The Book of the Dead, Redux

Image via A Book About Death, www.abookaboutdeath.blogspot.com. Art by Thomas Kerr, Mike Dickau, and Joel Cohen

As a how-to guide to the afterlife, the Egyptian Book of the Dead was printed on papyrus and placed in the tombs of the recently deceased. Nearly four thousand years have passed since the days of mummification and the storing of organs in canopic jars, but death is no less important or fascinating a subject to humanity. The latest installment of this fixation is A Book About Death, a massive, unbound book project by Paris-based artist Matthew Rose. According to the web site, over 1000 artists have contributed 500 postcards of artwork, each riffing on the theme of death and creating a mock cover for A Book About Death. Submissions range from surrealist collage to tranquil watercolors to ripping satire to minimalist black and white drawings, similar to Olaf Breuning’s work. Example: Thomas Kerr, Mike Dickau, and Joel Cohen (not the director) submitted a red and black cover (pictured above) in which several skeleton farmers till the land. Below the soil where they work are the images of a knife, a gun, and a stick of dynamite jutting into the soil. A quote beneath the drawing reads: “Your planet’s immune system is trying to get rid of you” –Kurt Vonnegut.

The nice thing about the project is that every artist is attributed and linked to. Therefore, in addition to the site for A Book About Death existing as a collaborative creation, it also serves as a substantial database of artists plying their skills. One can see scrolling through the works that one artist’s interpretation of death is as disparate as the next. The variety is infinite and, for artists, death still seems to have its intriguing luster as a topic worth tackling.

An exhibition for A Book About Death is set to open at The Emily Harvey Foundation in New York on September 10, 2009.

via A BOOK ABOUT DEATH