| Since
January 1990 Joseph Bartscherer has collected every issue of The
New York Times that bears a front-page obituary. He displays them
on a four-inch-high grid of rectangular Plexiglas pedestals measuring
23 x 85 inches, six papers to a pedestal. At present there are approximately
300 papers, with the piece continuing to grow as new obituaries are
published. |
 |
| Row of front-page
obituaries featuring Octavio Paz, James Earl Ray, Eldridge Cleaver,
Frank Sinatra, Barry Goldwater, and Roy Rogers. From the exhibition
Obituary. |
|
| In
some cities, the newspaper announces the death of every resident.
The New York Times, however, is highly selective, listing about
25 local deaths a day, and identifying a handful of figures it considers
sufficiently notable for a story on the inside obituary page, and,
with extreme stringency, for the front page of the paper. |
|
| Times
assistant managing editor Allan Siegal, who is responsible for the
layout of the front page, defines the standard for inclusion as repute
rather than celebrity, with repute established by an individual's
contribution to change in his or her profession or in society. Whether
that repute is weighty enough to compete with unfolding news stories
is decided on a case-by-case basis. The obituary editors or other
staffers bring prospective stories to the managing editor, and a group
of five senior editors led by the managing editor decides what goes
on the front page at a daily 4:30pm meeting. Decision-making is usually
by consensus, with impasses resolved by the executive editor. Some
obituaries will make it in and others not, and the arguments can be
heated. |
 |
| Front-page
obituary of Pat Nixon (6/23/93). From the exhibition Obituary. |
|
| The
significance ascribed to a life at the time that it ends necessarily
involves an acknowledgment of values of the past. The memory, passions,
and knowledge of the newspaper's staff will affect their response
and influence the play a story gets. As the editors age and their
identification with so-called youth culture becomes increasingly distant,
it is up to younger staff members to champion new figures, and urge
choices that reflect the changing social landscape. |
 |
| Front-page
obituary of Selena (4/1/95). From the exhibition Obituary. |
|
| As
a form associated with mourning and memorial, obituaries are treated
carefully, according to Marvin Siegel, assistant to the managing editor.
They are never farmed out and are often given to specialists to write,
such as a drama critic or science writer. In preparing obituaries
these writers shift gears, stretching the conventions of the news
story to create a complete retrospective narrative that will nest
within pages otherwise devoted to fragments of unfolding stories.
|
|
| Although
The New York Times clearly takes its role as primary source
for historians very seriously, the news and feature departments of
the newspaper hasten to clarify that they are not writing history
but giving accounts. This is particularly relevant for the obituaries,
stories of individual lives. The overwhelming majority of the figures
receiving tribute achieved their fame in the arts and entertainment
field. Among the performers the great preponderance are stars of screen
and stage, embodiments of the fantasies and projections of ordinary
people. This category is followed by national politics, international
politics, sports, literature, science, commerce, journalism, and a
smattering of others. While repute may be the guiding principle for
selection, there are a few anomalies that point to considerations
of human interest or nosiness: front-page obituaries are bestowed
on the wives and parents of American presidents (Pat Nixon or Virginia
Clinton Kelley), people whose death itself is a news story (Tejano
singer Selena at 23, van Gogh's contemporary Jeanne Calment at 122,
or serial murderer Jeffrey Dahmer), or those whose death provides
an occasion to raise controversial social issues (Jack Kevorkian patient
Janet Adkins). There is an additional small category of people involved
in the cultural and commercial life of New York City (New York Public
Library and former Georgetown University president Timothy Healy or
philanthropist Alice Tully). Intuiting its readers' desires while
keeping its conscience on history, the Times oscillates between
indulgence and education. |
 |
| Front-page
obituary of Jeffrey Dahmer (11/29/94). From the exhibition
Obituary. |
|
| |
|
|
When decedents are felt to
merit a photograph, pictures are culled from the picture desk, picture
agencies, and other newspapers. The picture editor offers a selection
of pictures for the front page, and may lobby for particular images.
In some cases Allan Siegal will consult with specialists, asking
the dance critic which picture of Martha Graham among the hundreds
in the file epitomizes what she should be remembered for. He then
considers the photograph in relation to others for the front page
in terms of "size, capacity, heft and visibility."
|
 |
| Front-page
obituary of Martha Graham (4/2/91). From the exhibition Obituary. |
|
| A
few of the photographs from the 1990s are spectacular (see the studio
shot of Ginger Rogers with Fred Astaire in the April 26, 1995 paper,
or the candid picture of Marcello Mastroianni on December 20, 1996),
but many tend to be illustrational. As Marvin Siegel says, the pictures
show people doing what they do-the politician speechifying, the artist
painting, the dancer dancing. Costume, pose, surroundings, and attributes
of profession inscribe the current era's protocol for representing
types. As performers and celebrities, public figures are accustomed
to presenting a constructed persona which may or may not bear intimate
relationship to their private selves. Writers, whose achievements
are internal, are freest from the expectations of the public, and
their portraits are often the most evocative. Other pictures are so
unrevealing of the subject's inner life that including them raises
the question of what social or psychological need the image nourishes,
perhaps serving merely as mnemonic device to secure a place in the
culture's memory. |
 |
| Front-page
obituary of Ginger Rogers (4/26/95). From the exhibition Obituary. |
|
| At
the Times, the hundreds of advance obituaries on people who
are ill, old, or important are zealously sealed so that reporters
won't preempt the future obituary's momentous appearance by using
the same language in a news story. (Allan Siegal recalls that in a
couple of bizarre instances the subject of the obituary outlived the
critic who wrote it, rendering the byline a piece of news, and a mini-obituary,
itself.) Death of a familiar person is always startling, and members
of the press scramble to be the first one to administer the jolt.
The headline feeds an anxiety that makes obituary-reading compulsive
for many. At the same time the story's dip into the past invites a
sense of nostalgic appreciation of historical and stylistic cycles
and a meditation on national character that calms and consoles the
reader. With the mind's therapeutic amnesia, the new death eclipses
past deaths. Like the newspapers displayed in Bartscherer's Obituary,
memory puts our most urgent losses within reach, but mercifully and
frustratingly restricts access to all the others. |
 |
| Front-page
obituary of Diana Princess of Wales (8/31/97). From the exhibition
Obituary. |
|
| In
his photographic work Joseph Bartscherer locates a particular phenomenon
in the world and makes a disciplined and detailed description of its
constituent parts, often over a prolonged period of time. The phenomenon
can be identified in a single word but is invariably a complex system
that has been cleanly excised from its milieu without losing its ramifications.
When he displays the finished work, he emphasizes the subject's internal
logic or lapses of logic, and its tendency toward pattern. Though
consistent with his working approach, Obituary is notable in
the economy of gesture and the breadth of ambition. |
 |
| Installation
view of the exhibition Obituary. |
|
| When
the newspapers are placed on display, revealing their varying states
of age and health, the whole imparts a mood of profound seriousness.
In part, one is moved by the systematic saving-over a twelve-year
period-of a resource normally consumed and discarded. The honoring
of lives has been noticed, and the lives themselves are again honored.
|
|
| The
gravity is also a consequence of the formality and rigor of the piece
as sculpture. The fastidious precision of the dimensional relationships
of geometric parts recalls the minimalist modular sculpture of Donald
Judd (who earned a front-page obituary mention in 1994) and Carl Andre's
industrial squares creating paths on the floor. Bartscherer's modules
interact with the architecture, but visually disengage from it to
establish a horizontal picture plane in space. The pedestals rise
above the floor at a level carefully gauged to foreclose any analogy
with the domesticity and convenience of the coffee table. The visitor
strains to find and read the obituary, feeling physically compressed
and controlled by the surrounding grid of papers with their overwhelming
volume of data. The freedom of ownership and privacy is denied, and
the museum's authority ensures that the papers remain unopened. |
 |
| Student Paula
Freedman '03 viewing the exhibition Obituary. |
|
| Like
the minimalists, Bartscherer departs from the model of art as self-expression,
operating rather as impartial collector of the evidence of culture.
His artistic eloquence is conveyed through the selection he makes,
and, in this case, the system he maintains, rather than the marks
he affixes. In Obituary he presents the emotionally charged
subject of mortality in a cool, elegant aesthetic that prompts the
viewer to consider philosophical as well as personal issues. The piece
calmly marks time, embodying the continuum, or tedium, of vitality
beyond the course of individual lives. |
 |
| Row of front-page
obituaries featuring Jeffrey Dahmer, Alix Grès, Orval
Faubus, Dean Rusk, John Osborne, and Rose Kennedy. From the
exhibition Obituary. |
|
| Though
reductive in its means, Obituary is as rich in its allusions
as history painting. While the use of newspapers raises the issues
of chronology, perspective, and the purposes of the artist, the internal
content of the paper raises other questions-about storytelling, history,
fame, the media, and photography. The piece is at the same time a
portrait of New York, which emerges as smart, sophisticated, ambitious,
artsy, parochial, institutional, dispassionately curious about the
rest of the world and fascinated with itself. |
|
| Being
an artist, Bartscherer is interested in the visual and conceptual
aspects of the newspaper as a designed object as well, and emphasizes
this by positioning the papers far enough away from the viewer to
draw attention to their overall layout. It's clear from conversing
with him that his own interpretive skills are exercised rather than
atrophied by the repetition inherent in the system he's created. His
eye is constantly alert to visual witticisms, ironies, and echoes.
He would notice repeated gestures, like that of the little girl beside
Bella Abzug and the baseball batter above; implicit humor in the pairing
of a bird's-eye view of a Times Square detour with the obituary of
astronaut Alan Shepard; the visual beauty of pages like December 16,
1999 or August 7, 2000; and the symbolism of Hillary and Chelsea Clinton
in mourning for Hugh Rodham, under the obituary photograph of Marian
Anderson singing in front of the Lincoln Memorial in 1939 after being
denied use of a concert hall. Bartscherer believes that the frequency
of these instances of suggestive juxtaposition shows intentionality
on the part of the people designing the page, whether responding to
the pictures on a conscious or subconscious level. When asked, different
members of the editorial staff of the paper either concede that there
might be subconscious impulses at work or dismiss the contention as
"postmodern nonsense." |
 |
| Front-page
obituary of Sir Alec Guiness (8/7/00). From the exhibition Obituary. |
|
| The
interplay between economy and profusion, vastness and detail, and
hermeticism and garrulousness is Bartscherer's inspired contribution
with this work, but it's one that makes the piece difficult to fully
comprehend. Bartscherer's sculpture is baffling to many, despite the
license that Dada, Cubism, and Surrealism gave artists to raise rather
than answer questions. Many imaginative people cannot fathom why someone
might want to investigate ideas in a visual, built way, and won't
allow that such an enterprise has anything to do with making art.
The activities of the artist in America remain as suspect as ever
in the postmodern era; and the artist him or herself, unless catapulted
into the realm of celebrity and market success, remains at the periphery
of national culture no matter how many Francis Bacons and Berenice
Abbotts make it onto the front page of The New York Times when
they die. |
 |
| Front-page
obituary of Berenice Abbott (12/11/91). From the exhibition
Obituary. |
|
| The
most interesting art exposes the assumptions and ideals of a culture,
and the most original contemporary art investigates the challenges
as well as pleasures of visual experience. A new generation, conditioned
by the multiplicity and interactivity of experiences in cyberspace,
will bring a fresh set of expectations to the purposes of art at the
beginning of the third millennium of our present era. The dynamic
of art in the 20th century has made it more and more difficult to
sequester art from other forms of creative expression. Now, at the
beginning of the 21st century, the possibilities of electronic media
may accelerate that process. It remains to be seen what effect these
changes will have on the venues where projects like Joseph Bartscherer's
Obituary are encountered. |
 |
| Installation
view of the exhibition Obituary. |
|
|