Though Kevorkian is well known (some would say notorious) for his activism in the area of euthanasia, he is also an artist of naive but compellingly awesome power. Oh, he also plays Jazz and is a composer, by the by.
As many of us do while in crisis, in the 1960s the deadly doctor enrolled in an adult education oil painting course in Pontiac, Michigan. He was at the time being forced to resign from his post at the University of Michigan as described elsewhere in this node. Over the years he produced eighteen oil paintings, almost all dealing with the subject of death. In 1985 he stored the paintings in Long Beach, California. In 1990, he asked the storage company to forward the oils to Michigan but due to a major snafu, the paintings, along with many of his compositions, were shipped to Australia where they dissapeared.
He resumed painting in 1993 and produced eight new paintings, most on the subject of death and dying as you would expect. The paintings are usually housed at the Ariana Gallery in Detroit, Michigan where you can buy poster reproductions. The collection has also toured to diverse sites to increase awareness of the doctor's work and raise funds. According to the owner of the gallery, Dr. Kevorkian:
"has no further artistic aspirations and he believes it unlikely that he will paint again. He does not enjoy the process and does not consider himself an artist. In fact, he disclaims the paintings as art."
In 2000, I had the opportunity to view his paintings at an exhibition held at the Armenian Library in Watertown, Massachussets. This was not a pleasurable experience. The paintings, though naive and primitive in execution, hit you like the proverbial ton of bricks with their unvarnished and blunt messages. In case the paintings had not beat you over the head hard enough, the Dr. provides detailed captions explaining what you are seeing. For example a painting entitled Nearer My God to Thee depicting a naked, flailed man clawing at the sides of a pit into which he is bein inexorably pulled with ripping bleeding fingernails, is captioned:
This depicts how most human beings feel about dying -- at least about their own deaths. Despite the solace of hypocritical religiosity and its seductive promise of an after-life of heavenly bliss. Most of us will do anything to thwart the inevitable victory of biological death. We contemplate and face it with great apprehension, profound fear, and terror. Sparing no financial or physical sacrifice, pleading wantonly and unashamedly, clutching any hope of salvation through medicine or prayer. How forbidding that dark abyss! How stupendous the yearning to dodge its gaping orifice. How inexorable the engulfment. Yet, below are the disintegrating hulks of those who have gone before; they have made the insensible transition and wonder what the fuss is all about. After all, how excruciating can nothingness be?
And so forth. Being a
coward, this caption and the painting completely
fucked me up for days, as it will no doubt do again now that I have reacquainted myself with it.
You may view the paintings at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kevorkian/aboutk/art/brotherhood.html, just make sure you have a stiff drink before you do so. Alternatively, you could listen to the Jazz flute album, A Very Still Life where he performs some of his compositions with the Morpheus Quintet which includes former members of the Brian Setzer orchestra and other accomplished musicians. The album was released in a limited pressing of 5,000 with cover art based on the namesake painting. A portion of the proceeds from the album goes to fund the building of an assisted suicide clinic. You can listen to a track of the album here: http://www.resist.pair.com/drjack.html
http://www.ffrf.org/fttoday/2004/junejuly/whatley.php
http://www.resist.pair.com/drjack.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kevorkian/aboutk/art/