Death of an Artist
29 March 2008 Labels: Art, Artist, Death 28 commentsSuicide (Latin suicidium, from sui caedere, to kill oneself) is the act of intentionally terminating one's own life, although in many dictionaries it connotes "willful destruction of one's self-interest," not necessarily physical death. Suicide occurs for any number of reasons, often relating to depression, substance abuse, shame, avoiding pain, financial difficulties or other undesirable situations.
The predominant view of modern medicine is that suicide is a mental health concern, associated with psychological factors such as the difficulty of coping with depression, inescapable suffering or fear, or other mental disorders and pressures. Suicide is sometimes interpreted in this framework as a "cry for help" and attention, or to express despair and the wish to escape, rather than a genuine intent to die. Most people who attempt suicide do not complete suicide on a first attempt; those who later gain a history of repetitions are significantly more at risk of eventual completion.
Nearly a million people worldwide die by suicide annually. There are an estimated 10 to 20 million attempted suicides every year. Elderly males have the highest suicide rate, although rates for young adults have been increasing in recent years.
Suicide
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vincent van Gogh
Self-portrait (1887)
Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist artist. His paintings and drawings include some of the world's best known, most popular and most expensive pieces.
On 27 July 1890, at the age of 37, he walked into the fields and shot himself in the chest with a revolver. Without realizing that he was fatally wounded he returned to the Ravoux Inn where he died in his bed two days later. Theo hastened to be at his side and reported his last words as "La tristesse durera toujours" (French for "the sadness will last forever").
Vincent was buried at the cemetery of Auvers-sur-Oise. Theo had contracted syphilis—though this was not admitted by the family for many years—and not long after Vincent's death, was himself admitted to hospital. He was not able to come to terms with the grief of his brother's absence, and died six months later on 25 January at Utrecht. In 1914 Theo's body was exhumed and re-buried beside Vincent.
Mark Rothko
Magenta, Black, Green on Orange,
oil on canvas, 1949,
Museum of Modern Art
Mark Rothko born Marcus Rothkowitz (Latvian: Marks Rotko); September 25, 1903–February 25, 1970) was a Latvian-born Jewish American painter and printmaker who is classified as an abstract expressionist, although he rejected not only the label but even being called an abstract painter.
"The fact that people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions.. the people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when painting them. And if you say you are moved only by their color relationships then you miss the point."
In the spring of 1968, Rothko suffered an aneurysm of the aorta, a result of his chronic high blood pressure. Ignoring doctor’s orders, Rothko continued to drink and smoke heavily, avoid exercise and maintain an unhealthy diet. However, he followed the advice not to paint pictures larger than a yard in height and turned his attention to smaller formats, including acrylics on paper. Due to impotence, Rothko and his wife Mell separated on New Year’s Day 1969, and he moved into his studio. Sensing the end was near, Rothko and his financial advisor, Bernard Reis, created a foundation intended to fund "research and education" that would receive the bulk of Rothko’s work following his death. (Reis later sold the paintings to the Marlborough Gallery at a considerable loss and pocketed the difference with Gallery representatives, the result of which was one of the longest and most heavily hyped legal battles in art history.)
On February 25, 1970, Oliver Steindecker, Rothko’s assistant, found the artist in his kitchen, lying dead on the floor in front of the sink, covered in blood. His arms had been sliced open with a razor lying at his side. During autopsy it was discovered he had also overdosed on anti-depressants. He was 66 years old.
Jack Cole (artist)
The Three Stooges had nothing on Plastic Man: Police Comics #24 (Nov. 1943), cover art by Jack Cole
Jack Ralph Cole (December 14, 1914 - August 13, 1958) was an American comic book artist and Playboy magazine cartoonist best-known for creating the popular and highly influential superhero Plastic Man. He was posthumously inducted into the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1991, and the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1999.
In May 1958, Cole realized one of his life's ambitions when he created his own daily syndicated newspaper comic strip, Betsy and Me, which chronicled the domestic adventures of nebbishy Chester Tibbet, his wife Betsy, and their 5-year-old genius son, Farley. By the end of the summer, it was appearing in 50 newspapers.
Not long afterward, Cole committed suicide. By now living at 703 Silver Lake Road in Cary, Illinois, about 40 miles northwest of Chicago, he told his wife at about two in the afternoon that he was picking up the mail and the newspapers. Driving his Chevrolet station wagon to Dave Donner's Sport Shop in nearby Crystal Lake, he purchased a .22 caliber, single-shot Marlin rifle. He phoned a neighbor between 5:15 and 5:30 p.m. to say what he was doing, and for the neighbor to tell Dorothy. Parked on a gravel road west of the intersection of Illinois Routes 176 and 14, Cole was found by three boys at approximately 6 p.m., shot in the head but still alive. A McHenry County sheriff's deputy arrived and called for an ambulance ten minutes later. Cole died at nearby Woodstock Hospital at 6:45 p.m.
That morning, he had mailed two suicide notes, one to Dorothy (who at a coroner's inquest testified that he had given his reasons) and one to his friend and boss, Playboy editor-publisher Hugh Hefner. The letter to his wife was never made public, and the reasons for Cole's suicide have remained unknown. Dorothy never again spoke with her late husband's family nor with Hefner, and remarried approximately a year later.
Dora Carrington
Farm at Watendlath (1921)
© Tate London, 2005
Dora de Houghton Carrington, known generally as Carrington, (March 29, 1893 – March 11, 1932) was a British painter and decorative artist.
She married Ralph Partridge, but lived most of her life with the homosexual writer Lytton Strachey . He died of cancer in January 1932. Carrington shot herself fatally two months later after a previous attempt to take her own life by asphyxiation from car exhaust. Partridge was able to intervene in the first suicide attempt but could not save her from the second attempt. She simply did not want to live without Strachey, whom she deeply loved. Carrington's life with Strachey was dramatized in the 1995 film Carrington, starring Emma Thompson in the title role.
Jeanne Hébuterne
Death Jeanne Hébuterne (April 6, 1898 – January 25, 1920) was a French artist, best known as the frequent subject and common-law wife of the artist Amedeo Modigliani.
On January 24, 1920 Amedeo Modigliani died. Jeanne Hébuterne's family brought her to their home but the totally distraught girl threw herself out of the fifth-floor apartment window two days after Modigliani's death, killing herself and her unborn child. Her family, who blamed her demise on Modigliani, interred her in the Cimetière de Bagneux. Nearly ten years later, the Hébuterne family finally relented and allowed her remains to be transferred to Père Lachaise Cemetery to rest beside Modigliani.
Diane Arbus
Identical Twins, Roselle, New Jersey, 1967, on the cover of Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph.
Diane Arbus (March 14, 1923 – July 26, 1971) was an American photographer, noted for her portraits of people on the fringes of society, such as transvestites, dwarfs, giants, prostitutes, and ordinary citizens in unconventional poses and settings.
In July 1971, Arbus committed suicide in Greenwich Village at the age of 48 by ingesting a large quantity of barbiturates and then slashing her wrists.
Francesca Woodman
francescawoodman.wall
American photographer Francesca Woodman (1958-1981) is best known for black-and-white pictures of herself and of female models. Many of her photographs show young women nude, blurred (due to movement and long exposure times), merging with their surroundings, or with their faces obscured. Years after her suicide at the age of 22, her photographic works became the subject of much attention, including many exhibitions and books.
In late 1980 Woodman became depressed due to her work and to a broken relationship. On January 19, 1981, she committed suicide by jumping out a loft window in New York. An acquaintance wrote "things had been bad, there had been therapy, things had gotten better, guard had been let down."
Arshile Gorky
Untitled
1934Jack Rutberg Fine Arts
Arshile Gorky (real name - Vostanik Manoog Adoyan; Armenian:(April 15, 1904? – July 21, 1948) was an Armenian-born American painter who had a seminal influence on Abstract Expressionism.
Gorky's later years were filled with immense pain and heartbreak. His studio barn burned down, he underwent a colostomy for cancer, his neck was broken and his painting arm temporarily paralyzed in a car accident, and his wife of seven years left him, taking their children with her. Gorky hanged himself in Sherman, Connecticut, in 1948, at the age of 44. He is buried in North Cemetery in Sherman, Connecticut.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
see the full list here:
Artists who committed suicide
and @
Art History
An alphabetical listing of those dearly departed artists (plus one art historian and one famous patron) who chose to leave this world by their own hands.
Artists Who Committed Suicide
Offbeat News
Bizarre Graves and Grave Stress Therapy
The man who made lists to fend off depression
Peter Mark Roget, the creator of Roget's Thesaurus made lists to handle all the pain, grief, sorrow, affliction, woe, bitterness, unhappiness and misery in a life that lasted over 90 years.
Flix
Flix is an application made by Dave Butler that uses a digital camera or webcam to create time-lapse movies. Still pictures are captured every few seconds, minutes or hours (whatever the user decides), then they are merged together as frames in a time-lapse video. Some cool effects can be achieved this way.
Two examples of filming a time lapse video whilst an Artwork is taking shape
Drawing Scarlett Johansson Part 1 of 3 Actual Speed
From: FAPortraitFactory
Marilyn Monroe Time Lapse
From: nanreasaao
"Made with Nimisis.com/flix"
Blog Travels
Make an artist one sheet:
Casey Klahn @ The Colorist
New School Color - recently made an artist one sheet....
well worth checking out....
What I Love & Hate About Art Blogging
Frame That Spam! Data-Crunching Artists Transform the World of Information
Top 20 (or so) Art Blogs
This list of the best art blogs for exhibition reviews and other art news was compiled by Joy Garnett, Associate Library Manager, Robert Goldwater Library, Metropolitan Museum of Art
The 101 most useful websites
There are tens of millions of sites to visit. Not forgetting telegraph.co.uk, here are the only ones you actually need. Compiled by David Baker
Speak Up Sydney is an exciting new initiative to help strengthen the tie between Sydney's local community and its businesses and we need to let as many Sydney-siders know about this as possible. And that of course includes you. As a launch incentive we're giving away up to $10,000 in cash and prizes!
Here's a bit of info on Speak Up Sydney and also how you could win a share of the prizes up for grabs.
Speak Up Sydney's goal is to provide a forum for Sydney residents to share the experiences they've had with local businesses and to voice their opinions in an open and honest manner. Why? Well here's what a recent survey conducted by research company PureProfile revealed:
1. 95% of Sydney residents feel out of the loop and would like to be more in-the-know about businesses in their local community.
2. 84% of Sydney-siders would like a forum to share their opinions and experiences (good and bad) with other people about the businesses and services in their local area.
3. 76% of people in Sydney currently waste time travelling outside their local area for services such as masseurs and mechanics because they don't know about alternative businesses within their local area.
Sydney-siders are feeling more and more disconnected from the people and businesses in their local community and we want to reverse this trend. And what better way to launch an initative like this than to give away bucket loads of cash and prizes?! There's 10 prizes up for grabs to the total of $10,000 with the main prize being $5,000 cash. How do you get your hands on the prizes? By sharing your past experiences and writing a review on a local business. Pretty simple really!
Speak Up Sydney has the support of some other super stars around Sydney such as RAYV.com.au, Time Out Sydney, Nudie, Lonely Planet, bopo, Greater Union Cinemas and many more.
All winners will be announced at an exclusive party to be held by Speak Up Sydney, RAYV and Time Out Sydney around the beginning of May.
For full details check out http://www.speakupsydney.com/.
I will be posting an update of the Top 101 Artists' Blogs
on the 1st April 2008
Earth Hour countdown begins
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