Vik Muniz: Thinking Artist

The Mona Lisa in peanut butter and jelly...well, jam, really

I just picked up a book I bought at an exhibition of Vik Munoz's work at PS-1 in Brooklyn back in February, during an ill-fated trip to NYC (I got appendicitis the second day, had to have surgery, and then stayed four extra days over my originally planned three - this during a heavy snowfall and the Jet Blue debacle). You can imagine, the trip being ill-fated and all, that I haven't really had a chance to look at this book much. But for the first time I actually read what Mr. Munoz had to say about his life and work, and it's really fascinating.

Mr. Munoz's work could be construed as gimmicky, if one stood back and only looked at pictures in books and online. But up close, in the scale that he works, they are not: instead, humor and attention to detail make for a surprisingly fun, and often very beautiful, effect. His ability to take disparate...well, stuff, and make it into images is amazing, as if he can actually see in a different way than the rest of us. Like he is doing jigsaws backwards, making the puzzle pieces form a picture rather than watching the picture emerge from the puzzle pieces.

Liz Taylor made out of diamonds: the artist had to work in the bank vault, with a guard standing by; he was not allowed to take them home.

A photographer by training, he works in odd materials: chocolate syrup, sugar, plastic toys, the dots from hole-punchers, junk, dust, and detritis from a Brazilian street after Carnivale - nearly always sticking to one material for each series. He then photographs the images he's made. When you see one of his shows you find yourself looking at very large-scale photographs (life size to the materials). The detail of it, and the "close-up, far-away" combination makes for an amazing, confusing, exhilarating experience. Funny, too, as in his Medusa Marinara, which I unfortunately couldn't find a picture of. And unfortunately, reproductions just don't convey the intensity of what I'm talking about. If you get a chance to see a show, do.

The artist and some others in front of the above image, made out of toy soldiers: you get a sense of the scale.

Here is what he says, in his book Reflex: A Vik Muniz Primer about that confusion of looking:

"My idea was to take a picture of something that represented something else, and I wanted the two readings to be incongruous with one another. I wanted to work with photography and drawing, but I was thinking about relief...If I were to draw a perfect likeness on the street, no matter how good the rendering was, I wouldn't get more than maybe fifteen dollars and a pat on the back for it. But if I were to draw the same person with molasses, and have a trail of ants walking on the picture, all of a sudden it would seem miraculous..."

He goes on to explain why having something glaring and awkward can really improve one's experience of art:

"In 1986, I paid a great sum of money to see Anthony Hopkins incarnate the role of King Lear. Five minutes of the performance was enough time for me to realize that I had wasted my money...his craft was so convincing that he disappeared entirely...I'd paid to see Anthony Hopkins, and all I got was a dying king! On the other hand, I once spent three dollars and a couple of bus tickets to an abandoned firehouse in Queens to watch an amateur production of Othello. The main role was to be played by a man of short stature with a beer belly. [He] worked full-time as a plumber, he was married with two children, and he rehearsed with the theatre group as a hobby on weekends. In the first moments of the play...[he] carried on with the full demeanor of the Moorish general...as the performance developed, however, [he] could no longer hold on to the general as an alter ego and started to slip into his identity as a plumber again. Throughout the rest of the play, he kept alternating personas - plumber, general, plumber, general -indefinitely. So for three dollars, I got to see two tragedies...the bad actor provided a richer experience of theater itself."

So by playing with recognizable materials (not ordinarily thought of as "art materials"), and making us bounce back and forth between, for example, chocolate syrup and Freud, he can make the examination of pictures more playful and interesting.

A Rembrandt beggar in pins, nails, and paper clips

Mr. Muniz became well-known via the series he called Sugar children. In 1995, he exchanged an art piece for a travel package to the Caribbean - St. Kitts, to be exact. During his stay there, he befriended a group of children who would come down to the beach where he swam. One day, they invited him home to meet their parents: "In contrast to the fresh, sweet demeanor of the children, their parents seemed weary and bitter, the inevitable result of an unfair exchange: long, backbreaking hours of labor at the sugar-cane plantation" for a meager salary.

Back in New York, he kept looking at his pictures of the children and thinking of their inevitable, sad metamorphosis, and how the agent of that change, that "mysterious, poisonous potion [which] would transform those bright-eyed island children", was sugar. He quotes the Brazilian poet Ferreira Gullar: "It is with the bitter lives of bitter people that I sweeten my coffee on this beautiful morning in Ipanema."


So he copied the snapshots in sugar on black paper, and took pictures of them. As he finished each one, he put the sugar into a jar with the original snapshot on it, like a label. The pictures are so lovely, and so fascinating, they became the turning-point for his career as an artist - and copies of them hang, thanks to the artist, in the school that the actual children attended in St. Kitts.

As for his experience trying to photograph homeless children on the streets of Sao Paulo, I will leave you to read about that yourself. Suffice to say it was a much more dangerous and miserable version of the above story (imagine seven-year-old crack addicts), but ultimately became an exercise in momentary transcendence. It's a really interesting story, as are all his other stories. Highly recommended, both in book and in person, and definitely fun and odd enough to be a Wonder.

A hole punch of talent: still life a la Cezanne

The Wonder of the Golden Proportions

Ever hear of the Golden Mean? Neither had I, until I was supposed to teach a graphic design course, and started (you know me) to do research on what, exactly, I should be teaching. It's one thing to be able to design things, and quite another to have to teach it to others.

A lot of what I found, gestalt theory and the principles of visual weight, and so on, were really interesting; but the Golden Mean was what really caught my fancy.

(NB: Math following. Don't be scared, all will be clear [and un-mathlike] in the end, I promise. I hope)

The Golden Mean, also known as the Golden Ratio, was developed as a proportional measurement by the ancient Greeks, as a way of making the most pleasing artworks. It was felt to be semi-divine, in that it seemed to show up in Nature as well. The ratio, an irrational number, began as 1.6180339887... and continued onward, pretty much forever. It is found by working out the following algebraic equation:

Essentially, if you take a line that is 1 long, and go from there, you will find that the above equation will work out to that same irrational number, which, when used as a proportional device, allows you to produce varying lengths of lines that are smaller and larger. But I'm not going to explain how, because though I really, really love math, I don't do well with equations, which are difficult for me: at least, to express the near-mystical magic that shows up in numbers.

So: now you have a bunch of varying line lengths. So what?

Well, let's see: take one of these lines and make a square out of it (putting four of them at right angles to each other, remember? I sometimes blank on these little leaps of logic). Then, starting at the center of one side, measure to one corner and draw an arc downward:


Aha! Now we start to have something. If the length of the square is 1, then the length of the rectangle (shown as the Greek letter phi here) is, of course, 1.6180339887... well, you get the point: the Greeks were smart. We call this shape the Golden Rectangle, and you can find it everywhere in Greek and Renaissance art (and elsewhere! Stage height proportions, window shapes, chair backs, believe me, they're everywhere. They are quite pleasing to the eye).

(If you really want to know the equation looks like this:)
(but don't ask me to explain that part).

Golden rectangles in the proportions of the Parthenon

Okay, onwards. I know this is looking like a lot of math, but bear with me here. Now we come to this guy named Fibonacci, born c.1170, who is considered "one of the most talented mathematicians of the Middle Ages" [wiki]. This is the man responsible for the introduction of the Hindu-Arabic numeral system when all of Europe was doing math in Roman numerals (I strongly urge you to read his link, above: it's fascinating). He used what is now known as the Fibonacci sequence - actually a pre-6th-century Indian concept - as an example in his famous and apparently brilliant book about math, Liber Abaci, or Book of Calculation, which is why we have it now. In any case, the Fibonacci Sequence, as it is now known, leads to all kinds of interesting events.

Try this. Draw a square, measuring one unit across (make it a small unit, like a centimeter, or perhaps the distance between binder-paper lines - otherwise you will need big paper). Now draw another square exactly the same right up alongside it (so they are sharing a side). Now, say you take the line along the top of both squares and use that to draw a bigger square, which of course is two units on a side - right? Okay, now moving clockwise (or counter-clockwise, like the picture below) around this construction, draw another square along the side where the edge of the big square and one small square align. Keep going clockwise and keep drawing bigger and bigger squares. The length of each consecutive square should make a sequence, like this: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89... (by now you've probably run out of paper). Viola! Your own personal Fibonacci sequence, right there in your own home! And...lookie there. It sure looks kind of like...is it? Pretty close to a Golden Rectangle, isn't it?


Okay, okay, you say. That's kind of neat. But aren't we just wanking with numbers?

Well, perhaps. But check this out. You can draw an arc, starting with a point at the middle of the two first squares where they touch the third square. The arc goes from corner to corner of each square, so that the two squares together make a semicircle. Then, by expanding the arc and drawing one in each square, working around the structure, you can build a lovely spiral:

This Fibonacci spiral does not have the two original squares visible

This spiral is one that closely mimics the Golden Spiral, based on the Golden Mean, above. The main difference is that the Golden Mean goes in both directions, both up and down, whereas the Fibonacci spiral only goes upwards from 1 (though you could take it down if you were into math, I'm sure). Both are considered logarithmic spirals, which are found everywhere in nature. Jakob Bernouli, a mathematician from a great family of brilliant people, called the logarithmic spiral spira mirabilis, or "the Miraculous Spiral," so called because the size increases but its shape is unaltered with each successive curve. This kind of spiral shows up in shells, in hurricanes, in the shape of a cat's claw or a wave; galaxies and flowers all work with logarithmic spirals. The Fibonacci sequence can be found many places as well, such as in the ancestry patterns of bees, the branching of trees, the whorls of a sunflower and the fruitlets of a pineapple.

Technically, though, the Fibonacci spiral has a slight wobble; it is not perfect, so not really a proper logarithmic spiral.

Which brings me to something which I find absolutely wonderful: if you chart that wobble on a graph, it begins to look as if it is ocillating around something, some specific number. Guess which number?

You guessed it. Now tell me there's no mystery in numbers.



(For a nice, step by step, even better mathematical explanation of this, check out this site. It certainly got me going.)

Apotropaism and the Evil Eye

and traps of all kinds


Looking through the exhibition checklist for the show (see previous post) at the Corning Museum of Glass, I came across the term "apotropaic", referring to "objects such as amulets and talismans or other symbols intended to 'ward off evil' or 'avert or combat evil.'" [wiki] The term apotrope comes from the Greek meaning "to turn away", and seems to express itself a great deal in eye symbology.

Take, for example, Mediterranean eye beads, worn or hung in the home to avert the evil eye, which is an incredibly widespread belief, traditionally found all the way from Britain through Europe and Russia and on down into the Middle East and India. The evil eye is invited, either inadvertently or purposefully, by complimenting someone or looking enviously on something of theirs - or similarly, by the staring of strangers. The root of this evil is set in envy, and as a result vocal or obvious admiration of something is taboo in many cultures. Thus the tradition of indirect appreciation, and sayings such as Masha'Allah ("God has willed it"), or Keyn aynhoreh ("no evil eye"), to misdirect the effects of the admiration. Some people believe that the expression of admiration or envy will catch the attention of God(s), and inspire the deity to redress the balance by evening out the fortunes of the admirer and admiree, so to speak.

Eye beads are common throughout Greece, Turkey, Syria and other parts of the Middle East, and I have even seen them for sale in Venice. Traditionally they are blue, which is a color said to reflect the blueness of the evil eye; people with green eyes are suspiciously evil eye-like, and there is even some speculation that the blueness traditional to the eye-beads comes from foreigners with blue eyes, who bumble in and compliment everyone in a terribly inauspicious way. The symbol can be seen everywhere - on bracelets, pendants, doorways, keychains and even on airplanes and boats. Wikipedia even mentions eyes being painted on drinking vessels in ancient Greece to protect the drinkers (I wonder what from?).

The tradition of painting eyes on boats, which in the Mediterranean is directly correlated with the evil eye, as well as with the Eye of Horus - which is a symbol of protection and indestructibility - seems to be common all over the world. In most places, such as in Asia and the Norse traditions, the eye on the boat has more to do with seeing, with finding one's way safely. But it's still an eye, and it's still protection.

This idea of bad intentions or evil energy being thrown at or drawn to one is pretty much common throughout humanity. In parts of Africa and Indonesia, black magic and curses are very real and present. I sat next to a man on a bus in Java once who claimed he was a black magician, and who told me all about it. I didn't like him very much and was trying really hard not to have him touch my knee anymore, so I didn't listen as closely as I should have, and have cursed my high morals ever since, as I could have learned more than I did; but nontheless, I was surprised to find the darkness under the everyday life of what seemed, to a tourist like me at that time, to be one kind of simply Muslim culture.

A Javanese shadow puppet, with the traditional black-and-white decoration worked in

One thing I did remember him telling me was that much of the decoration you see in Java and Bali, of the alternating black and white squares, was about black magic and white magic being kept in balance. A warding, of a sort. There are many, many types of warding for bad influences - the eye beads, of course; and horseshoes, which despite folklore about "holding in luck" are held, in older folklore, to be about reversing evil influence (I imagine the evil swooshing around the curve of the horseshoe like a Nascar racer around a corner, and zooming away again). Fish are considered immune to the evil eye by Jews and others, possibly because they are so wet, and the evil eye's effects are often of a wasting, drying kind (and fish are always wet). There are special woods, of course, like rowan branches in British/Celtic tradition, as well as the tying of red string; red thread is also, in Jewish custom, a ward for babies against the evil eye (people do tend to admire babies a lot).

The mention of string brings me back to the Corning Exhibit. I was riveted by the description of "witch balls", which included this blurb: "The evil eye is not the only source of ambient negativity and ill will. “Witches,” for example, can include anyone who actively wishes misfortune or sickness on others, or who causes others to suffer. The witch ball is believed to be the ancestor of the Christmas tree ornament, which was originally meant to protect gifts from outsiders who might covet them. In the United States, witch balls were traditionally filled with colorful bits of paper and string to confuse and repel witches who might be lurking around the house."

This witch ball, an antique, is one of the decorative, bright types of witch balls which you can still find today all over the internet. This one reminds me, oddly enough, of a glass eye bead.

Another source speaks of how witch balls were used to cover the tops of milk jugs, creamers, and bowls, but didn't discuss why; I found myself thinking of the tales of magical beings being given offerings of milk, and malevalent ones liking to spoil it. Witches, for example, are widely-known to cause milk to curdle. Could the witch balls be a sort of charm against that, to begin with, and somehow expanding to mean protection for the whole household? In other literature, witch-balls are commonly described as simply colorful or reflective glass balls that were hung in windows or around the garden, to confuse and sometimes even imprison the malevalent presence which a witch may have sent toward your household. Strings are mentioned only rarely as being inserted, though there are ample examples, both new and old, of glass balls, often with glass threads running across the inside, which are described as "witch balls". Wikipedia describes an appalachian tradition whereby black hair could be balled up with beeswax "into a hard round pellet about the size of a marble and is used in curses. In Ozark folklore, a witch that wants to kill someone will take this hair ball and throw it at the intended victim; it is said that when someone in the Ozarks is killed by a witch's curse, this witch ball is found near the body."

Bhutanese spirit trap: see? They're everywhere

Then there are sprite traps (corruption of "spirit traps"), which are made from red thread woven or tied onto a branch (often rowan), sometimes with a bit of copper wire. The traps are placed in front of the front and back doors of a dwelling or other building. Once a spirit is caught, the threads are cut and placed inside a witch bottle (which appears to be a less-expensive form of witch ball), and the bottle is often buried under a doorstep or hearth or other place around the home. Back again to thread or string inside a glass object!

Another form of bad-feeling catcher: the Dream-catcher, which is traditionally hung above Ojibwe newborn's beds to catch everything evil but let everything good through

Other stories, particularly of witch bottles which have been dug up recently around England, show that many witch bottles were filled with actual human bits such as hair or fingernails, bent pins and urine. This was apparently a way to point it toward a witch who may have been doing harm. When someone was unable to pass water, or took sick, or died, you would know who the witch was.

This might explain why the witch balls/bottles, the ones I find especially fascinating, with the string and other stuff in them, are so rare. It's only on occasion that they are found, dug up or unearthed in some other way, and then I wouldn't wonder if they didn't often get thrown away, as I would guess the buried ones might be a bit creepy and dirty. In any case, my searches for images of the American kind of witch ball, with the bits of paper and string, have been mostly fruitless. I do wish I could find more pictures of them, as the image in my mind is strong, and I'd love to compare.

Witch bottle found under a house in England

As Brian Hoggard over at apotropaios.co.uk says, "How fearful of supernatural intrusion into your home would you have to be before you'd consider lifting your hearthstone, digging a hole and inserting a bottle filled with pins and urine?" Which brings up an interesting point. Even today, I know when I'm having extremely good fortune, I can't help wondering when it's going to end. It feels weird to boast about things - superstition kicks in and I'm compelled to knock on wood or make light of my fortune. I work hard at not congratulating myself on being happy, for the happier I get, the more I notice where I could be. "There but for the grace of God go I," becomes my mantra, other peoples' misfortune a persistent dark spot at the edge of my fortune.

This feeling that the bad things are out there, waiting to pounce, must have been very pronounced in the old days. I always think of the Salem witch trials, or Cromwellian England, or even, to a lesser degree, McCarthyism, as these moments when that feeling - the one that tells us this happiness is fleeting, that there is bad luck (or, if you prefer, bad intentions) lurking just beyond reach - has taken over an entire populace. They are horrible moments, periods of extreme unease when no one feels they can trust another person, when the winter of the soul sets in and no one is certain of anything anymore, least of all why. Some of my friends would have us believe that this moment, now, 2007, is one of those times: when getting in and out of the US is becoming more and more difficult and there is free license to look into all our private affairs for no reason at all; when people living next door to each other are encouraged to turn each other in.

That may be true; but I get through it by working, all the time, to try to generate some light in this darkness. Hanging onto the wonder, looking at minutae and seeing the joy and the life in it - and helping others to see and remember those joys - is one of the best ways I know to find our way. May you all find your paths without stumbling.


Some links:
- Curious Expeditions discusses some interesting bottles which may or may not ward off bad luck for the drinker (much as the Greek cups do), among a collection of other remarkable, though less magic-oriented, bottles.
- An excellent page on the history of the Ojibwe's use of dreamcatchers and the woman ethnologist who carefully and extensively studied them.
- An unusual, completely unopened witch bottle made of ceramic, with a face on it, in the BBC News
- Another witch bottle in the BBC News.
- One place to buy eye beads, if you're interested.

Madeleine L'Engle is Gone

Just heard that she passed, and had to say something.

I had a mixed relationship with her work. As a kid I loved her Wrinkle In Time Trilogy, then got angry at the fourth book because of the way Meg gets turned into a pregnant housewife despite her brilliance and left home from the adventure (this was when I was a teenager); for awhile I couldn't forgive Ms. L'Engle. After all, hadn't Meg's own mom been a scientist and a mom? But now someone has reminded me about the wonderful song from Wind in the Door, and I had to take it all back. She was a worthy influence; there was a lot of power and beauty in many of her books, and an understanding of relationships, that I admire.

Here you go:

"I Name you Echthroi. I Name you Meg.
I Name you Calvin.
I Name you Mr. Jenkins.
I Name you Proginoskes.
I fill you with Naming.
Be!
Be, butterfly and behemoth,
be galaxy and grasshopper,
star and sparrow,
you matter,
you are,
be!
Be caterpillar and comet,
Be porcupine and planet,
sea sand and solar system,
sing with us,
dance with us,
rejoice with us,
for the glory of creation,
seagulls and seraphim,
angle worms and angel host,
chrysanthemum and cherubim.
(O cherubim.)
Be!
Sing for the glory
of the living and the loving
the flaming of creation
sing with us
dance with us
be with us.
Be!"

Plus, who can't love a writer who includes a tired, grumpy, and bureaucratic school principal in the saving of the Universe?

Interesting article by the Times here

Thanks to reader Intertext for this heads' up, and her friend Curtana for the reminder of the quote.

World's Largest Camera Obscura

I was just listening to the BBC on the radio in my car. If you haven't heard about this, you should check it out: the Legacy Photo Project, here in California, did an amazing project last year using an airplane hanger as a camera obscura, or pinhole camera, to produce probably the world's largest photograph, made on specially-ordered German muslin without seams: three stories high by eleven stories long. The place is not beautiful, but it's an amazing piece of engineering and cooperative work, as you can see if you go to the Great Picture link and then click on the Fact Sheet.

I was nosing around the photography websites and seeing complaints of how lame the picture looks, but from what the guy I heard says, as you walk up close, the detail is amazing. If you go to the "gallery" link in "The Great Picture" section, second photo along shows some of the details. And all with a lens-less 1/4" pinhole.

Definitely a curiosity worth storing in the Cabinet - all 1200 pounds of it.

Wunderkammer Alert, again

Covered Uranium Glass Sugar Bowl, England, about 1840–1860. This glass was actually made with uranium, and has a deep yellow glow to it not found in any other kind of glass.

Thanks to Morbid Anatomy for their mention quite recently of the Corning Museum of Glass' Curiosities of Glassmaking show, a purely glass wunderkammer: a real, proper exhibition of curiosities. On looking at the Exhibition Checklist, which sadly does not contain any pictures (sigh), I was blown away by the descriptions, and am nearly ready to buy plane tickets to see the wonderous thing.

Euplectellum Aspergillum, or glass sponge, is also known as Venus' Flower Basket. The skeleton of the sponge is a lattice of silica; a scientific study of its substructure and refractive properties found that the sponge’s silica spicules transmit light in a similar way to the optical fibers used in telecommunications.

Among other things, there are glass fire grenades, a pyrex iron c. 1946, meteoric glass, glass sponges, a Klein bottle, Prince Rupert's Drops, strange glass medical equipment, a collection of glass eyes, and glass eye beads, which are supposed to divert the evil eye (more about these later), not to mention various odd, old scientific glass acoutrements and glass used for reliquaries.

If you are anywhere near upstate New York, I encourage you to go look at what seems like one of the most interesting exhibitions this year.

Curiosities of Glassmaking, an exhibit in the West Bridge Gallery of the Corning Museum of Glass, is up until October 21st, 2007.

Incorruptible and Forever

Highgate Cemetery, in London

By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return. (Genesis 3:19)

As I mentioned in my post on reliquaries, some relics are actually whole saints, preserved in a state that is called "incorruptible". This means "the property of a body — usually a human body — that does not decompose after death...
Incorruptibility is seen as distinct from the good preservation of a body, or mummification. Incorruptible bodies are often said to have the Odour of Sanctity, a sweet smell...if a body remains incorruptible after death, this is generally seen to be a sign that the individual is a saint. The converse is not true: not every saint is expected to have an incorruptible corpse." [wiki] And incorruptible bodies, according to the Catholic Church, must be bodies that have not been embalmed or otherwise preserved.

Here's a question, though: "Is decomposition a BAD thing?"

I am always torn about this supposedly miraculous incorruptibility, mostly because so many of them really look mummified. I really want them to be real, because it's such a fascinating and weird addition to the minutae of the world: I mean, what a marvelous concept, to be so outside the physical order of things that you smell like flowers, or keep your dewy complexion, even though you have departed this earthly plane. I suppose it seems glamorous, extraordinary even, to leave behind whatever mystical quality makes your flesh stay and stay, as if you had never left. And yet, there is something creepy, something unnatural about it, too. And so often a dead saint is described as "fresh and sweet as the day they died" - but then when you see pictures of them they don't look much different than some of the mummies in, for example, Guanajuato, Mexico, none of whom are considered saintly in the least.


Incorruptibility has shown up in many different religions, but Catholicism is the place where it really has taken hold. With the belief in relics came a desire to exhume the corpses of people who had been particularly devout or who had caused miracles during their lifetimes. A good number of the bodies thus exhumed were proclaimed incorrupt, which was for a long time a real weight in the argument for someone's beatification.

Theoretically, accidentally preserved corpses are typically discolored, wrinkled, distorted, skeletal looking and lacking in elasticity, whereas a truly incorruptible body doesn't have any of those characteristics: instead, they are moist and flexible, and often retain certain organs intact, such as the liver or heart. Unlike most long-dead corpses, incorruptibles supposedly have a sweet, almost floral, smell; and all this even after years in damp, corrosive places.

The reliquary containing St. Sergius' incorrupt body. St. Sergius of Radonezh died in 1392.

Unfortunately, the really old saints, such as Sergius of Radonezh are kept in very old reliquaries, and are therefore mostly closed from view; it is only since the 1700s or so, when glass became a proper industry, that large reliquaries have been able to incorporate enough glass to make it possible to to get a really good view of the body thus preserved. Thus, the incorruptibles in more recent reliquaries, such as the head of the amazing St. Catherine of Siena, whom the folk at Curious Expeditions went to see, are actually on display. A surprising number of incorruptible saints are quite recent, with a number of them living and dying in the 19th century; and you can actually see photographs of them when you read about them in Wikipedia or elsewhere.


I was impressed and suspicious when I saw the remains of St. Bernadette Soubirous, who died in 1879 and was exhumed several times before being put in her glass reliquary in Nevers, France. Her face is so perfect, so impossibly serene and attractive, that I had difficulty not smelling a rat. Then I found out that during the last exhumation but one, the ever-so-helpful folk who did it actually washed the body, so when they re-exhumed her in 1909 there was a slight discoloration to her face. This led to cosmetic procedures: "A precise imprint of the face was molded so that the firm of Pierre Imans [a high-quality mannequin designer and manufacturer] in Paris could make a light wax mask based on the imprints and on some genuine photos. This was common practice for relics in France, as it was feared that although the body was mummified, the blackish tinge to the face and the sunken eyes and nose would make an unpleasant impression on the public. Imprints of the hands were also taken for the presentation of the body." [wiki]

This explained everything! In fact, I was still suspicious, for it seems to me that "sunken eyes and nose" do not sound uncorrupted, never mind the discoloration, which was put down to the washing. On looking at the picture again, however, I can indeed see the underlying structure of a face, with that weird veneer that the wax mask gives to it. It's odd. Part of me is simply skeptical. But part of me wants it to be true, because it would be another unexplained thing in a far-too explained world. I find the whole process of masking relics strangely bizarre, a queer kind of hygenicization of something that should be startling. I already struggle not to feel the wool is being pulled over my eyes, or perhaps (to be kinder) I simply feel that there is a strong sort of wishful thinking going on by those involved; so for the Church to indulge in this sort of cosmeticism when the miraculousness should be allowed its own self-evidence - it makes me feel as if I'm being patronized. I'd much rather see the real thing, miraculous or not.

The question of incorruptibility implies a certain belief, very present in many religions, but particularly Catholicism, that the earthly sphere is a place of sin and somehow, being earthly, less...important. A lesser place than the place beyond death, where we will all go to reap our rewards, rewards that are better than those we receive here. So when someone's earthly remains, those parts of them that were left behind when they went to go to the spiritual world (to meet their Maker), don't follow the natural processes of decay, it is symbolic of the purity, the lack of sin, when they lived here on earth. In other words, they were so saintly in regular life that the sinlessness permeated their fleshly self, and it remained "above" such things as returning to the dust from whence they came.

I could be describing this inaccurately, but this is as close as I can get to what seems to be the thinking.

The problem with this thinking, for me - who is not Catholic, and not studied in Catholicism - is the basic tenet that the natural, "earthly" world is a lesser world than the one we go on to after death (whatever that may be). The very word "incorruptible" implies this attitude, as if the natural processes were a corruption, dirtying what is holy; whereas I find, on looking around me, that the intricacy of the decomposition process is incredible, amazing - miraculous, if you will - whether they be the product of some Creator or the result of some intricate evolutionary processes. The completeness, the incredible tidiness of it, is astounding, particularly when you look carefully at the processes that happen after death.

A white-backed vulture. There's a good reason vultures have no feathers on their heads.

In a natural environment, there are animals who live almost solely on dead bodies; they are, in essence, nature's janitors. They decrease the amount of body that needs to decompose, scatter the bones, and generally reduce what is there. Then a host of smaller janitors move in, breaking the remains down farther, carrying it away and dispersing it until there is very little left. What remains is then covered with leaves or dead plant matter, which in turn keeps whatever is left moist so that it can be fully dissolved by bacteria - with the exception of bones, which, happily for science, sometimes live on for millenia.

I think one of the things that people find difficult about this process (aside from things like smell and general asthetics) is that, in essence, the body is being eaten, being devoured by the agents of the soil. We have trouble thinking about why anything would want to eat such a revolting meal. But just think about it: if there was ever any sense of divinity in the universe, wouldn't it be symbolized by the fact that there are creatures out there who prefer to eat something so (to us) repulsive? That in this perfectly balanced world, everything is provided for, even the redistribution of our bodies' nutrients back to the soil, so that fruit can be made and flowers can flourish? There is nothing so wonderful, in my mind, as the fact that something so unwanted as a dead body can be turned into something so desirable as a flower. And all the things which do that work for us - buzzards and blowflies and their ilk - should be venerated for the job they do to make our world as beautiful as it is.

Which brings me to another historical point of view about nature: that line we draw, the one which is so clear and so difficult to define - the line between humans and nature. There are many, many ways that people of European descent try to distinguish themselves as separate from animals, and death is one of the biggies. Embalming, solid-metal caskets, crypts, mummification, you name it: we try to cheat nature out of reclaiming us, and prove that we are not simply animals, to lie down and be taken by the soil. The preservation of bodies is not a new concept, but it has lasted surprisingly long, considering how crowded our earth has become. It was only recently, for example, that the first person of European descent was cremated here in the U.S. (see this great article from the other Cabinet, about Theosophists and cremation), because up until the last century, nearly everyone believed they would not be able to go to Heaven unless their bodies were preserved intact.


There is a movement, begun in England in the 1990's, to make the burial industry more ecologically friendly, called "the alternative death movement," toward creating nature preserves where remains are interred with cardboard or other biodegradable caskets, and the only markers are native plants or stones. The bodies are not embalmed, and some are even simply wrapped in a shroud. The intense beauty of this kind of burial, to be returned to the embrace of the earth so as to nourish the land, seems to me far more mysterious and inspirational than the idea of leaving behind a moist and flexible carapace that is never allowed to go...well, home.

And really, the concept of forever is hard to grasp. Does having your remains stay immovable, fixed, speak more of eternity to you? Or does the more fluid, circular idea of matter constantly recycled - that your remains become part of the soil, then part of plants, then perhaps eaten by an herbivore, which in turn is eaten by another person, thus carrying some small part of you on in any number of others' bodies - seem vaster and more eternal? I think I would have to go with the latter. I understand the miraculousness of saints who linger, to help their supplicants; but ultimately, I find I would not want it for myself.

Ursula LeGuin talks about this in a different way in the last couple of her Earthsea books: this need to herd the dead into a place of their own, and the way that the unnaturalness of it begins to take its toll. It's a more metaphorical approach, but the idea that our natural cycle is to return to the earth, to the wholeness of everything, is well-presented.

I suppose the remains of saints are important in that they leave something behind for people to venerate. It is a kindness, a vehicle for more miracles, if you are a believer of those things. But for the rest of us, it is at this point just an industry, one that makes a great deal of money. If you have ever watched Six Feet Under, especially the episodes where the large corporation is trying to take over their small family funeral business, you may get some inkling. But try googling "casket manufacturer", and you'll come up with a really amazing peek into a big-business operation.

My friend Gwyan once did an art piece about how a lot of less-wealthy graves in Oakland, California got moved from the cemetery to make room for more graves. He found a mortuary catalog and printed flyers for caskets, from the Solid Bronze casket (yes, many coffins are actually metal these days) down to the Cardboard Casket, and posted them along the route the disenterred had taken from the cemetery to their new location. This from the same person who went with some others from the Cacophony Society (who were also involved with the origins of Burning Man) on a tour of the newly-abandoned California School of Mortuary Science, where all kinds of amazing things were unearthed, including a full glass bottle of LyfLyk - "For the velvety appearance of living tissue" (many thanks to the Frigid Fluid company for continuing to carry this fascinating product).

But I digress (eww!).

Abney Park Cemetery

Highgate Cemetery, in London, is a famous example of what happens when the burial industry goes awry: nature takes over, with quite wonderful results: leaning angels point to heaven, ivy from ancient wreaths has instead wreathed itself around wonderful Victorian monuments. The cemetery was built during the Victorian era, when the small local churchyards could no longer maintain the number of burials required. A ring of seven cemeteries were built in a ring around London, known as The Magnificent Seven, and an era of seriously fashionable Gothic burials was ushered in.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, for us), the companies who built these cemeteries simply didn't have the foresight to put money away for the future maintenance of the park, so when the cemetery was full, no more money was coming in and maintenance on it ceased altogether. By 1975, despite an annex across the road (where you can see Karl Marx's tomb), it had become such a financial disaster that they actually closed it, and it was only because a trust was formed and efforts made to save the cemetery that it hasn't completely fallen into ruin. Still, those intervening years have done wonders for the atmosphere of the place, and I would put it, along with its smaller sister cemetery, Abney Park in Hackney, as one of my top ten places to see in London. In fact Highgate was the scenery for a lot of the 1960's Hammer Horror movies, so if you want to do a little armchair tourism, you could watch a vampire flick or two.

In any case, this fearfulness, this attitude toward "corruption", is a conundrum not easily solved. To be separated from your loved ones forever - or, more hopefully, until they join you wherever - can be terrible to contemplate. No one knows for sure how death happens, and what happens to that meaningful spark that is you, when you go. Stepping off into a dark place is not an easy business. But to fear the breakdown of one's body, that return of your less meaningful parts to whence they came, should not be a fearful process, because you're not there anymore. It seems to me it is a gift you can give to the universe.

Don't get me wrong, if you want to become incorruptible and be put in a really cool reliquary, I'm not going to stop you. We all need some miraculous weirdness to keep us interested, keep the wonder going. ...I'm just saying, let's not all do it.


Some links for your perusal:

The Mummy Locator, with all the information you could ever want about mummies - this page points to Guanajuato.

A really great site all about why and how not to spend a lot of money on fancy caskets.

A directory of places in the U.S. that do green burials, and information on home funerals and other back-to-basics ideas.

A very minimalist site selling cardboard and other self-assembly caskets for as low as $49.95.