate to the subject, not from my perspective, but from their own. For my BFA thesis exhibition, I created and displayed a triptych of bones resting on coffin-sized plinths representing three patients I had provided emergency medical care to while serving in war zones. All three patients ultimately died (Image 5). The memory of these people and their cases, all strangers to me, had a significant impact on my mental health. This exhibition was my earliest attempt at expressing how I felt personally as well as trying to invite people to reflect upon their experiences and ideas of death as well as contemplating their own mortality.

15 Soloman, Sheldon and Greenberg, 10. Combs 17

PERSONAL GROWTH AS AN ARTIST: GRADUATE STUDENT

When I entered graduate school, I was on a high, I had recently graduated with my BFA, my artwork had been selected for inclusion in an international art competition, and I was embarking on what I knew to be the final step in my formal education. What I didn’t expect was that relocating to a new city and environment, along with the challenges of beginning graduate school, would put me into a non-functioning state of mind. I went to classes when I had to, but that is all I could manage to do. A change in medications complicated my issues and I became more depressed. I began to binge eat in response to the boredom my withdrawn state had caused. In retrospect, I was terrified with what lay ahead. It took time, but eventually after the worst three months of my academic career, and forty pounds, I began to gain a foothold. I forged ahead and continued to develop and evolve my concepts in relationship to trauma and healing and death and mortality. I also continued to gain insight into my creative practice and the overarching concept of using personal experience and history as the basis for communicating larger ideas.

SIMILARITIES TO CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS

My work began to evolve; I began to emote through my work on a more conscious level, much like South American sculptor Doris Salcedo. I was beginning to create three-dimensional representations of my personal experiences. Similarly, Salcedo created works based on her life and tragedy in Columbia. Her journey began with a series of works entitled Atrabiliarios (1991-1996) (Image 6). Having just returned to Columbia from abroad in 1985, she witnessed the results of a guerilla occupation in the Palace of Justice in Bogota. In response, she began to create. As Salcedo put it:

The violence that ensued ended in a horrific tragedy. It was something I witnessed for myself. It was not just a visual memory, but a terrible recollection of the smell of the torched building with human beings inside…it left its marks on me. I to conceive of works based on nothing, in the sense of having nothing and Combs 18

of there being nothing. But how was I going to make a material object from nothing? So I began rummaging through waste, and Third World waste is extreme like our reality. I retrieved a number of discarded objects from a hospital in Bogota and begun to produce works from them.16iv

She further explains:

Atrabiliarios was based upon the experience of people who went missing. When a beloved person disappears, everything becomes impregnated with that person’s essence. Every single object but also every single space is a reminder of his or her absence, as if absence were stronger than presence. Not a single space is left untouched, and there isn’t a single area of one’s life left untainted by sorrow. This mark of pain is so deeply inscribed in the expectancies of victims’ families that what I did was almost a literal transportation of their feelings to a real space. Furthermore, it was vital to construct the work in spatial terms, to act as a meeting point for those of us who lived through such ordeals. The experience had to be taken to a collective space, away from the anonymity of private experiences.17

Salcedo was working with and from her memories of the horrors she witnessed, rendering them through the eyes of the victims, but insisting she was not herself a victim. Internally, she felt her own experiences were valid, but she believed the plight of the victims was being ignored. She felt the issues and incidents surrounding the casualties and survivors should be known to the world. Salcedo shared those concerns using sculpture to communicate them. Her work generated controversy and conversation by bringing to light life in a Third World country, making political statements of tragedies common in South America.

16 Carlos Basualdo, Andreas Huyssen, and Nancy Princenthal. “Doris Salcedo.” Phaidon Press Limited. New York, NY. 2000. Pg. 14. 17 Carlos Basualdo, Andreas Huyssen, and Nancy Princenthal. Pg. 16. Combs 19

REFLECTING ON MY WORK, HALFWAY THROUGH THE MFA

During my research into Doris Salcedo’s art practice, I realized I was working in a similar line of thought. For my exhibition imperCEIVABLE PERmanence, I used memories of my own first-hand experiences of treating victims of trauma and monitoring their healing processes as the basis for creating constructs that represented those events. I collected damaged, dented, and twisted car parts, physically highlighted the damage, and then tangibly constructed a mesh overlay of welded rods to represent new tissues generated during the healing process (Images 7-15). The various rods used in the eight pieces presented in the exhibition created a layer or a space between the damage and trauma to the auto body pieces. The newly created layers were referencing an imaginary healing process. The negative space is a visual representation of how victims of trauma may physically appear to be healed but still have underlying damage. The exhibition was specifically curated for the gallery space and arranged throughout the gallery to create a progressive story. Much like the function of cells in a comic book, the pieces worked in conjunction to develop a narrative. It was a revelation for me, finally comprehending that I had been using my memories to construct dialogues in order to interact with my audience. I had been taming the images of death and trauma from “Rated R” to “Rated PG” for public consumption, but recognizing what I was actually doing started to change how I was thinking about my approach to future creations. As Dr. Oliver Sacks put it, “We (now) know that memories are not fixed or frozen, like Proust’s jars of preserves in a larder, but are transformed, disassembled, reassembled, and re-categorized with every act of recollection.”18 This is what I was doing, taking my memories, re-contextualizing them and presenting them in as artistic manner as possible in an effort to say something to my viewers. The full intentionality of my visualizations may not have been obvious to my viewers, but my new found understanding of my practice allowed me to begin bridging the gap between my personal experience and what I was really trying to address, mortality and the human condition.

18 Popova, Maria. Pg. 3. Combs 20

WHY I DO WHAT I DO

Humans are a product of their environments; my environment forced me to set aside my humanity as a means of survival. I had to take my horrific memories, what I now use as source material, and bury them as deep as possible so that I could function on a daily basis. When I ultimately lost my grip, when my memories erupted, I began to mentally change my perspective. Therapy and medication allowed me to gain some control, but I was clearly a different person, somebody I did not know. My environment had changed and I felt that I needed to seek my lost humanity. I needed to allow myself to regress in order to regain the control I once had. Understanding it was not possible for me to become who and what I once was was difficult to deal with but I slowly started to evolve. Reducing the medications, which had neutralized my emotions, was a major step for me. It allowed me to feel again, something I needed to have the capacity to do if I wanted to use art as a tool for expressing ideas and emotions to others. I am a product of what I once experienced. I know it is impossible for me to go back to being who I was before those events occurred. It is because of those experiences that I want to remind people of who they are. To invite others to confront what is happening in their lives right now, not file it away where it can do greater damage in the future. I want people to live while they still have the time and ability to do so. I am attempting to inspire these behaviors through my art work.

MY DESIRES TO FOR US TO CONTEMPLATE OUR HUMANITY

Each successive year progress and technology have changed the way people live their lives. We went from a predominantly physical society to one where physicality is the exception. Technological advances have allowed for prosperity and leisure time. Having leisure time means we need things to fill those gaps no longer taken up with physical labor and time-consuming jobs. For example, fewer people are harvesting or producing their own foods; people buy things at the grocery store, which saves time over producing it themselves adding even more leisure time. An influx of technology Combs 21 has also changed our existence including: radio, television, computers, video games, cell phones and the internet. The World Wide Web paved the way to connectivity; computers and smartphones are now fully integrated into our social lives. We no longer have to talk to communicate. We now have digitial platforms to express ourselves whether anyone is listening or not. Our humanity is being diminished to the digital revolution. What was once a novelty has become a necessity in our lives regardless if it truly is necessary. Many people believe social media can bring them some kind of elevated social status, and in some cases it clearly does. However, my response to that is asking what good is status if in the process we become afraid to walk out the door, if we lose the ability to actually talk to a real person face to face? When I say people are losing their humanity, it is because we are wittnessing technology replacing personal, face-to-face human contact, something deemed as one of the six essential human needs. Based on Maslow’s original Hierarchy of Human Needs19, the modern theory states, “Adults require connection (physical or emotional) with other humans to release certain hormones like oxytocin. Human touch is so important that when we are young, our brains won’t develop correctly without it. Regular connection to others allows us to maintain a sense of well being that allows for self care.”20 Hypothetically, technology can ruin our social lives. “Without human connection we do not produce oxytocin, a hormone associated with empathy, trust, sexual activity and relationship building.”21 By extending our use of technology we are removing ourselves from others, creating a barrier between others and ourselves. Theoretically, this would reduce the production of oxytocin in the body, and inhibit our ability to empathize with others and/or form bonds based on trust which further inhibits our relationships. I want to invite people to re-examine their lives by reflecting on their

19 Maslow, A.H. “A Theory of Human Motivation.” Psychological Review. 50(4):370-96. 1943. 20 Gravagna, Nicole, PhD. “Six Fundamental Human Needs We Need To Meet to Live Our Best Lives.” February 5, 2018 Viewed on https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora /2018/02/05/six-fundamental-human-needs-we-need-to-meet-to-live-our-best- lives/#2524720d344a on January 13, 2019. 21 MacGill, Markus. “What is the link between love and oxytocin.” Medical News Today. www.medicalnewstoday.com. September 4, 2017. Combs 22 own humanity. I want us to realize the things we are laying aside, through our use of technology, are more valuable than we may possibly imagine.

CONCEPTS, INSPIRATIONS, TOOLS, AND MATERIALS

Having explained the theory behind my thinking and forming the basis of my art practice allows me to expand on how I engage an audience. I design artwork to communicate ideas, translating my memories into a tool others can use to question and investigate their own humanity. I want to spawn both internal and external dialogues with my audience. The artworks I construct, how I craft them, and what they are made from raises content and meaning and helps me deliver a message. Materials are often discussed as contributing to the visual aspects of artistic pieces, but the processes involved in the construction of a work are often overlooked. Beyond, “I wonder how he made that,” a work’s fabrication is often left out of the discussion as if it is irrelevant. With many art forms, “how its made” is implied, however with sculpture in particular, how something is made can dramatically influence what the piece means. I want viewers to consider the intensity of the processes artists employ. People should contemplate the incredible effort some artists put into their profession because it can have meaning. Many artists live precariously through their art, and I am no different. My chosen processes are physically intense. When I am in the studio, I work until my body no longer allows me to work, ending my days with intense muscle spasms and dehydration. Death is rarely painless, but neither is living, especially when your obsession is so physically and mentally intense that you will not stop the process, even to fulfill your basic needs. The objects I form literally cause me pain and suffering. I believe this physical exertion allows me to portray my subject in an honest way. The processes I employ are intense because the materials I am drawn to require a certain brute physicality to manipulate. In some instances, it is surprising how severe and demanding the manipulation really is. My primary choice of material is steel. It can be bent, hammered, welded, ground down, melted, sanded and polished, all of which bring about unique physical challenges and skill sets. In contrast to the hardness of the Combs 23 steel, I am currently using wool to enhance the look, feel and texture of the metal work that I am so significantly drawn to. I manually felt wool to graft it onto my steel forms. The needle felting process is not difficult to master but is time-consuming and manually exhausting. Felting requires basically two things, unprocessed wool and specialty felting needles which have tiny barbs pointing downward. To make an object I form the wool in a loose ball over an armature and stab into it with the felting needle over and over. Since the barb points down, when you push it in, it picks up the wool fibers and pushes them into the center of the mass. When the needle is pulled out is leaves those fibers in place, compacting it into the shape you want. This takes practice and thousands upon thousands of individual needle jabs. Although fiber arts is a common practice, it is rarely used in fine arts. I researched two individual artists that have provided inspiration, Paolo Del Toro and Stephanie Metz. The techniques I employ are similar to theirs, though vary depending on the form that is being created. Del Toro is a British born artist living in the United States, his website biography states: “He is best known for his bizarre, whimsical, and dreamlike creations made from foam and needle-felted wool, Paolo’s sculptures give viewers a glimpse of a world inspired by myths and fairytales, Jungian theory, and Gnosticism. Often influenced by outsider, tribal, and folk art, Paolo strives for a clean and pleasing resolution of form in each sculpture. By combining grotesque imagery with the softness felt, he uses his sculptures as a comment on the dichotomy of beauty and ugliness.” His work is colorful and filled with fantasy. Part of what draws me to his works is the scale he uses. His pieces are often over six feet in height. Though smaller, “Sofia Battles the Snake” 2016 is a foam core sculpture with a felted surface (Image 16).22 Stephanie Metz is the first artist I looked to when I started felting. Not because she was recommended, but as a result of a blind search for bone sculptures. What came up was a whimsical piece Metz created based on her imaginary response to what a teddy bear’s skull would look like. That specific

22 Del Toro, Paolo. Artists Biography. Viewed at https://paolopuck.com/about/ on January 13, 2019. Combs 24 artwork got my attention, but it was the rest of her work that held my interest. Her biography states, “(Metz)…creates biomorphic abstract sculpture that explores the tension created when opposing qualities coexist. She works primarily in wool and industrial felt to create detailed, complex, and mysterious forms that defy their humble origins. She lives and works in San Jose, California.”23 Metz describes her installation “Flesh and Bone,” (Image 17) as “a series of small studies and human-sized sculptures that reference parts of the body, from soft, weighty folds of flesh to the stripped down abstract architecture of bones. The features of each extreme – rigid, angular edges and plump creases and dimples – blend into each other in sort of logic that develops as I construct the piece and imagine the forces acting upon it.”24 Metz’s work has served as a visual inspiration. Using the skills I learned early on working with steel, and combining it with needle felted wool became a materials obsession that pushed me towards the visual and conceptual look and feel of the artworks in my thesis exhibition.

THESIS ART EXHIBITION; FROM IDEA TO INSTALLATION

The title of my thesis art exhibition is ”Sic Transit Gloria Mundi,” a Latin phrase meaning, “thus passes the glory of the world.” The history behind this expression and the hypothesized meaning behind the image on the Death Tarot card are what provided inspiration for the visual theme my exhibition follows. “Sic transit gloria mundi” is a sentence that is spoken during the coronation of a new Pope as he passes a specific point while walking down the center of the Sistine Chapel to the ceremonial pulpit. Flax is burned to represent the transitoriness of earthly glory. It was first used at the coronation of Alexander V in Pisa, 7 July 1409, but is earlier in origin. It may ultimately derive from ‘O quam cito transit gloria mundi [Oh how quickly the glory of the world passes away]’ in the De Imitatione Christi of Thomas à Kempis.25 In this context, it is a religious ceremony, where the Pope is being ritually

23 Metz, Stephanie. Artists Biography. Viewed at https://www.stephaniemetz.com/about/ on January 13, 2019. 24 Metz, Stephanie. https://www.stephaniemetz.com. 25 Knowles, Elizabeth. ed. The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable( Second ed.). Oxford University Press. 2005. Combs 25 elevated to a person who has a direct link to communicate with God. The statement is referring to the Pope as being “the glory of the world,” the one person who is worthy of that connection. My philosophy is not religious in nature. My viewpoint is derived from my own life experiences. To me, every person has the capability of being “the glory of the world.” When someone is dying, you can see both fear and reconciliation in their eyes, at times people die in mid-sentence uttering who knows what, but I have personally witnessed people praying during their deaths. It is because of that, that I believe that the glory of the world is the responsibility of every living person, hence its importance and relevance to my show. We make the world glorious through our actions. If everyone were to live a good, full and virtuous life, we would find our humanity, define ourselves, and wake each morning with the intention of living. Those of us living in this way will die without regret. On the other hand, those who live miserably, die miserably and likely full of regret. The Death Tarot card depicts a skeletal rider atop a horse riding past a prone king towards a religious figure surrounded by kneeling people. The “Death” image on the card has been in existence in various forms for centuries. Earliest iterations date back to 1440 or 1450 and were used for various card games26; however, most people associate the cards with divination or cartomancy.v Determining the future using a series of random cards drawn from a deck has a long history The first written information about this practice dates to the late 1700’s.27 I am more interested in the interpretation of the imagery than its application in cartomancy. According to Eden Gray, author of “A Complete Guide to the Tarot,” it is unlikely that this card actually represents a physical death. “Typically it implies an end, possibly of a relationship or interest, and therefore implies an increased sense of self- awareness—not to be confused with self-consciousness or any kind of self- diminishment.”28 Gray interprets this card as a change of thinking from an old way into a new way. “The horse Death is riding is stepping over a prone king, which symbolizes

26 Pratesi, Franco. "In Search of Tarot Sources." The Playing-Card. 41 (2): 100. 2012. 27 Dummett, Michael A. E; Mann, Sylvia. The game of Tarot: From Ferrara to Salt Lake City. Duckworth Publishers. University of California. 1980. 28 Gray, Eden. The Complete Guide to the Tarot. Bantam Books/Crown Publishing. New York, NY. 1970. Combs 26 how not even royalty can stop change.”29 My interpretation is not much different, though I consider it to be a reference to mortality and self-awareness, which is a very memento mori ideation. For my exhibition “Sic Transit Gloria Mundi,” I have coalesced these interpretations into the overall theme. The exhibition consists of three separate works. In the first work I combined steel with needle-felted wool to construct bone inspired sculptures. Two opposing materials presented in the construction of one object. Steel is cold and unyielding like the human body in death. Wool is often associated with warmth, protection and life. They are constructed in a symbiotic form much like yin and yang to create the memento mori-esque visual characteristics discussed earlier. These bone pieces, sixty in all, are displayed on pine planks slightly elevated above the floor creating a shadow beneath the display. The grid display is designed to be reminiscent of the classical layout of a traditional cemetery. The second work is a pair of digitalvideo projections, which digitally display countdown timers - countdowns to death. The first video is based on my birthdate and includes two streams of data. My current age in years, months, days, hours and seconds; the amount of time I have lived, and how many years, months, days, hours and seconds I have prior to my potential death. The second projection is based on the start date of the exhibition. The countdown starts as if the “person” were born on the same date as the show opens, a “Baby Doe.” I am communicating to the audience that I am aware of my own mortality. I am aware down to the second. My mortality is being compared to a fictitious person born that morning. It is designed to invite the audience to begin thinking of their own humanity, their own mortality, and realize they should not waste a single living moment worrying about death. The intended message is that death is going to happen, so live in the present. The third piece in the exhibition is a series of ten steel bones displayed standing in a pound of ground steel within glass cylinders and open mahogany boxes. These pieces are wall hung and have ten chairs on the floor directly opposite the works. The intent is to promote self-reflection. The visual inspiration came from an in-depth study

29 Gray, Eden. The Complete Guide to the Tarot. Bantam Books/Crown Publishing. New York, NY. 1970. Combs 27 of religious relics and reliquary, and from rooms designed to hold urns filled with human ashes called columbariumsvi or cinerariums.vii The symbolic nature of the work however, is my own. The steel bones are a sign of permanence, though steel does degrade, it is known for its strength and lasting properties. The pound of ground steel is a Shakespearian reference to “a pound of flesh.” In William Shakespeare’s A Merchant of Venice the debt Antonio owes Shylock comes into question. Antonio is unable to pay his debt. Shylock states to the judge, “The pound of flesh which I demand of him is deerely bought, 'tis mine, and I will haue it.”30 This statement has come to mean that any debt that is owed, lawful, yet unreasonable will be paid back at all costs, or simply stated, debt should be taken seriously. The wood was chosen for its rich grains and finished to reflect the design of a modern wood casket. The glass cylinder or vessel containing the bones can be interpreted as the body. The number of pieces within the work has been carefully chosen for its significance. Ten is considered a perfect number according to Pythagoreansviii, 1+2+3+4 = 10; the first four numbers added together equal the sum of ten which is called a tetraktys31. When consulting the Tarot cards, the number ten is the “Wheel of Fortune” card. It signifies the beginning of something new or receiving an unexpected fortune. In the bible, there are Ten Commandments, and to bible theorists, the number ten holds other significances. These details are not privy to the general viewing audience because I want to allow each viewer to draw their own conclusions. The three works are presented consecutively; the first piece is devised to create a hushed atmosphere, similar to what it feels like in a church or library. The quietness of these places is implied, and that is what I am trying to instill. The second work is an effort to confront the viewer and challenge them to think about their own lives and their own mortality. For the third, the focus is to invite people to sit in front of these pieces and consider their own existence. I want viewers to contemplate and ask themselves if they are living the best life they can. Can they do better for themselves or can they

30 Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice, Act IV, scene I. 1596. 31 Fideler, D. ed. The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library. Phanes Press, 1987.

Combs 28 make a difference in someone else’s life? The viewers are subjected to the human condition. In essence, this exhibition is inviting and promoting personal change and self-reflection. CONCLUSION

As a graduate student it has been my purstuit to learn, grow, challenge myself, develop my artistic skills, and theorize the basis of my creative practice. It has required a significant amount of research and experimentation to find the basis of my art practice. I believe what I discovered will remain the underlying drive as to why I create. The human condition is what defines or makes us human. Our memories allow us to experience the human condition Our avoidance of death is at the forefront of our decision processes. As we are products of the environments we live in, our development and awareness of death occurs at different times and manifests in different ways. We rely on experience (memory) to learn how to live and to navigate the world. Each person is subject to development and the stereotypes of the region they grew up in; however, as environments change, so does the human condition, and then the cycle begins anew. The change of environment ignites new memories, new memories lead to new behaviors, and new behaviors equal growth. The downside of being human is that these things could have the opposite effect and throw one into a downward spiral leading to a negative circumstance. Macabre as it may be, there is always an opposing force for all life ends in death. I am using my personal experience with tragedy to instigate my art. As of now, my intent is to create a conversation, it does not matter whether it is an internal or external conversation, but it should always reflect on the importance of life. Martin Luther King was once attributed as saying, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” Actually it is interesting to discover that he said something entirely different, “the quote attributed to him is what is considered a paraphrase of a much more complex thought he uttered during a sermon in Selma, Alabama on March 8, 1965.”ix This serves as a final reminder that our thoughts and memories are not always our own, and we should always follow our own ideals. In the end, I don’t want us to restrict our lives due to the Combs 29 pressing matters of the world or the idea of our own future deaths for after all, to be mortal is to be human and our humanity is the reason we are mortal.

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ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

1) Ashton, Dore. “About Rothko.” Oxford University Press. Oxford, UK. 1983.

According to the author, no amount of factual or biographical detail can ever comprise an adequate portrait. Writing from personal accounts from Rothko, Rothko’s friends and his acquaintances, Ashton composed his book in an attempt to bring just that, an “adequate” representation of Rothko and his life. Using his personal insights, the information presented brings extensive detail about the artist in a manner that allows for easy comprehension. “Rothko did not feel very securely at home in the interpreted world,” the book begins. He had a family, children, he traveled, but most of all found solace and inspiration in painting. Rothko said, “Ideas and plans that existed in the mind at the start were simply the doorway through which one left the world in which they occur.” This quote is a representation of how reflective and philosophical Rothko was, how he used philosophy and applied it to his craft. This book covers everything about Rothko, his early immigration from Russia, formal and informal training, his extensive reading habit as well as a chronicle of his richly colored paintings and the philosophy behind them. Full of rich quotes, this title is capable of providing valuable information in my research and writing.

2) Bailey, Colin B. Collins, John. Klimt, Gustav. “Gustav Klimt: Modernism in the Making.” Henry N. Abrams Incorporated. New York. 2001.

This is a book containing written biographical information on Gustav Klimt, his style of painting as it developed, links to modernism and thematic approaches. It covers many diverse topics into how he chose imagery to depict as well as the historical references, which further inspired him. This book contains numerous photographs of his work, many of which were destroyed in a fire, that are intense visual references. Klimt’s paintings often depict people in embraces (something he “had a thing for”), thematic depictions of death and Combs 31

illnesses as well as the prominence of gold in his work. Klimt explains how he often used passages from readings to construct his visualizations as his imagination developed. He chose to read Dante, many of the Greek Tragedies, Nietzsche and other authors who often broached death, dying and illness in their subjects. These themes are clearly repetitive in many of Klimt’s paintings and drawings. This book provides insight into why the artist chose those topics and the inspiration behind theme. Though many of his works were commissioned pieces for public spaces, his imagery was often deemed unfit for public view due to their “pornographic” nature. This book can provide images to compare and contrast with themes of death and how my own work fits into the historical narrative. The source is valid, and was written with input by the artist Gustav Klimt, which further adds to the legitimacy of the information.

3) Bal, Mieke. Of What One Cannot Speak: Doris Salcedo’s Political Art. University of Chicago Press. Chicago, Illinois. 2010.

Mieke Bal narrates the female perspective of Columbian-born sculptor Doris Salcedo. Most importantly Bal captures Salcedo’s essence in her writings. In the introduction Bal states: “Thematically, Salcedo’s work is involved in mourning. Looking at the world obliquely, from the a-central position of the artist engaged with it, Salcedo handles materials as a form of “hopeless mourning.” This material handling of hopeless mourning, it seems to me, can hint at the function political art might have today. As I learned from an interview with the artist herself, such art is a priori in displacement, in ways this book will articulate. The importance of the concept of displacement for Salcedo’s work is an indication of where I will look for the political function of art. By vocation displaced, according to her definition of the artist in general, Salcedo rubs the past into the present. In so doing she blocks the process of forgetting.” Mourning is a process involving memory, memory is the link in the human condition, which I am exploring, the source of where I believe my practice is evolving from. Bal Combs 32

extrapolates the information Salcedo presents and feeds it to the reader in such a way to be understandable and poetic at the same time.

4) Becker, Ernest. “The Denial of Death.” New York: Free Press. 1973.

Ernest Becker was one of the foremost chroniclers of death, how humans deal with the subject, change because of it and use it as a motivator. He purported that the fear of death is a universal human condition, meaning it is something all people and all societies throughout the world experience it. Becker explains that Primitive peoples often celebrated death as an elevation to a higher level of being, modern Western Societies have a hard time believing this concept, which is why the fear of death it is a prominent part of psychological being. It is interesting that we are born without fear, so there is no fear of death. Becker hypothesizes that it is not until about the age of five that humans become aware of death and it is at this point that it becomes a significant influence in our behavior. He admits that it is a gradual process that the fear must develop over a period of time as children come to grips with the fact that something can come and take someone away forever. Once it has been learned, the fear becomes a driving factor in not only our survival but also our decision-making processes. This book provides precursory information to Terror Management Theory (TMT) and is therefore important to my research. It has historical significance and has been adopted as a valid information in the study of psychology.

5) Beyeler Foundation. “Mark Rothko: A Consummated Experience Between Picture and Onlooker.” Hatje Cantz Publishers. Riehen/Basel, Switzerland. 2001.

First and foremost this book is a presentation of the imagery Mark Rothko created. The majority of its pages are filled with full-color reproductions of Rothko’s work. Scattered throughout the book are writings and essays about Rothko written by Oliver Wick, Franz Meyer, Jeffrey Weiss, Elizabeth E. Rathbone, Marjorie B. Cohen and Ben Heller to name a few. In the Prelude, Combs 33

Oliver Wick writes about how Rothko’s paintings became noticed, how it gained an audience in postwar American art. His involvement with Galerie Beyeler brought his work to the level of Picasso, Matisse, Mondrian, Giacometti and Klee to name a few. Wick also chronicles the numerous shows and retrospectives including the 1962 Basel. Further into the book, Franz Meyer writes specifically about his personal encounters with Rothko, specifically referring to his inclusion in the “New American Painting” exhibition at the Kuntsthalle in Basel in April 1958. This is the year Meyer believes “everything started” for Rothko. This book brings valuable insight into the painter, as well as the brilliance of the color reproductions of his work. Though nothing can substitute a personal viewing, the images are incredible and support/illustrate Rothko’s personal position and philosophy on painting.

6) Biberman, Efrat, and Shirley Sharon-Zisser. Art, Death and Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Routledge, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com.

Art, Death and Lacanian Psychoanalysis surveys the connection between art and death from the Lacanian point of view. It makes reference to the death drive as it manifests in theories of art. It approaches Freud's treatment of death and the moment of biological extinction but also focuses on the recurring moments in life which he called "the death drive" or the "compulsion to repeat" – often referred to as the fight or flight response in modern medicine. The book draws connection between art and literature, the presence of death in paintings and the theoretical discourse of Western culture. The authors scrutinize the works of Gerhard Richter, Jeff Wall, and contemporary Israeli artists Deganit Berest and Yitzhak Livneh, as well as through the writings of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. In retrospect this book helps bridge the gap between Lacanian Psychoanalytic processes and current thoughts in contemporary art and literature.

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7) Carlos Basualdo, Andreas Huyssen, and Nancy Princenthal. “Doris Salcedo.” Phaidon Press Limited. New York, NY. 2000.

This book is about Columbian born sculptor Doris Salcedo. It is comprised of images of her work, and includes a distinct interview with Salcedo by Carlos Basualdo. Basualdo asks a multitude of questions leading Salcedo in an open and revealing conversation. The interview covers her early years of development in Columbia, her move to New York for school and her progression from formally trained painter to full-blown sculptor. Basualdo’s interview brings forth dialogue about the controversies, horrors and tragedies in Salcedo’s life which continue to influence her work, how she works, and what she reveals to the public. Nancy Princenthal presents a survey of Salcedo’s work distinctly reviewing a collection of pictured works by the artist. Her writing in essay form, brings perspective to the artists work, builds on or expands on the previous interview and provides details about Salcedo’s life, and art practice. The end of the book contains another documented conversation between artist and Charles Merewether from 1998. Right from the start Salcedo addresses silence: “In art, silence is already a language – a language prior to language – of the unexpressed and the inexpressible: Art is the transmission without words of what is the same in all human beings…The tragic hero’s silence is silent in all art and is understood in all art without a single word.” Salcedo is the closest working contemporary artist I can relate to on a singular level. Here understanding of dealing with loses and tragedy is at the forefront of what my practice is built upon. This will be a valuable resource for insight into my writings.

8) Comay, Rebecca. Material Remains: Doris Salcedo. Oxford Literary Review 2017. 39:1, 42-64.

Rebecca Comay sums up Doris Salcedo’s work with the following: “Salcedo (herself) explicitly regards her work as a form of mourning and as a kind of testimony: the artwork functions as a funeral oration, tomb, offering, shroud, witness, reminder and remainder of a death otherwise threatening to go Combs 35

unmarked. Salcedo notably does not depict violence, identify victims or perpetrators, supply the forensic details of the crime, elucidate its political and economic context, or provide moral instruction. There is no informational signage, no verbal supplement. And, despite the overtly religious visual idiom she often draws on, the work does not offer reparation or redemption. Salcedo provides neither the consolations of beauty nor the gratifications of critical insight. There is no explicit call to political mobilization or promise of social solidarity— any solidarity is with the dead, not with the living—and the sensus communis awakened by the work seems to be confined to the space of the museum.” Comay writes in a not so overt manner, that our world has become so uptight that memories, memorials or any remembrance of the dead due to any form of tragedy has come under attack. Society is abandoning the obvious history as a result of artists who work with such tragedies, such as Salcedo are at risk of becoming to controversial to be effective. This is a pro-Salcedo article which examines the artists work and contrasts it with current events and perspectives throughout the world.

9) Douce, Francis Esq. F.A.S. Dibden, Frognall. “Holbein’s Dance of Death and Holbein’s Bible Cuts.” George Bell and Sons. London. 1890.

This written reference is two titles combined in one book with a dissertation written by Douce on “The Dance of Death” and Dibden writing the forward to the “Bible Cuts.” This is a historical compilation, almost a correction of Hans Holbein’s work as is evident in the preface. “The beautiful designs, which have been, perhaps too implicitly, regarded as the invention of the justly celebrated painter, Hans Holbein, are clearly known in this country (England) by the inaccurate etchings of most of them by Wenceslaus Hollar, the copper plates of which having formally become the property of Mr. Edwards of Pall Mall, were published by him, accompanied by a very hasty and imperfect dissertation; which with fewer faults and considerable enlargement, is here again submitted to public attention.” My interest in this book is in the unaltered information provided by the Combs 36

late 1800’s perspectives of the writers. Each aspect is presented from a view long since past and therefore speaks to more of an accurate underpinning of how death and dying were used in imagery in the past, as well as in the most popular book of the age, the Holy Bible. The imagery, which starts in the center of the book associated with the dissertation portion of “The Dance” depicts scenes of characters all dealing with death in their own way. Images I – XLIX (1-49) all have either individuals or groups of people engaged in day to day activities with death (as a skeleton) lurking somewhere in the print. In example, “The Judge” depicts a court scene where the judge is about to hand out a sentence, death is lurking just behind the Judge, with his hands on his shoulders as if guiding the decision. This imagery becomes valuable in linking research in Terror Management Theory (TMT) to art in a historical context. It is provides art examples (illustrations) from the past, which link to the current methodology behind TMT. The biblical prints by Holbein just strengthen the aspect that religious institutions used images of “terror” to adjust people’s behaviors. It was recognized early on that fear and death or the fear of death could be used as propaganda to push the religious agenda and control the flock. These ideas tie into my practice as I believe death to be a motivator.

10) Goodwin, Sarah McKim Webster. “Kitsch and Culture: The Dance of Death in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Graphic Arts.” Garland Publishing Inc. New York and London. 1988.

“Skeletons are easy to draw and they are cheap to reproduce. They work best in black and white. Artists use them as shorthand for any kind of powerful destructive process, and they are meant to make us squirm.” This book is a discussion of the impact the imagery of death has, specifically from the perspective of “The Danse Macabre.” The author explains unapologetically that the genre or motif of the dance of death has morphed and changed over the centuries by pointing out that it is in fact centuries old and has been modernized with the advent of the industrial revolution and mass production. One of the Combs 37

earliest images or motifs from the late Middle Ages produced until about 1500 included a corpse or skeleton returning to life to lead people towards their deaths. The key to the motif is that the living are always conversing with the dead consciously or unconsciously. The imagery is a foreshadowing of death, of widespread carnage or an apocalypse. These medieval translations have been modernized with the advent of marketing, but also within contemporary art. Skulls and bones are often used subjects in prints, paintings and sculptures; this book describes the early history, patterns and precedence of the genre. This source was funded by scholarly and government grants, it is well referenced and contains information valid to the subject as pertaining to the use of “death” as an image from the medieval era to the late 1980’s. Artists referenced: Hans Holbein, Thomas Rowlandson, Grandville, Alfred Rethel, Ferdinand Barth and E.H. Langolis (prints and woodcuts).

11) Hardie-Bick, J., 2015. Necessary Illusions: Life, Death and the Construction of Meaning. Oñati Socio-legal Series [online], 5 (3), 850-861. Available from: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2619408.

This article reviews and reinforces Ernest Becker’s theories on death and dying, specifically it explores why people do the things they do and about their awareness of mortality. “Not only do we need to acknowledge that death is an inescapable part of the human condition, but we also need to recognize that ‘when people die they are not gone because their identity leaves a record’.” This writing is a both a review and addition to Becker’s work, it complies different perspectives from multiple sources and uses them to strengthen the original theory. Though this article has significance, it only provides clarification to what Becker was thinking through the use of examples and studies produced by other authors and will be of little use for inclusion in my thesis work.

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12) Hirst, Damien. Burn, Gordon. “On The Way to Work.” Faber and Faber Ltd. London. 2001.

This book is literally a conversation with Damien Hirst and Gordon Burn. It is overlaid with a scrapbook format and images from Hirst’s work as an artist. The first question Burn asks, “What is the relationship between yourself and the art market?” Hirst’s response, “The art market? I guess it’s…Well there’s as many art markets as artists, aren’t there? You mean finance, money… This type of conversation continues throughout the 231-page volume. It covers questions about his early education, peoples he worked with, his art. When asked, “What is art?” Hirst responded with, “It’s a fucking poor excuse for life, innit, eh?!” “I have proven it to myself that art is about life and the art world’s about money. And I’m the only one who fucking knows that. Everyone lies to themselves to make is seem lie it’s the other way. But it isn’t.” This book is full of the in your face brashness Hirst is known for, however it does provide valuable insight into a working artists mind. There is potential for use of the material in this book in my research and writing.

13) Kennicott, Philip. "Rachel Whiteread Lets Us Imagine a World in which we don’t Exist." WP Company LLC d/b/a The Washington Post, last modified Sep 27.

Kennicott writes this short article on the processes of Rachel Whiteread. Her use of casting of everyday objects create a carbon copy of the memories many people can associate with. By casting objects familiar to most, Whiteread is able to reach a broad audience through the imagery she presents. Kennicott concentrates on Ghost, produced in 1990, which is the inverted casting of a Victorian era fireplace. Its grid like structure, a product of the casting process sits robustly in any space it occupies. It is relying on the fact that many people’s memories can visualize this space; in fact many have made memories in just such a setting. It’s the familiarity that the author keys in on; its what he believes makes Whiteheads work successful…and memorable. Combs 39

14) O'Gorman, Marcel . “Angels in Digital Armor: Techno-culture and Terror Management .” Postmodern Culture ; Baltimore Vol. 20, Issue. 3. May 2010.

This article connects the modern use of technology, its addiction to the on- line aspects of life to Terror Management Theory (TMT). “Terrorism, as the word implies, capitalizes on the human capacity to experience terror. Terror is, in turn, a uniquely human response to the threat of annihilation. Terror management theory is about how humans cope, not with the imminent threat of extermination but with the awareness that such threats are ubiquitous and will all eventually succeed. Death will be our ultimate fate. How then do we manage this potential for terror?” The answer, according to O’Gorman is on-line. People are hiding in on-line games, living falsehoods on social media and literally just avoiding the real world where terror and death are more likely to be experienced. This information becomes useful as a way to tie the ideals of the past to the ideals of the present. This excerpt modernizes some aspects of TMT by making the connection between people and on-line communities. It helps answer why people are shrinking away from face to face meetings in favor of their on-line personas.

15) O’Neil, Mark. “Museums and Mortality.” Material Religion. 8:1, 52-75. DOI: 10.2752/175183412X13286288797890. 2012.

This journal article from the Routledge Taylor and Francis Group is a discussion of how museums are tied to death and exhibitions are organized in line with the current thinking of Terror Management Theory (TMT). O’Neil theorizes that early museums were essentially created to house the art collections of their benefactors (through “Death Planning”) as a way of immortalizing their names post-mortem. Besides art, there are displays of carcasses from different animals species from throughout the world and remnants of past cultures, all of which have a direct connection with death. In Combs 40

essence, museums are houses of death, mausoleums filled with artifacts. TMT theorists have conducted over 300 studies in over a dozen countries linking the behaviors of aggression, stereotyping, needs for structure and meaning, depression, phobias, political preferences, creativity, sexuality and attraction, romantic and interpersonal attachment, self-awareness, unconscious cognition, martyrdom, religion, group identification, disgust, human-nature, physical health, risk taking and legal judgment. O’Neil believes these theories should be directed to how museums display works. It is basically an effort to predict an audience’s reaction. This article presents a form of social engineering; it promotes the use of TMT to solicit a response from a specific audience.

16) Popova, Maria. Neurologist Oliver Sacks on Memory, Plagiarism, and the Necessary Forgettings of Creativity. Brain Pickings. February 14, 2013. Accessed on December 1, 2018 at https://www.brainpickings.org /2013/02/04/ oliver-sacks-on-memory-and-plagiarism/.

Maria Popova authors this short article about renowned Neurologist Oliver Sacks comments on memories. Though deceased, Sacks theories and writings have been widely regarded as groundbreaking in his field of study. Not relegated to just the medical world, Sacks has been known to author books, reviews and articles for multiple outlets. In one such article for the New York Times, Sacks was quoted as saying (about memory): “Indifference to source allows us to assimilate what we read, what we are told, what others say and think and write and paint, as intensely and richly as if they were primary experiences. It allows us to see and hear with other eyes and ears, to enter into other minds, to assimilate the art and science and religion of the whole culture, to enter into and contribute to the common mind, the general commonwealth of knowledge. This sort of sharing and participation, this communion, would not be possible if all our knowledge, our memories, were tagged and identified, seen as private, exclusively ours. Memory is dialogic and arises not only from direct experience but from the intercourse of many minds. In his book “Hallucinations”, Sacks stated, “We now know that memories are not fixed or frozen, like Proust’s jars of preserves in a larder, but are transformed, disassembled, reassembled, and re- Combs 41

categorized with every act of recollection.” Though short, this article creates the basis of the framework needed to reveal how memories affect people, and how art capitalizes on that fact.

17) Saltzman, Lisa. “Making Memory Matter: Strategies of Remembrance in Contemporary Art.” The University of Chicago Press. Chicago & London. 2006.

This book is a compilation of perspectives by the author about how memories are interwoven with art historically and within the practice of many contemporary artists. It begins with author’s thoughts on the origins of art, from simple cave paintings to the musings of Pliny the Elder. The book systematically goes through multiple art genres to include painting, video, sculpture and drawing and documents work from artists Kara Walker, Cornelia Parker, Do-Ho Suh and Rachel Whiteread to name a few. In each instance, Saltzman discusses the link between the work and memories and how those things are intertwined. For instance the controversial imagery of Kara Walker’s Before the Battle (Chicken Dumplin), 1995, depicting a white confederate soldier kissing the nipple of a stereotypical female slave dropping a cooked chicken leg, and how it’s rhetoric is inflammatory to the memories of black culturists. Her images are drawn from the historically stereotypical art and events of the past, using the memories of an entire culture, it’s history, to draw attention to contemporary issues. This is just a sample of what this book has to offer, most keenly is the insight it provides into how the public reacts to controversy through memory of both current and past events.

18) Soloman, Sheldon; Greenberg, Jeff. Pyszczynski, Thomas A. “The worm at the core: on the role of death in life.” Random House. New York. 1954.

This book reference is an extension of studies inspired by the research into “Death and Dying,” performed by Ernest Becker. The authors are highly qualified research Psychologists; these writings were twenty-five years in the Combs 42

making. The information was gleamed from research conducted throughout the world and compiled for this text. The information contained will help verbalize how people deal with death, the fear of death, and the want to transcend it by altering their behavior in both good and bad ways. This theory, “Terror Management Theory,” or TMT hypothesizes that the majority of human behaviors can be linked to the fear of death. This fear causes people children to fear others who are not like them, inflame violence and intolerance and can help people justify outrageous purchases as examples. It is my belief that his theory can be applied to art and give insight into my own personal art practice. This is a scholarly source, and a heavily popularized theory for any person researching the affects of death in modern societies. The authors use a wide range of subjects to explain how the theory works, including art. The writers quote George Bernard Shaw for instance, “Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable,” while referencing the supernatural, a “feature” known to be in every culture. This commonality is an example of how the authors tie things together into the universal TMT, which has roots in all societies. This is a broad subject, but the book manages to provide the appropriate amount of theory vs. examples. It is easily understandable and will be a valuable resource.

19) Rothko, Mark. Rothko, Christopher. “The Artist’s Reality: Philosophies of Art.” Yale University Press. New Haven, CT. 2004.

This book, rather collection of writings – twelve essays - by Mark Rothko provides valuable insight into the inner workings of a professional artist. It spans from his early career and covers moments for nearly his entire life. It explains how his painting evolved from working in forms, architectural paintings and on to his bold color saturated paintings. In it Rothko explained the transition from totemic and biomorphic figures to planes of color in part by saying that "...the familiar identity of things has to be pulverized..." He describes his forms as "organisms with volition and a passion for self-assertion." This description of the Combs 43

forms in his paintings as living forces or beings is consistent with his description of the work of art as having a life of its own. Rothko’s critics were all around him and that wore on him, even his own wife was considered a critic and was speculated not to support her husband’s work. At one point Rothko quits painting entirely and just begins to read. He offers multitudes of quotes: “The subject of a painting is the painting itself, which is a corporeal manifestation of the artists notion of reality, made manifest through the production on the canvas of objects, or qualities, or both, recognizable or created, which are referable to our experience, either directly or though reasoning.”

20) Sylvester, David. “Francis Bacon.” Pantheon Books. Random House. New York. 1975.

This book reference consists of ninety-four black and white images by, about, or referring to Francis Bacon and an extensive interview of Bacon by the author, Sylvester. It is compiled from four interviews ranging from as early as 1962 to 1974. These interviews include radio and television broadcasts as well as private recordings between Bacon and Sylvester. Some of the materials used in this compilation were previously published in part within other writings. The first interview refers to the beginning of Bacons career with a discussion about forms and the use of the crucifixion and Picasso as inspiration. These abstractions were created in 1944 and the imagery is haunting and surreal. Sylvester guides Bacon through a series of decisions he made on imagery Bacon referenced in some of his more famous paintings, such as “Painting”, from 1946 depicting splayed bodies of cows from a butchers shop. Bacon has simply stated that many times his subjects just fall into his lap, almost as if it was accidental. The interviews go on to discuss the dark style Bacon uses in his works. The often-distorted bodies and faces in portraits, the use of blurred lines and openly displaying innards and bones. As this book is based on actual interviews, with the information coming directly from Francis Bacon, the source is reliable and as straightforward as you can get. The reader is at whim of Sylvester who directs Combs 44

the conversations, however, the content gives insight into how an artists practice develops and continues to evolve over a long stretch of time. This book is a potential source of imagery to contrast and compare in my own writings.

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REFERENCES

Ashton, Dore. About Rothko. Da Capo Press. Oxford University Press. London. 1983.

Bailey, Colin B. Collins, John. Klimt, Gustav. “Gustav Klimt: Modernism in the Making.” Henry N. Abrams Incorporated. New York. 2001.

Bal, Mieke. Of What One Cannot Speak: Doris Salcedo’s Political Art. University of Chicago Press. Chicago, Illinois. 2010.

Becker, Ernest. “The Denial of Death.” New York: Free Press. 1973.

Biberman, Efrat, and Shirley Sharon-Zisser. Art, Death and Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Routledge, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com.

Brennan, Michael. A-Z of Death and Dying : Social, Medical, and Cultural Aspects, ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/knowledgecenter/detail.action?docID=1688 904.

Britannica Academic, s.v. "Damien Hirst," accessed October 21, 2018. https://academic.eb.com/levels/ collegiate/article/Damien-Hirst/435769.

Burn, Gordon. Hirst, Damien. On the Way to Work. Faber and Faber. London. 2001.

Camille, Michael. Master of Death: Lifeless Art of Pierre Remiet. Illuminator. New Haven, Conn. Yale University Press 1996.

Clark, Mary. “In Search of Human Nature.” Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group. London. 2002.

Carlos Basualdo, Andreas Huyssen, and Nancy Princenthal. “Doris Salcedo.” Phaidon Press Limited. New York, NY. 2000.

Comay, Rebecca. Material Remains: Doris Salcedo. Oxford Literary Review 2017. 39:1, 42-64.

Del Toro, Paolo. Artists Biography. Viewed at https://paolopuck.com/about/ on January 13, 2019.

Douce, Francis Esq. F.A.S. Dibden, Frognall. “Holbein’s Dance of Death and Holbein’s Bible Cuts.” George Bell and Sons. London. 1890.

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Dummett, Michael A. E; Mann, Sylvia. The game of Tarot: From Ferrara to Salt Lake City. Duckworth Publishers. University of California. 1980.

Goodwin, Sarah McKim Webster. “Kitsch and Culture: The Dance of Death in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Graphic Arts.” Garland Publishing Inc. New York and London. 1988.

Gravagna, Nicole, PhD. “Six Fundamental Human Needs We Need To Meet to Live Our Best Lives.” February 5, 2018 Viewed on https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora /2018/02/05/six-fundamental-human-needs-we-need-to-meet-to-live-our-best- lives/#2524720d344a on January 13, 2019.

Gray, Eden. The Complete Guide to the Tarot. Bantam Books/Crown Publishing. New York, NY. 1970.

Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T. & Solomon, S. (1986). "The causes and consequences of a need for self-esteem: A terror management theory". In R.F. Baumeister (ed.), Public Self and Private Self (pp. 189-212). Springer-Verlag (New York).

Hall, Cynthia. “Before the Apocalypse: German Prints and Illustrated Books, 1400- 1500”. Harvard University Art Museums Bulletin, 4(2),9.

Hardie-Bick, J., 2015. Necessary Illusions: Life, Death and the Construction of Meaning. Oñati Socio-legal Series [online], 5 (3), 850-861. Available from: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2619408.

Kennicott, Philip. "Rachel Whiteread Lets Us Imagine a World in which we don’t Exist." WP Company LLC d/b/a The Washington Post, last modified Sep 27.

Knowles, Elizabeth. ed. The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable( Second ed.). Oxford University Press. 2005.

MacGill, Markus. “What is the link between love and oxytocin.” Medical News Today. www.medicalnewstoday.com. September 4, 2017.

Maslow, A.H. “A Theory of Human Motivation.” Psychological Review. 50(4):370-96. 1943.

Metz, Stephanie. Artists Biography. Viewed at https://www.stephaniemetz.com/about/ on January 13, 2019.

Never Forget: The Story Behind the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, published in 2008. Updated in 2016 by VVMF on http://www.vvmf.org/the- controversy. Accessed on November 15, 2018.

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O'Gorman, Marcel . “Angels in Digital Armor: Techno-culture and Terror Management .” Postmodern Culture ; Baltimore Vol. 20, Issue. 3. May 2010.

O’Neil, Mark. “Museums and Mortality.” Material Religion. 8:1, 52-75. DOI: 10.2752/175183412X13286288797890. 2012.

Popova, Maria. Neurologist Oliver Sacks on Memory, Plagiarism, and the Necessary Forgettings of Creativity. Brain Pickings. February 14, 2013. Accessed on December 1, 2018 at https://www.brainpickings.org /2013/02/04/ oliver-sacks-on-memory-and-plagiarism/.

Pratesi, Franco. "In Search of Tarot Sources". The Playing-Card. 41 (2): 100. 2012.

Rothko, Mark. Rothko Christopher. The Artist’s Reality: Philosophies of Art / Mark Rothko. Yale University Press. New Haven. London. 2001.

Rothko, Mark. A Consummated Experience Between Picture and Onlooker. Fondation Beyeler, Riechen/Basal. Hatje Cantz Publishers. 2001.

Soloman, Sheldon; Greenberg, Jeff. Pyszczynski, Thomas A. “The worm at the core: on the role of death in life.” Random House. New York. 2015.

Ryan, D. “Vanitas; Meditations on Life and Death in Contemporary Art: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Sculpture [Serial online]. January 2001:20(1):63-64. Available from: Art Full Text (H.W. Wilson), Ipswitch, MA. Accessed on September 16, 2018.

Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice, Act IV, scene I. 1596.

Sylvester, David. “Francis Bacon.” Pantheon Books. Random House. New York. 1975.

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IMAGES

Image 1 Maya Lin Vietnam Veterans War Memorial Dedicated November 13, 1982

Image 2 Saint Michael Fighting the Dragon Woodcut Print 1498

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Image 3 Hans Holbein “The Judge” 1538

Image 4 Jacques Linard “Vanitas 1644”

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Image 5 Mark L. Combs BFA Final Exhibition 2015

Image 6 Doris Salcedo, Atrabiliarios (a small representation of the number in the collection) 1991-1996

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Image 7 Mark L. Combs “In the Line of Duty” 2017

Image 8 Mark L. Combs “Bilateral” 2017

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Image 9 Mark L. Combs “Traction” / Detail 2017

Image 10 Mark L. Combs “Organ Donor” 2017

Image 11 Mark L. Combs “Autopsy” 2017

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Image 12 Image 13 Mark L. Combs Mark L. Combs “Skin Graft” “Multiple Fractures” 2017 2017

Image 14 Mark L. Combs “Orthopedic Consult” 2017

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Image 15 Mark L. Combs “imperCEIVABLE PERmanence” 2017

Image 16 Paolo Del Toro Sofia Battle the Snake 46 x 38 x 25 inches 2016

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Image 17 Stephanie Metz Flesh and Bone Installation View 2016

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i The Dance of death, also called danse macabre, is a medieval allegorical concept of the all-conquering and equalizing power of death, expressed in the drama, poetry, music, and visual arts of western Europe mainly in the late Middle Ages. As explained on Britanica.com. ii Memento mori - Death is one of the few things that we as humans are guaranteed in life, and this is a reality that unites us all - however, the way one acknowledges this fact is unique to the individual. In medieval times, the theory and practice of reflecting on the transient nature of earthly life was known as "memento mori": a Latin phrase translating to "remember that you must die". This theory is an important aspect of ascetic disciplines - particularly Christianity - providing inspiration to turn ones attention away from the distractions of earthly concerns and desires; bringing the focus instead on the prospect of the afterlife. Artists have explored the concepts of memento mori in a number of unique ways throughout history, developing a universal language of rich visual symbolism over time. Common elements of this genre include skulls, flowers, or a candle to imply the persistence of time. This exhibition will investigate the many ways in which artists have interpreted human mortality, and how the tradition of the memento mori continues to inspire contemporary artists to this day. By creating a dialogue investigating the ephemeral nature of life, the awareness impermanence heightens appreciation of the present. Taken from: https://artsandculture.google.com/usergallery/ the-art-of-dying-memento-mori-through-the-ages/DALS56IGGr1jIA iii Cultural worldview: Our cultures exist within larger structures called “worldviews.” In her book “In Search of Human Nature,” Mary Clark defines worldviews as “beliefs and assumptions by which an individual makes sense of experiences that are hidden deep within the language and traditions of the surrounding society. iv Excerpt taken from an interview with Carlos Basualdo in response to being asked what the point of departure was in her working method for her first series entitled Atrabiliarios (1991-1996). v Fortune telling by means of playing cards; as defined by Merriam-Websters. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cartomancy. Accessed on December 10th, 2018. vi Columbarium; A structure of vaults lined with recesses for funerary urns; as defined by Merriam-Websters. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/columbarium. Accessed on January 13, 2019. vii Cinerarium; A place to receive the ashes of the cremated dead; as defined by Merriam-Websters. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cinerarium. Accessed on January 13, 2019.

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viii Pythagoreans or Pythagoreanism, is the philosophical school and religious brotherhood, believed to have been founded by Pythagoras of Samos, who settled in Croton in southern Italy about 525 BCE. Taken from www.britanica.com, accessed on January 13, 2019. ix The original paraphrased speech of Dr. Martin Luther King, March 8, 1965:

“Deep down in our non-violent creed is the conviction there are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true, that they’re worth dying for. And if a man happens to be 36 years old, as I happen to be, some great truth stands before the door of his life — some great opportunity to stand up for that which is right. A man might be afraid his home will get bombed, or he’s afraid that he will lose his job, or he’s afraid that he will get shot, or beat down by state troopers, and he may go on and live until he’s 80. He’s just as dead at 36 as he would be at 80. The cessation of breathing in his life is merely the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit. He died… A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true. So we’re going to stand up amid horses. We’re going to stand up right here in Alabama, amid the billy-clubs. We’re going to stand up right here in Alabama amid police dogs, if they have them. We’re going to stand up amid tear gas! We’re going to stand up amid anything they can muster up, letting the world know that we are determined to be free!”