Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Art, Fashion & Design >

Beautiful Death: Cemetary Art

09:42 / 29.05.02

a while back i was given a wonderful book: this bloke has spent 20 years or so travelling around europe, photographing cemetaries. apart from the different styles, country to country, the pics are very lovingly taken and it's something i've done a fair amount of myself over the years. the ancient, wind battered celtic crosses of cornwall's graveyards are as beautiful as the avenues of kensal green's massive cemetary, which i lived opposite for five years - the victorian monuments were, admittedly, a point scoring exercise by the families of the deceased, to show who had the higher status, but the gothic monuments are superb.

anyone else into this kind of thing? what's your favourite?

09:59 / 29.05.02

I personally actively like chilled out, friendly graveyards... not modern, but sunlit... or lively, overgrown ones...they are comfortable places, and not at all scary. However, some of the graveyards in Edinburgh particularly are outstandingly disturbing - bleak as fuck, skulls carved everywhere, and forbidding statues of lonely old businessmen... the graves-in-cages thing has always struck me as pretty weird, too.

There is a ruined abbey near Newcastle, right on top of a cliff by the sea, and the gravestones are, as I recall, basically in sandstone, unbelievably weathered and unreadable. But by far the coolest thing about the place is the two coffins cut into the rock. I lay down in one when I was there...

10:27 / 29.05.02

Question: graves and funerals display our grief and regret, and are often beautiful. But sometimes, even frequently, the same amount of thought, planning, and emotion expended on the funeral could have saved the life of the deceased, both in civilian life and war.

Sometimes, the beauty of these settings strikes me as slightly obscene.

10:41 / 29.05.02

I think that may partially be the point... Funerals, and graves, are generally for the living, not the dead. Either to assuage guilt, out of a sense of duty, or simply because it helps ease the pain and honour the deceased, whom the mourners genuinely loved. However, tombs can also be a status symbol planned by the deceased (like the lonely Edinburgh businessman I mentioned)...an 'in yer face' to one's peers, and a lasting reminder that one had the cash to kick arse in the lasting memorial stakes. Graveyards can be analysed like everything else - for emotional, social and political significance. Sure, it can be depressing, it can be obscene... but most things can, in the end...

10:50 / 29.05.02

funerals are a necessary ritual, for the reasons chol stated. an official parting of the ways is necessary. i find cemetaries peaceful places where i go to think, when i'm feeling down, or just to clear some mental space. i take photographs of them because i appreciate them as art and they can be very atmospheric, as are the pics in the book - although i've been interested to find that that atmosphere is more melancholic than 'spooky'.

15:56 / 29.05.02

...rubbings are also fun though its been a while since I've done it. In some ways I like cemetaries a great deal...bunch of dead people, lots of things to look at, and usually pretty quiet. I do think that modern ones are generally less interesting and a waste of space in some aspects. Could be used for better purposes. I like older ones (see some in the city in Phila) when there's a bunch of buildings that's been erected around them. Old (relatively speaking), flat and worn down stones that are much different from today's. Nice juxtaposition.

Going to places like Arlington National Cemetary is amazing...thousands of simple white stones carrying of into the distance. One of the more fascinating memorials.

It is interesting to see rituals with older generations visiting the graves of their loved ones. I haven't visited the dead nor do I feel that I will. But I guess since I'm young and didn't lose my love, etc. I don't have a direct need or purpose beyond curiousity and fascination.

10:09 / 30.05.02

i like looking at the information on the tombstones -- how old people were, how many kids they had, how many survived, who else is buried with them...

i love looking at names as well. one of my faves is in gravesend (of all places), where a Mr Freelove is buried with a Miss Cooch. honestly!

there's a lovely cemetary in prague, where dvorjak is buried, which is full of interesting sculptures and statuary, and gorgeous colourful mosaics. one of them has a pretty sexy statue of a woman in a state of undress, topless. and the name of the tomb? Bendova.

i know, it's a stupid innuendo. but the statue is lovely. i like things like that. wilde's tomb in pere lachaise, sculpted by epstein (and damaged by vandals) is nice too.

i love tombs that have flowers or trees all over them as well. but those photos printed on the actual tombstone always seem kind of tacky.