Kevorkian’s ‘Very Still Life’ art – Louisville Courier-Journal (blog)
“Very Still Life,” part of the Jack Kevorkian art collection at the Armenian Library and Museum of America in Watertown, Mass.
Years ago I covered the grand opening for a solo art exhibit in which the artist couldn’t attend.
He was sitting in prison.
The artist was suicide doctor Jack Kevorkian, who died Friday. His garish and ghoulish artwork, delivered with all the subtlety of a guillotine, could have earned him the nickname “Dr. Death” even if he never campaigned so relentlessly to enable terminally ill patients to end their lives deliberately.
At the time of the 1999 exhibit, Kevorkian was starting an eight-year prison term for first-degree murder for injecting a lethal drug into Thomas Youk, a patient with Lou Gehrig’s disease.
The exhibit was held at the Armenian Library and Museum of America in the Boston suburb of Watertown, Mass. While Kevorkian may have been a pariah in some circles, the exhibit opener drew only admirers, including Youk’s widow, Melody, who proclaimed that Kevorkian worked “so we can all live in freedom, and that includes the final moment.”
Perhaps surprisingly given the opposite of many churches to his activity, one of Kevorkian’s most vocal supporters at the exhibit was a priest. He was from a nearby Armenian Apostolic congregation — part of a church that has existed since ancient times but is distinct from ancient Catholic and Orthodox branches.
“If I could walk in there and get him out of jail myself, I’d do it,” the priest said.
The connection with the Armenian heritage was far from incidental. A fellow Armenian-American at the exhibit drew the connection: “He doesn’t want people to suffer like his ancestors did.”
Kevorkian donated his works to the museum, which to this day sells them as post cards and other items. For example, there’s the work, “Very Still Life,” which shows a flower growing out of a skull, glowing in icy blue light.
One painting showed a severed head, held by arms bearing Nazi and Ottoman Turkish symbols, reflecting Kevorkian’s conviction that the Armenian genocide — which his parents survived — set the stage for that of the Jews.
Other paintings showed a comatose man lying in the gaping mouth of a spectral skull; a feverish man burning in an inferno; and an agonized paralysis victim with his brain and spinal column in chains.
Yet another work showed a soul wide-eyed with dread, his fingers worn to the bone while vainly clinging to life. The title was “Nearer My God to Thee.”
Kevorkian’s written description said: “Despite the solace of hypocritical religiosity and the seductive promise of an afterlife of heavenly bliss, most of us will do anything to thwart the inevitable victory of biological death.” Below the panicked soul were the faint, calm faces of the dead who “have made the insensible transition and wonder what all the fuss is about.”
An observer at the exhibit was overheard saying, “the guy’s obsessed with death.”
There isn’t a jury in the world that would have acquitted him of that.
UPDATE: See this Associated Press article saying that the Armenian museum has already seen a surge in requests for signed posters of Kevorkian art.
Peter Smith writes about faith and religion for The Courier-Journal. Get your local newspaper delivered daily or weekends to your door. Click here for subscription information and special deals.