Art: An Essay on Mortality and Curiosity

It is no secret there is a drive to push the boundaries of what some consider good taste in the broad spectrum of art. So long as a piece it elicits some emotion it serves a purpose of clearing the mind to look at things in a different way if only for the split second a person first sees it.

If they are so repulsed to look away they cannot deny the power of the piece; I challenge though that those pieces could have even greater influence if the offensive aspects were veiled enough that you take time to wrap your head around that which is not spelled out for you, however offensive the overall subject is; the curiosity that passers-by exhibit at an accident site. It is a natural curiosity driven in my opinion by our fascination and veiled interest in our own mortality.

I grew up with a picture on the wall that was always interesting to me but I never truly understood until my adulthood. It was a colored pencil drawing of the main entrance to the Krematorium at Dachau prison camp. My grandfather was a paratrooper in World War II, and no doubt witnessed a great deal of atrocities. Not the least was the conditions and experiences during the liberation of that very camp.

My grandfather didn't speak much of his time at war and died of cancer when my father was 7 so there is little detail beyond what I've reconstructed here that I know for certain; My father has often speculated that the things his father experienced contributed to his early death. He witnessed walking skeletons of prisoners who allied soldiers would selflessly give food, and later would die as a result of overeating. I couldn't imagine the guilt of their best intention to help these starving people only to kill them. He witnessed prisoners being fed into the ovens and allied soldiers being ordered to execute German soldiers without trial.

I like to think this drawing elicits further curiosity by not being overly detailed. I've looked at it all throughout my life with different levels of awareness and ever increasing curiosity. I like to think a person is drawn to seek out other images and stories of Dachau. I like to think my grandfather, consciously or subconsciously, was moved in the same way when he acquired it. I hope to gain further insight into his involvement there and perhaps request his military records.

It reminds the person of the great atrocities the human race is capable of and the soldiers there to fight those atrocities. It shows our ability to cope through art: as a distraction as well as a documentation that says more than a photograph to me because it is filtered by a soldier's mind and an artist's eye.

The single detail that gives real gravity to the piece for me is the smoke rising from the chimney of the crematorium and how it varies from the rest of the piece. It is smudged and dark. A part of me says in all likelihood it is cigarette ash, while another says there would be some poetic homage to the many killed there to use soot or ash from the furnace. Whether that is the case or not, it elicits that thought, that possibility and, in so doing, reminds the person it's not about the ash on the paper, but the ash remains at Dachau.