Negotiating Death: Problems with depicting the corpse in contemporary art.

By Maya Love. Art History 334: Ways of Seeing Contemporary Art, Semester One 2018. Grade: A+

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What are the issues arising from how contemporary artworks have depicted the corpse? 

At the most primal level, the human corpse is visually shocking. The corpse presides over the history of art, manifested in the didactic symbolism of memento mori, the Baroque glorification of the grotesque, the Surrealist obsession with the exquisite corpse and most recently, the depiction of the corpse that has emerged in contemporary art. The depiction of the corpse in contemporary art is a necessary evil that raises issues regarding the management of the ‘corpse’ as a physical and symbolic entity. As Julia Kristeva asserts the corpse is “the utmost abjection. It is death infecting life” [1] and while it is not always ethically justifiable, the depiction of the corpse is a powerful way to engage a viewer; yet it must be negotiated carefully. 

American artist Andres Serrano and Mexican artist Teresa Margolles both use the corpse in their art, in an attempt to return dignity to the anonymous or forgotten corpse. Serrano presides over the photographic medium, while Margolles tends towards a process that depicts the corpse as a physical object or by the residues left behind after post-mortem examinations. The beginning of this essay will introduce two works by each artist and examine how they negotiate the assumption that it is unnecessary to depict the corpse. The second part of this essay will examine the issues that surround the acquisition of the corpse as an artistic resource, focusing predominantly on Margolles within the context of 1990s Mexico. This is especially prevalent in Margolles’ work which sheds light on the socio-political setting that she works within. Finally, this essay will speak to the tension between the agency of an artist and the vulnerability of the dead. While agency is always one-sided in regard to the corpse, Serrano and Margolles negotiate this differently. While the depiction of the corpse in contemporary art is not always morally correct, it is a necessary and productive means of understanding the way these artists approach death. However, it must be managed appropriately. 

Figure 1: Andres Serrano. The Morgue (Rat Poison Suicide), 1992 (cibachrome, 49 1⁄2 x 60, Edition of 3; 32 1⁄2 x 40, Edition of 7), collection Stephen & Elizabeth Sobel, New York.
Image by Andres Serrano: http://andresserrano.org/series/the-morgue

Serrano’s series The Morgue lures the viewer in with a highly-constructed and aestheticized styling of the corpse. This treatment of form clashes with the brutally direct titles that indicate the violent deaths of the victims. Perhaps this is confronting because we assume that we will all die peacefully. Rat Poison Suicide I (1992, figure 1) is the first in a trio of three images. It depicts a tightly cropped segment of a female torso wearing a white bralette, arms covered with goose-bumps and her hands raised above her chest in clenched fists. She is artificially lit from a source in the upper-right corner which casts a shadow that dissects her upper arm. At first, the image could be believed to depict a living body, but the title shatters this illusion. The image is seductive; the chiaroscuro references Caravaggio's treatment of light while the navy hood that occludes her face references the drapery of Hellenic sculpture. Yet, this viewer is irrefutably aware, due to the title, that this is a corpse. 

Conversely, Burnt to Death (1992, figure 2) is from the same series but utilises a visceral, clinical mode of representation that is affronting to view. Shallow depth of field emphasises the details of the charred remains, while the large format of the image makes it inescapable for the viewer. The ashy skeleton laid atop white cloth acts as a morbid inversion of the golden light that dominates in Rat Poison Suicide I. Gregory Minissale isolates the two prevailing modes of representation in the series; one that works “through the hierarchies of art” and the other is “a concealed surgical mirror onto torn and seared flesh.”[2] These contrasting modes deliberately create disjunction in the viewer’s attempts to understand the images. One wants to look a moment longer but is repulsed by their desire to do so. It evokes a sense of the abject – the debased image that we long to look at, despite our impulse to look away. 

Figure 2: Andres Serrano. The Morgue (Burnt to Death), 1992, (Cibachrome, 49 1⁄2 x 60, Edition of 3; 32 1⁄2 x 40, Edition of 7), private owner.
Image by Andres Serrano: http://andresserrano.org/series/the-morgue

Figure 3: Teresa Margolles. Lengua [Tongue], 2000, (object, dimensions unknown), courtesy of Teresa Margolles & Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich. Black & white reproduction from: Banwell, Julia. Teresa Margolles and the Aesthetics of Death. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2015. 93.

Again, the abject manifests in Teresa Margolles’ object, Lengua (2000, figure 3) which consists of a preserved human tongue pierced by a metal rod and bar accessory, supported by a metal plinth. Abjection emerges in the application of the readymade tradition; the object is removed from its usual context and presented as a challenge for the viewer to comprehend. Initial concerns relate to where it came from and how it came to be in the setting of an art gallery. Many of Margolles’ works use a strong visceral depiction of death to provide social commentary on the artist’s country of origin. Through the ‘life of the corpse’, Margolles brings the viewer into close-contact with death, which may lead to the fear that the artist exploits these bodies.[3] However, of many artists who work with the corpse, Margolles has the most legitimate access to the morgue as a forensic specialist. Her later works, such as 127 Cuerpos (2006, figures 4 and 5), focus more predominantly on bringing the viewer into contact with the residues left after post-mortem examinations. This may be a product of early criticism relating to her procurement of the corpses. 

When comparing the two artists, it is clear that Margolles brings the viewer much closer to the corpse. Serrano’s use of photography maintains a distance from his subject, but also provides an avenue to manipulate the audience’s perception of the deceased. Serrano also provides a more aestheticized approach than Margolles which can provide an opportunity to find beauty in the abject. Margolles’ images are substantially more abstract. She removes objects from their common context to imbue them with meaning and in doing so, exposes the “inequality and injustice to which the corpses she uses have been subjected to” in the context of Mexico in the early twenty-first century.[4] Spectators are expected to be uncomfortable at the sight of Margolles’ and Serrano’s works because a confrontational approach is necessary to their artistic approach. As Lousa maintains, art can provide a controlled way of engaging with our fears.[5] However, this engagement can also advance the view that exhibiting the corpse is graphic and unnecessary and this often leads to judgements of the artist’s morality. 

In 1998, Anthony Noel Kelly was charged with the theft of body parts from the Royal College of Surgeons in London. This case provides an example of truly unethical procurement of the corpse as an artistic resource. Although granted permission to sketch bodies in the morgue at RCS, when Kelly’s work was exhibited it became clear that they could not have been made without casting actual body parts.[6] He allegedly removed body parts in black plastic bags, conjuring the image of a modern-day grave robber. When compared to Serrano and Margolles, all three artists had access to a morgue and used the corpse in an artistic capacity. However, Serrano was granted permission to photograph his subjects under the jurisdiction of a pathologist who maintained the anonymity of the deceased. Margolles' is a forensic pathologist and therefore her access to the morgue is completely legitimate. Her procurement of the corpse as a medium is unique to the socio-political climate in Mexico. For all artists engaging with the corpse, there is a degree of professional liability that should promote a considered approach to the management of the corpse as a medium, however, Kelly's case shows what happens when this is abused. 

What is often shocking about art that depicts the corpse is that the artist could legitimately acquire the corpse. Margolles’ access is unique to her profession but can also be attributed to a “culture of institutional laxity and a disregard for human remains” in Mexico during the late 1990s and early 2000s. The increase in maquiladoras (industrial plants) located along the Mexico-US border sparked a surge in the number of drug-related feminicidios and disappearances.[7] Banwell attributes the increased visibility of death and dead bodies, both in the morgue and in public spaces, as a result of the narco-violence native to this area.[8] Margolles repurposes the unclaimed and forgotten corpses, often victims of narco-violence, and uses them to expose the socio-political turmoil in Mexico. 

Margolles’ art raises issues regarding the necessity of consent, which can complicate her dual role as pathologist/artist. This is evident in the acquisition of the tongue used in Lengua (2000, figure 3). It belonged to a young man who died in a street fight and Margolles admits that she thought she could use his body to speak for thousands of anonymous deaths.[9] The family of the man were initially resistant to give consent until the artist offered to pay for the man’s burial, something the family could not have otherwise afforded. There is a possibility that this aspect of production threatens to indict the social conditions that make Margolles’ access to the corpse possible. Conversely, Mexico has a long tradition of placing the corpse in public view through the Catholic tradition of the relic. Margolles’ art must not be dismissed because the critic is ignorant of traditions outside of the Western perspective.[10] Lengua (2000, figure 3) functions as a non-secular relic, removed from the body and displayed for the purpose of meditation. The ethics of the artist’s use of the cadaver is for the individual to discern, but the corpse is undeniably crucial to Margolles’ expression of social injustice. 

In Andres Serrano’s series The Morgue, agency is monologic. The intense stylisation and composition of the images are a record of his unbridled artistic control. In the Rat Poison Suicide trio, this is particularly evident. While the aforementioned first image is represented in the mode of high art, Rat Poison Suicide II depicts a close-up of a medical incision on the corpse’s foot and Rat Poison Suicide III focuses on an autopsy scar that runs from the pubic bone to the figure’s neck. The figures’ arms are no longer raised and the bralette has been removed in this third image. Andrea Fitzpatrick argues that Serrano’s work takes advantage of the power imbalance between the living and the dead.[11] She suggests a gendered approach that condenses the Rat Poison Suicide trio to a “grossly invasive view of her pubic region”, which reduces the identity of the deceased to a “spectacular display of her sex.”[12] Serrano imposes an identity on this corpse that defines the viewer’s reading. While it is true that the dead cannot give consent or assert identity, Serrano abuses the authority he possesses as the living, for the sake of his art. 

Margolles also imposes identity onto the deceased she works with; however, it is in an attempt to make death visible in the collective social conscience as an alternative to obscuring the result of narco-violence. It is true that these corpses are afforded an identity because the artist chooses to do so. The tongue in Lengua (2000, figure 3) metaphorically speaks for the anonymous victims of drug-related murders, but it speaks the voice of the artist. Julia Banwell posits the idea that Margolles appropriates the dead and by not identifying them, she reinforces the dehumanising effect of their unclaimed status.[13] However, she also acknowledges that Margolles is intent on visibility, not individuality.[14] In Margolles' work, the significance is afforded to the dead by posing them as metonyms for the social corpus. They may not be ethically justifiable, but they present a more dignified negotiation of the agency of the artist and vulnerability of the dead when compared with Serrano. 

Figure 4: Teresa Margolles. 127 Cuerpos [127 Bodies], 2006, (Installation made of thread, approx. 35.5 meters), courtesy of Teresa Margolles & Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich.
Photograph: Achim Kukulies. Black & white reproduction from: Banwell, Julia. Teresa Margolles and the Aesthetics of Death. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2015. 92.

Art-making that involves the corpse under the guise of a social cause is not reason enough to disregard the autonomy of the deceased. Perhaps this concern is what provoked a departure from the explicit representation of the corpse to a more conceptual depiction in Margolles’ later work, notably in 127 Cuerpos (2006, figure 4). The work is an installation that allows the viewer to approach the knotted threads suspended from either end of the exhibition space. Upon inspection, the viewer will note the dried blood and other bodily fluids that coat the thread. This work is composed of 127 remnants of autopsy thread used to sew up the body after an autopsy. Although the human body is absent, the spectator is brought in close contact with the corpse, however, the identity of the deceased is not compromised. Due to the conceptual nature of the work, the threads are not linked directly to a person, instead, they are metonymic substitutes for bodies, knotted together in the social corpus. The work is a unique representation of the corpse that doesn’t compromise the identity of the deceased. 

The use of the corpse in contemporary art raises a series of problems that question the artist’s mode of representation, the acquisition of their medium and how they manage the one-sided agency in relation to the deceased. These issues ultimately beg the question; is it ethically just to use the corpse in art, and if so, how does one achieve that? While Serrano and Margolles are substantially more ethically justifiable in their methods than that of Kelly, their work still presents issues. However, art has never been known to follow convention, and perhaps the discourse that the use of the corpse in contemporary art provokes is enough to justify its use in art-making. 

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[1]  Kristeva, “Approaching Abjection,” 4. 
[2] Minissale, “Deleuzian Approaches to the Corpse: Serrano, Witkin and Eisenman,” 115.
[3]  Banwell, Teresa Margolles and the Aesthetics of Death, 39. 
[4] Ibid., 32. 
[5]  Lousa, “Death Aestheticization in Contemporary Artistic Practices,” 384.
[6]   Banwell, Teresa Margolles and the Aesthetics of Death, 35. 
[7] Ibid., 7. 
[8]  Ibid., 9.
[9]  Ibid., 93. 
[10]  Ibid., 17.
[11]  Fitzpatrick, “Reconsidering the Dead in Andres Serrano’s ‘The Morgue’: Identity, Agency, Subjectivity,” 28.
[12]  Fitzpatrick, 27. 
[13]  Banwell, Teresa Margolles and the Aesthetics of Death, 12. 
[14]  Banwell, 14. 

Bibliography 

Banwell, Julia. Teresa Margolles and the Aesthetics of Death. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2015. 

Ferguson, Bruce. “Andres Serrano: Invisible Power.” In Body and Soul, 9-13. New York: Takarajima Books, 1995. 

Fitzpatrick, Andrea D. Reconsidering the Dead in Andres Serrano’s ‘The Morgue’: Identity, Agency, Subjectivity.” Canadian Art Review / Medical Tabulae: Visual Arts as Medical Representation 33:1 (2008): 28-42. 

Garcia, Emeren and John Zeppetelli. Teresa Margolles: Mundos. Montreal: Musee d’art contemporain de Montreal, 2017. 

Hobbs, Robert Carleton, Wendy Steiner, and Marcia Tucker. Andres Serrano works 1983- 1993. Philadelphia: Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, 1994. 

Kristeva, Julia. “Approaching Abjection.” In Powers of Horror; an essay on abjection, 1- 31. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. 

Lousa, Teresa. “Death Aestheticization in Contemporary Artistic Practices.” Arte, Individuo y Sociedad 28:2 (2016): 371-385. 

Minissale, Gregory. “Deleuzian Approaches to the Corpse: Serrano, Witkin and Eisenman.” Janus Head 12:2 (2011): 101-129. 

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About the Author:

Maya is currently studying towards her BA Honours in Art History, focusing on the ethical and legal implications of using the corpse in contemporary art. Aside from having a penchant for death, she enjoys theatre and her fur-child, Special Agent Dale Cooper.  

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