{"id":116731,"date":"2025-11-01T23:14:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T23:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/116731\/"},"modified":"2025-11-01T23:14:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T23:14:10","slug":"why-does-death-inspire-so-much-art-its-the-killer-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/116731\/","title":{"rendered":"Why does death inspire so much art? It\u2019s the killer question"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments given to him by God, two in particular would have interested any artists gathered in the waiting crowd. One is the Second Commandment, which says, \u201cThou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or in the earth beneath\u201d \u2014 in other words, don\u2019t make art. The other is the Sixth Commandment, which insists: \u201cThou shalt not kill.\u201d Oops. Bang goes another creative favourite.<\/p>\n

Murder has proved to be exceptionally popular in art. The act of killing, the way people die, who dies, why they die have been of recurring cultural interest. So much so that the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts has decided to make art\u2019s appetite for murder the subject of a rousing investigation.<\/p>\n

Housed in one of Norman Foster\u2019s signature buildings, the centre is probably Britain\u2019s wackiest collection of art. Ranging from pre-Columbian sculpture to paintings by Francis Bacon, from African fetishes to Modigliani nudes, it is, like Heraclitus\u2019s famous description of a river, somewhere you can never step into twice because it\u2019s always changing.<\/p>\n

\"Painting<\/p>\n

Ophelia by George Frederick Watts<\/p>\n

ALAMY<\/p>\n

Under the director Jago Cooper, this unlikely venue has put on a succession of unlikely investigations of unlikely subjects. Last year it was drugs and their impact on art. Then the sea and all it has inspired. Now, from far out in the left field, comes a show posing the question: can we stop killing each other? To say this event wrestles with this dark ask is mightily to understate the difficulty. This isn\u2019t wrestling. This is full body contact kung fu.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The best art, music and cultural events this week \u2014 the critics\u2019 guide<\/a><\/p>\n

As with all shows at the Sainsbury, the search for murder is a multipart parade that tries its best to hang together but never quite manages it. Scattered about the building in various niches, corridors and galleries, it thrusts hither and thither, looking for interesting things to examine in the killing fields of art.<\/p>\n

The start, at least, is legible, with a rousing depiction of the murder of Abel by his brother Cain \u2014 the Bible\u2019s first assassination \u2014 by the thunderous Victorian GF Watts. Part painting, part explosion in a fireworks factory, it\u2019s typical Watts, with scary lighting, glistening flesh and satanic smoke. <\/p>\n

\"Oil<\/p>\n

The Denunciation of Cain by GF Watts<\/p>\n

WATTS GALLERY, PHOTO BY KATE WOLSTENHOLME<\/p>\n

What follows is less certain. Before we know it we are in the world of Indian shadow puppets and Punch & Judy shows, where violent marionettes beat the living daylights out of each other to the evident delight of watching kids. This childish enjoyment of symbolic extinction is, we learn, an international human reaction. A section of Japanese woodcuts confirms the point.<\/p>\n

By the time we reach the heart of the show, a lengthy tribute to Shakespeare\u2019s most violent moments, we have learnt that art is a safe space for death, somewhere to rehearse the final darkness. And what a lot of liquidation there is in that Punch & Judy show writ large: the plays of Shakespeare.<\/p>\n

\"Illustration<\/p>\n

An Indian shadow puppet<\/p>\n

COURTESY OF THE SOUTH ASIA COLLECTION, PHOTO BY TRISH MERCER-DAVID<\/p>\n

Othello\u2019s fatal jealousy, the deaths of Juliet and her Romeo, the final madness of Ophelia have inspired tremulous art in impressive quantities. The show was unable to persuade the Tate to lend its famous Ophelia by Millais (nor do we have the version by Friedrich Heyser that Taylor Swift picked out in her Fate of Ophelia video) but we do have three other river scenes in which poor, mad Ophelia finds her psychic turmoil symbolised by the twists and knots of the nature surrounding her watery grave.<\/p>\n

While all this jumping about from epoch to epoch, country to country, art form to art form, is going on, a set of instructive wall texts ensures we keep abreast of the show\u2019s bigger meanings. Art, we keep being told, is a rehearsal space in which we release our angers and evaluate their consequences. The modern world doesn\u2019t get specific mentions but, like the prompter in a Shakespeare production, it keeps whispering from the wings: \u201cLook at me.\u201d <\/p>\n

The mutters are most audible in those moments of the voyage when we\u2019re asked if the levels of violence we see in video games and Hollywood movies have inspired an increase in violence in the real world. To my eyes it\u2019s as clear as crystal that they have and that the school shootings and mass stabbings are the direct result of a continuous barrage of blam, blam, blamming on the teenage mind. If it were up to me, I would ban all violent video games.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Read more art reviews, guides and interviews<\/a><\/p>\n

But, of course, there\u2019s mass money to be made in mass murder and the games companies would quickly find another way to exploit our bloodlust. It\u2019s a point made with startling ferocity by Crossfire, a film installation by Christian Marclay, which I nominate as the show\u2019s masterpiece. <\/p>\n

Combing the world of movies for instances of people shooting each other, Marclay has woven the countless examples he collected into a ballet of assassination taking place on four screens that surround you. We start with a gun being loaded. Progress to the first shootout. Pause for a reload. Then all hell breaks loose. <\/p>\n

Bullet after bullet, angry face after angry face, from war pics to gangster movies, from westerns to sci-fi shootouts, from Clint Eastwood to Arnold Schwarzenegger, blam, blam, blam go the revolvers, rifles and machineguns, with us in the middle. The relentless gunfire builds to a hypnotic pattern, until its insistent rhythms become perversely attractive. <\/p>\n

This Cain instinct is being triggered. And the world is suddenly full of listeners. <\/p>\n

Can We Stop Killing Each Other? is at the Sainsbury Centre, Norwich, to May 17, 2026<\/p>\n

What exhibitions have you enjoyed recently? Let us know in the comments below<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments given to him by God, two in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-116731","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}