A morbid moment

Hello! I had a bit of a morbid moment in my procrastination today. I should have been working on my english coursework, but when my ill brother walked into the kitchen where i'd set up office for the afternoon, i took a break from my work to tell him how in my english lesson the other day, we read an extract from a novel about Ned Kelly (the title of the novel and author i'm afraid i've forgotten, and am too lazy to dig into my insanely unorganised pile of notes, not yet seperated by subject or, for that matter, sorted into anything resembling chronological order. I have no idea how i'm going to even approach beginning revision for my may & june exams in a few weeks), in which Ned's getting jiggy with a pretty lady and, when he decides to have a little suck on her mammary papillas (had to look up the scientific term as i feel rude enough talking about this as it is), he gets bit more than he bargained for - he spies a little babe in the corner of the room and the revelation comes to him that she is infact lactating, and the substance that has just filled his mouth is breast milk - nice. But anyway, i decided to go on Ned Kelly's wikipedia page, as of course he is a significant figure in Australian history. There, i found i photograph of his death mask. I was intrigued by this 'death mask' idea and decided to look at its wikipedia page. This is what i found:

In Western cultures a death mask is a wax or plaster cast made of a person’s face following death. Death masks may be mementos of the dead, or be used for creation of portraits. It is sometimes possible to identify portraits that have been painted from death masks, because of the characteristic slight distortions of the features caused by the weight of the plaster during the making of the mold.

Ned Kelly's death mask

I found this idea very intruiging. It had never occured to me that even before the times of photography (although i'm aware that photography was around in Kelly's time, there is infact a photo of him on wiki taken the day before his execution, he lived from 1855-1880), a person's real face could be immortalised in something besides a painting. It's all very well looking at paintings of famous historical figures, but what often frustrates me is that we know that a persons features would often be manipulated to the requirements of the sitter, whether this be as a result of the fashions in beauty in that particular place or time, or, as seen in particular with monarchs whose portraits were often as much a piece of propaganda as they were work of art, their image could be manipulated in a way that would be benifitial to how they were percieved by their public. As seen, for instance, in Elizabeth I's 'Armada Portrait', in which many techniques are used to not only place the Virgin Queen on somewhat of a pedastal in terms of her idolised beauty, but also to assert as much power as possible over her subjects. It is a painting created with the intention of inspiring awe amongst those who lay their eyes upon it. 

Armada Portrait of Elizabeth I (circa 1588)

Her grand outfit allows her to dominate more of the painting than she might otherwise, placing as much attention on her as possible, whilst demonstrating her importance. her right hand is resting casually on a globe, suggesting the ease with which she controls so much of it - she doesn't struggle to overcome any problems that she faces in doing so and therefore her percieved position as a rightful ruler appointed by God is solidified. There are countless other elements in this painting that add to this sense of power and beauty, but i think you get the picture. It is likely that, whilst she may have been good looking, and as we know, wore alot of makeup and paid careful attention to her appearance in order to maintain the image of the 'Virgin Queen', she may not have been as beautiful as this. As with the makeup, clothes, photoshop effects and flattering angles that many women, whether famous or otherwise, utilise in order to create the desired image of themselves in photographs taken of them, contemporary paintings of historical figures are never to be trusted entirely. One of the most important things to remember in all types of art is that rarely is there anything that has not been put in without a significant amount of thought. In visual art, such things often must be considered in order to further one's understanding of it: how are their limbs positioned? In which direction are  they looking? Why is their dress that colour? Why is that tree there in the background? 

I know from first hand experience that this is a principle used extensively in the subject of history, and exhausted to the point of being tedious in the study of Literature. It appears to be my teachers' pleasure to drive us, as students, absolutely scatty; trying to draw ten different meanings from one sentence, many of which refer to such obscure sources one would have had to read the entire contents of the British library, or at the very least, the entire works of Shakespeare, Chaucer, other medieval fictions such as Sir Thomas Malory's 'Le Morte D'Arthur', both the old and new testaments of the bible, Paradise Lost (which keeps cropping up for me in my eng lit studies, much to my annoyance - i can't see myself sitting down to read it any time soon), not to mention a considerable amount of Keats, Dickens, Hardy, Plath, Lawrence, Woolf, Wilde...i could go on, but i won't. Such analytical subjects certainly, in my opinion, have to be a labour of love or it is just not possible to succesfully or happily pursue them. 

But going back to the point of this post: whilst having a look at the wikipedia page on death masks, i came across this particular one, which has a very interesting story behind its creation:

L'Inconnue de la Seine, recorded the face of an unidentified young woman who, according to one oft-repeated story, had been found drowned in the Seine River at Paris around the late 1880s. A worker at the Paris morgue was so taken by her beauty that he made a plaster cast of her face. She was considered so beautiful that in the following years copies of the mask became a fashionable morbid fixture in Parisian Bohemian society.

 

Albert Camus and others compared her enigmatic smile to that of the Mona Lisa, inviting numerous speculations as to what clues the eerily happy expression in her face could offer about her life, her death, and her place in society. Critic A. Alvarez wrote "I am told that a whole generation of German girls modeled their looks on her." According to Hans Hesse of the University of Sussex, Alvarez reports, "the Inconnue became the erotic ideal of the period, as Bardot was for the 1950s. He thinks that German actresses like Elisabeth Bergner modeled themselves on her. She was finally displaced as a paradigm by Greta Garbo."

                                                                              

First thing i thought when i read this? CREEEEEPY....but cool. I'm a sucker for a good horror story. I spent my childhood/early teenage years lapping up supernatural horror stories, either buying them from second hand bookshops (always one for a bargain) or borrowing them from the library. Anything to do with dead people interests me. I don't know why, and i know it sounds really sick, but it's true. I find it scary but i love the thrill. I remember the first time i watched 'The Others' and was introduced to the Victorian concept of taking photographs of the dead. Well i had a look at some photographs today and here's a few. If they're standing, then they're being propped up by stands. Sorry if anyone finds this offensive by the way, i realise it's a pretty morbid topic, hence the title of this post. No doubt i'll be having some weird nightmares tonight!

Jeanette Glackmeyer - taken around 1870. About 14 at the time, she had been dead for 9 days when this photograph was taken.

This little girl had to pose with her dead, older brother. Poor thing! How traumatising :(

Girl propped up with a stand, if you look carefully, you can notice that her right foot is dangling a bit above the ground.

I hope none of you get nightmares after looking at these photos! If you do, my apologies :S

 

Now to keep going with this bloody coursework...

Lots of love, 

Lucy

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