10 Death Artists

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Jordan As Hindley In Controversial Image
02/02/10

LONDON -- Model Katie Price's face has been imposed on to a picture of Moors Murderer Myra Hindley for an exhibition which opens this week. Entitled Public Enemy Number One, the controversial image sees the model fused on to the distinctive black and white police mugshot of Hindley taken in the 1960s.

Irish artist Kevin Sharkey was inspired to create the image after Price, also known as Jordan, was voted the most hated woman in Britain. "When I think of 'hated' women, the first person who comes to mind is Myra Hindley," the artist says. "I think the macabre black and white police photograph of her from the 1960s is the epitome of evil. So I set about merging that iconic image with Katie's face, and I hope when people look at it they will immediately realise the two women are poles apart." Mr Sharkey says he is not looking to defend Jordan, but he hopes he can make people think more seriously about the way they react to celebrities.

Relatives of the Moors Murderers' victims have condemned the picture. John Kilbride was abducted and murdered by Myra Hindley and Ian Brady in 1963, when he was 12 years old. His brother Danny told Sky News: "It is about time these people grew up. An artist with real talent doesn't need to resort to tactics like this." -- Sky News

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Artist Gregor Schneider plans to put dying person on show
04/22/08

MUNICH -- German artist Gregor Schneider plans to exhibit a dying person as the focus of an upcoming show. The artist, whose previous works have included a disturbing recreation of family life in two identical houses in the East End of London and a 20-year project to transform his parents’ former house, said his aim was "to show the beauty of death".

Schneider claims to have found a doctor in Dusseldorf who will help him find a volunteer willing to die in public in the name of art, according to the Art Newspaper. "Unfortunately today, death and the road to death are about suffering. Coming to terms with death as I plan it can take away the pain of dying for us," the artist told the online edition of Die Welt.

Politicians and curators are in a state of uproar about Mr Schneider’s plans. “The dying person would determine everything in advance, he would be the absolute centre of attention,” said Mr Schneider. “Everything will be done in consultation with the relatives, and the public will watch the death in an appropriately private atmosphere."

In 2000, Schneider himself feigned death as part of a show in Haus Esters Museum in Krefeld. He was awarded the Golden Lion for Sculpture at the Venice Biennale the following year for ‘Dead House ur’, a reconstruction of his parents’ home. He is currently showing an installation in Paris consisting of a series of rooms of decreasing size. Visitors make their way through the installation alone, and are filmed as they do so. -- Telegraph.co.uk

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Weatherston portrait might be art but we don't have to like it
02/24/10

WELLINGTON -- It was a face behind a crime that appalled the nation. Now it is a work of art. A portrait of Clayton Weatherston is one of 93 works competing in the Adam Portraiture Award, opening in Wellington tomorrow. Stretching 2.5 metres high, Liam Gerrard's charcoal and acrylic work captures a man who dominated the national news last year, as Weatherston stood trial for the 2008 murder of his former girlfriend, Sophie Elliott, 22, whom he stabbed 216 times. Miss Elliott's father, Gil, said he had not known the portrait was being painted and suggested the title "The Epitome of Evil" might be a suitable one. "It would have been better to have done a nice one of Sophie."

Gerrard, 25, whose first solo exhibition late last year included a portrait of David Bain, who was acquitted on charges of murdering his family, said he chose Weatherston because "I was interested in doing a villain. The guidelines for the award were just to do an actual New Zealander. I just thought I'd try a bad guy. I went for the most hated man in the country, or he was at that time." Gerrard said he did not expect anyone to buy the work. "As far as anyone having it on their wall, I highly doubt it. Except maybe a collector." National Portrait Gallery director Avenal McKinnon said the portrait was probably the most contentious subject to appear in the biennial competition. "You could, in some countries, say artists are not allowed to paint bad people or murderers. But in New Zealand we have this wonderful freedom, it's what democracy is all about." -- The Dominion Post

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The Murderer as Snow White
01/19/04

STOCKHOLM -- On Saturday night, the Israeli ambassador to Sweden, Zvi Mazel, damaged an "art exhibit" glorifying a Palestinian terrorist at the Stockholm's Historical Museum. The ambassador dismantled the electrical cables connecting the spotlights and threw one of them into some water.

Titled "Snow White and the Madness of Truth," the exhibit consisted of a small ship carrying a picture of Islamic Jihad bomber Hanadi Jaradat (who was a lawyer and mother of two) sailing, "with the smile of an angel," in a rectangular pool filled with red-colored water. Jaradat killed herself and 22 others, including Israeli Arabs and a number of Israeli Jewish children, in a suicide bombing on October 4, 2003, at Maxim's jointly-owned Jewish-Arab restaurant in Haifa, Israel.

As background music to his exhibit, the "artist," Dror Feiler, mixed music from Bach's 199 Cantata "My Heart Swims in Blood." Tel Aviv-born Feiler is well-known as a self-hating Israeli active in radical circles in Sweden where he lives. His Swedish wife Gunilla Skoeld Feiler, helped create the instillation.

Dror Feiler told Israel Radio on Sunday that Mazel was "an intellectual midget, his actions were similar to those of a stall owner in a third world country."

When Mazel pulled the plugs on the installation on Saturday night, Feiler approached him angrily, shouting in Hebrew, "You're doing exactly what you do in Nablus. This is a free country and I can say what I want to say here, not like you in your apartheid country."

Zvi Mazel is unrepentant about his actions. "My wife and I stood there and began to tremble," he told the Israeli Ynet Internet site. "There was the terrorist, wearing perfect makeup and sailing placidly along the rivers of blood of my brothers and the families that were murdered. My whole body trembled when I saw a female terrorist like Snow White in the exhibition." -- Mideast Media Dispatch

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Loyalist killer to seek lottery aid for artist colony
10/21/03

LONDON -- The convicted murderer Michael Stone, who killed three people in a gun and grenade attack in Belfast’s Milltown Cemetery in 1988, is hoping to spend up to £1 million to convert a country house into workshops and studios for budding artists.

Although Stone, a former builder who learnt how to paint during 12 years inside the Maze prison, has made a fortune from his art and the proceeds of an autobiography, he disclosed yesterday that he intends to apply for public money to set up the art centre.

Among those who have bought or have been given his work are Mo Mowlam, the former Northern Ireland Secretary, and Charles Saachi, the advertising mogul. Stone’s work, which has become popular thanks to his notoriety, sells for between £500 and £25,000 per piece.

The former terrorist, who has exhibited his work in Belfast and is hoping to be nominated for next year’s Turner Prize with a sculpture made of up to 2,000 pigs’ ears, told The Times that he has put an offer on a large house in rural Co Down outside Belfast.

Stone has become such a cult figure that he has even been signed by a special agency offering former criminals as after-dinner speakers at up to £2,500 a time. He is currently writing a fictional thriller about a freelance assassin who travels to London to kill Islamist terrorists. He is also co-writing a book, designed to be a counter-terrrorist handbook, with a former member of the British Army. -- The Times

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Protests Against Starving Dog Art Exhibition
03/17/08

COSTA DEL SOL -- The Costa Rican ‘artist’ Guillermo Vargas Habacuc is alleged to have paid some children to chase and catch an abandoned dog. He is said to have tied the animal by a very short rope to the wall of an art gallery in Managua and left it there for several days, without food or water, until it died. During this time, many people visited the art gallery, paying absolutely no attention to the torment of the dying dog. Photographs of the so-called exhibition can be found on the Internet.

The prestigious Central American Biennial exhibition incomprehensibly decided to consider this barbarous act as art, and Habacuc has been invited to repeat his cruel action at the Biennial of 2008 in Honduras.

In his defence, the artist has claimed that what he was attempting to prove was that those who saw the suffering of the dog just walked on by and that if it had been left on the street to die, no-one would have even known of its existence. It has also been reported that the dog did not die but escaped, and that it had been fed by Vargas and was only tied up during the gallery opening times. It has not been possible to confirm this. -- Euro Weekly News

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Swedish artist connected to Belgian child killer
06/08/10

LULEA -- Angelina Elander, a 40-year-old singer and artist from Luleå in northern Sweden, has featured in a series of reports in Flemish and French language media sources which describe her as the "lover" and "admirer" of De Gelder, the 21-year-old man who killed three and seriously injured six more in an attack on a nursery in the town of Dendermonde in January 2009.

Elander is reported by Belgian newspaper La Capitale to have penned a slew of letters expressing her affection for the convicted killer, going as far as to submit an application for employment at his Bruges prison. On her blog, Kosmonaut Planemo, Elander has published her letters and other material pertaining to the De Gelder case and she is also reported by La Capitale to have opened a petition to free the killer.

Passages cited by the commercial Flemish television channel VTM include: "Oh, my darling. Did you really do all this pour moi? You shouldn't have. *blushing* I feel harmony. I feel at peace with the universe. I think my boobs have grown." -- The Local

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Marvin Francis's Paper Trail
11/26/06

LOUISVILLE - Marvin Francis's studio is cell A-10 in Kentucky’s maximum security prison, and his medium is dissolved toilet paper. He buys Charmin from “the outside,” he says, because “the stuff in here is a little rough.”Before Marvin Francis was sentenced in 1986 to life without parole for 25 years for murdering a Hopkinsville grocer during a robbery, he had never picked up a paintbrush or set foot inside a museum. “Art had never entered my life,” he said.

Now, his disturbing sculptures of life behind bars using only the limited materials of toilet paper, wood, glue, and acrylic paint fetch prices of as much as $3,000 each.

And competing with 55 other self-taught artists from around the world, Francis, 46, recently won first place in a juried competition for sculptors sponsored by Gallery 24 in Berlin, Europe’s leading gallery for undiscovered artists. Shows will follow in Paris and New York, where his work already is part of the American Folk Art Museum’s collection.

“You can’t help but be blown away by the world he creates with the contents of a wastepaper basket,” said sculptor Bob Morgan, owner of Lexington’s Gallery Soleil, which sponsored a one-man show by Francis in 2004. “That alone would make him worthy of note.” -- Louisville Courier Journal

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Artist to Feed Murderer to Goldfish
09/02/08

COPEHNAGEN—Controversy-seeking Danish-based artist Marco Evaristti has convinced a convict on death row in Texas to allow Evaristti to grind up his body and feed it to goldfish for an artwork should he be executed as planned, reports the Art Newspaper.

"My aim is to first deep freeze Gene's body and then make fish food out of it. Visitors to my exhibition will be able to feed goldfish with it," said Evaristti, who has visited Gene Hathorn, 47, a convicted murderer, in prison several times. Hathorn has been awaiting execution since being found guilty of murdering his father, stepmother, and stepbrother in 1985.

Chilean-born Evaristti has courted controversy with his work before. In 2000, he addressed mortality and the dark side of human nature by showing live goldfish in 10 electric blenders and inviting visitors to the exhibition to switch them on. In 2004, he explored issues of territory and environmental protection by painting an iceberg in Greenland red. -- Artinfo

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Armless artist's headbutt kills man
09/18/07

SNELLVILLE, Ga. — Police are investigating the death of a man who collapsed after he was head-butted by an armless man in a fight over a woman. Snellville Police Chief Roy Whitehead said the two men, Charles Keith Teer and William Russell Redfern, scuffled Monday afternoon in the driveway of a suburban Atlanta home.

Police say Redfern, who was born with no right arm and only a short stump for his left arm, kicked Teer and Teer hit Redfern during the fight, which was due to long-standing bad blood over a woman who once dated Teer and now dates Redfern. After bystanders separated them, Redfern "came back and head-butted (Teer) one time," Whitehead said. Teer complained of feeling dizzy, collapsed and died, Whitehead said.

Known by the nickname "Rusty," Redfern made a name for himself in the late 1980s for pen and ink drawings he does using his foot. According to the Web site for VSA Arts — an affiliate of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts that promotes and showcases artists with disabilities — Redfern's drawings take one to six months to complete. -- msnbc



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p.s. Hey. Slight chance of a day-trip by me and some pals to Versailles tomorrow. If so, we'll leave early, meaning there would be just be a quickie p.s. in the morning, in which case I would catch up with you fully on Monday. We'll see. ** Paradigm, Deep mapping is a nice term, yeah. Never heard it before. Where is the review for? Will it be readable online? Yeah, your election seems really complicated. I've been trying to understand its exactness via the news, but it's really kind of confusing. Excellent if the Greens have the balance of power. I mean very excellent. Does that mean they're likely to coalition with Labor? Me, I'm pretty good. My back is normal again, I think. So far. The film I'm in ... well, I haven't seen it yet, but the director Christophe Honore told me the idea was to forefront and linger on gay life/ love/ sex in the Paris banilieues, which is something rarely discussed much less depicted in film, literature, the news, etc. I think it's a deliberate counteraction to the popular image of the 'suburbs' as a solely violent, beleaguered, dangerous place. As I understand it, the film is both a kind of no holds barred portrayal of the love/sex lives of some young gay Franco-Maghrebis and something of an attack on the Sarkozy government's policies. I'll know better when I see it for the first time in a little over a week. Thanks, Scott. ** Tonyoneill, Glad you liked it, man. Yes, LSD, ahhhhh. I don't think I've done DMT. I'm pretty sure I didn't. I'll look for those Ramones books. Yeah, their first album is just sheer perfection. They got cartoonier after that, and they were still wonderful, but that first album has this really dark undercurrent that I think people overlook a lot when they think about The Ramones. Ha ha, yeah, someone else was reminding me of those illustrated glassine envelopes yesterday. I'd forgotten about them, I think because they have awful memories attached for me. I think Genesis P-Orridge collects them. Anyway, yeah, thanks a lot, T. ** Bernard Welt, That's so incredibly exciting about your book's near-realness. That's just so cool to hear, B! Expect a hell of a related Day here when that book is born. Strangely, I think the review of 'Inception' I liked the most was by Harry Knowles of all people over on aintitcool. Not sure it would be of much use for you, though. Yikes, that is weird about the broken window. I mean, hm, coincidence surely, but still. Do you really think there might be a connection? ** Pilgarlic, I vaguely recall people sort dancing hippie-style to Loggins and Messina. I think they played whatever passed for dance music back in those days before and after the L&M set to satisfy those who were intent on shaking it. I'm sure Bread and the Carpenters probably made appearances at mine too. I was on, coincidentally, acid that night so my memories are spiral shaped. ** Eli Jurgen, Yeah, I would have maybe predicted that those food items might squash together in your stomach in some unpleasing way, but I've been a vegetarian since I was little-ish, so what do I know about food? Not very much, truth be told. Yeah, I didn't use it in the post, but one art critic was making a case for LSD blotter art as being as artful as whittling. Hope you feel much better this morning. ** 'Stoopid Slapped Puppies', Yeah, as I keep saying, LSD is my chemical man. '60s microdot acid was all over the place, quality-wise and strength-wise, but they always did the job, oh boy. The Dazed thing is out? I'll go look for it. I have no idea what it ended up being. I was interviewed about BB, and then I guess they made a paragraph out of parts of what I said. Cool if it helps him get readers. I'll start compiling publisher ideas to give you when you get closer to the finish line. You bet. And, naturally, I'm very glad Valencia won't be silencing you, man. Love, respect, etc. ** Sypha, Well, 'Atrocity Exhibition' has that piece titled something like 'Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan'. Not sure of that counts though. People who think talking about death is morbid are just scaredy-cats. Of course I say that on a day when the topic of death has infused my blog yet again. I think that novel you're thinking of writing sounds really, really interesting. I hope it stays exciting and interesting for you. ** David Ehrenstein, Top of the morning to you, sir. ** Empty Frame, Hey. Yeah, most people I know who love Berlin speak of its settling down with sad faces. I wish I'd managed to get there years ago, although I guess I won't know the difference when I do. I don't know shit about what's up with the new UK government, but doesn't the coalition thing potentially kind of mush Cameron's nastiness into a blah center right middleground kind of situation? I'm glad you're going out in style as a Berliner. Those places sound very cool. I'll look around on youtube for the 'Kunst und Kult' thing. Thanks, pal. ** Allesfliesst, I'm not sure exactly what you're looking for, but I'm going to second Steevee's recommendation of WIRE. I'm totally addicted to it, and it's the only music magazine I always buy, devour from cover to cover, and find a wealth of very interesting stuff that ends up being my main soundtrack. ** Will Decker. Hey. Well, my young French friend is straight, so he'll need to be careful in regards to other things, ha ha. To me, there is no 'a boy' since each boy is as completely unique and distinct in every way as is any adult, and it's always more useful to think of 'a particular boy'. ** JW Veldhoen, Ha ha, your friend sure has fantasized a wild life for me. I think the last time I was propositioned by my so-called 'type', I was still wearing knickers. I suppose I might have gotten a bear hug or two, but mostly across cyberspace. If it makes them feel better, you can tell them that I'm ironically poor for other reasons. I think I might go for the Bosch too. There's weak acid and strong acid, but the problem is knowing which is which in advance and then, of course, you've got every body's biological particularities to boot. Maybe Ecstacy? Someone was just telling me there's actual, not all that polluted E going around again of late. ** Steevee, Well, I would certainly hope you'll get some painkillers. I guess they might just give that numbing gel, which is more weird than fun. ** Plexus, Best question mark ever! Ha ha, I got your ?-demystifying email, and I wrote back to you. Oh, wait, you came back here late. Yeah, like I said, I saw your explanatory email and wrote back. Hope you got mine. No, you're coming off as whatever the opposite of bad would be. Pick a superlative. Hope your Friday is absolutely magnificent, G. ** Bill, I think between prosecuting drug users and people whose citizenship isn't 'proven' by a bunch of paperwork, law enforcement agencies' hands are pretty busy. What a world. Ugh about the heat wave and top floor and especially the headache. I can't believe you were ever hateful, Bill. You, hateful? No, that does not compute. ** Alan, Thanks, man. Totally fantastic about your upcoming spate of days off. Are you really that close to finishing? Wow, that's exciting, and it sounds so fucking good to me. My kingdom for your pace. No, yeah, that's very, very excellent news, Alan. Really thrilling to hear! ** End. I'll see you tomorrow either briefly or at the usual length, and, until then, have a good one.