1578 entdeckte man in Rom ein Labyrinth unterirdischer Begräbnisgänge, in denen sich die sterblichen Überreste Tausender Menschen mutmasslich frühchristliche Märtyrer fanden. In der Folge barg man die Überreste dieser sogenannten Katakombenheiligen und brachte sie in katholische Kirchen und Klöster überwiegend in Süddeutschland, in der Schweiz und in Österreich, wo nach den Zerstörungen des 30-jährigen Krieges und im Zuge der Reformation dringender Bedarf an »neuen« Reliquien bestand. Dort wurden sie von geschickten Kunsthandwerkern und Künstlern wieder zusammengesetzt, mit Gold und Edelsteinen verziert und in prächtige Gewänder gekleidet. Anschliessend stellte man sie in kunstvollen Schreinen aus, um der Gemeinde die spirituellen Schätze, die die Gläubigen im Jenseits erwarteten, stets vor Augen zu halten. Annähernd drei Jahrhunderte lang verehrte man die reich geschmückten »Heiligen Leiber« als Wundertäter und Beschützer der Gemeinde, bis die Zweifel hinsichtlich ihrer Authentizität schliesslich die Oberhand gewannen. Dann schämte man sich ihrer und versteckte oder zerstörte sie. Dieses Buch wirft ein strahlendes Schlaglicht auf die in Vergessenheit geratenen Katakombenheiligen. Neben glanzvollen Bildern von über 70 spektakulär mit Juwelen besetzten Skeletten finden sich die bewegenden Geschichten zahlreicher Katakombenheiliger und seltenes Archivmaterial. Damit werden einige der atemberaubenden Reliquien erstmals veröffentlicht, da es Paul Koudounaris gelang, Zutritt zu ansonsten eher unzugänglichen religiösen Einrichtungen zu erhalten.
Digital pigment print on pearlescent paper, 45” by 30” in 51” by 36” frame $600
Digital pigment print on pearlescent paper, 35” by 23” in 41” by 29” frame $500
A new book reveals the bejewelled and decorated skeletons that have been hidden in churches for more than a century. Photographs by Paul Koudounaris
Dr. Paul Koudounaris is a professor of Baroque Art History in Los Angeles and has travelled the globe documenting and collecting momento mori and just plain weird shit. Though much of his collection of taxidermy, weird relics, bizarre paintings (some found, some commissioned), and curious antiques originate from flea markets, dodgy dealers and fellow collectors, many items are from his travels to the strangest regions in the world. Recently, the good doctor has been putting together a book about surviving charnel houses and bone-decorated chapels in Europe and South America, tentatively entitled Empire of Death (and will be released through Thames & Hudson later in 2011) Here's an article Paul wrote for FT in 2009 on the subject: www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/1801/sisterhood_of... www.thamesandhudson.com
Digital pigment print on pearlescent paper, 23” by 16” in 29” by 22” frame $400
This one-of-a-kind history traces the partnership between humans and cats back to the foundation of civilization. When I put Paul Koudounaris on speakerphone, my two cats appear from seemingly nowhere and settle in to listen to the sound of his voice. After a brief chat about the pleasant lack of fleas around his new home […]
In 1578 word spread of the discovery in Rome of a network of underground tombs containing the remains of thousands of early Christian martyrs. Many skeletons of these supposed saints were soon removed from their resting place and sent to Catholic churches in Europe to replace holy relics that were destroyed during the Protestant Reformation. Once in place the skeletons were then carefully reassembled and enshrined in costumes, wigs, jewels, crowns, gold lace, and armor as a physical reminder of the heavenly treasures that awaited in the afterlife. More
In 1578 word spread of the discovery in Rome of a network of underground tombs containing the remains of thousands of early Christian martyrs. Many skeletons of these supposed saints were soon removed from their resting place and sent to Catholic churches in Europe to replace holy relics that were destroyed during the Protestant Reformation. Once in place the skeletons were then carefully reassembled and enshrined in costumes, wigs, jewels, crowns, gold lace, and armor as a physical reminder of the heavenly treasures that awaited in the afterlife. More
Memento Mori: The Dead Among Us, a photography book by Paul Koudounaris out this month from Thames & Hudson, is a visual narrative of how a more visceral relationship to the dead thrives across the globe.
November 1st – December 1st, 2013
Es begann mit der Mäusejagd: ein packender Streifzug durch die Geschichte der Hauskatze Kulturgeschichte aus Katzenhand! Auf unnachahmliche Art erzählt Katzendame Baba in diesem prächtig gestalteten Geschenkbuch von der wechselhaften Beziehung zwischen Mensch und Mieze. Gemeinsam mit ihrem zweibeinigen Co-Autor Paul Koudounaris, Kunsthistoriker und Katzenexperte, begibt sie sich auf eine Reise durch die Zeit. Sie begegnen Babas wilder Urahnin Felis und der altägyptischen Katzengöttin Bastet, lernen Wissenswertes über die Rolle der Katze in Mittelalter und Aufklärung, stechen mit den wagemutigsten Schiffskatzen in See und folgen den Spuren von Babas Vorfahren bis hin ins Weltall. - Amüsanter Streifzug: von der prähistorischen Felis bis zu den berühmten Katzen der Gegenwart - Humorvolles Katzenbuch: Anekdoten und Geschichten über eine Jahrtausende alte Beziehung - Historisch fundiert: Alles über Abstammung, Mythologie und Historie der beliebten Stubentiger - Geschenkbuch in hochwertiger Ausstattung, reich illustriert und mit ungewöhnlichen Fotografien Was Katzen denken und wie sie den Menschen immer wieder eroberten Katze und Mensch: Diese Konstellation hat Weltgeschichte geschrieben! Stubentiger Baba erklärt, wie clevere Samtpfoten der Historie ihren Stempel aufgedrückt haben. Wer wissen will, wie sich Katzen über die Jahrtausende hinweg selbst domestizierten und so flauschig wie geschmeidig vom Leben und Denken der Menschen Besitz ergriffen haben, liegt mit diesem Buch goldrichtig. Ein ungewöhnliches und unterhaltsames Geschenk für Katzenliebhaber und alle, die es werden wollen. Ihre Katze rät: Sie brauchen dieses Buch, denn die Geschichte der Katze wird hier endlich hinreichend gewürdigt!
If you haven't heard already, LA's hottest cat-themed art show is coming back for round two. After premiering in 2014 in Downtown Los Angeles and drawing thousands of cat lovers, this year's exhibit will feature over 70 international artists. In a…
The afterlife is just more elegant for some of us. In a state of repose in churches around Germany, Switzerland, and Austria are these jeweled skeletons...
November 1st – December 1st, 2013
Dr. Paul Koudounaris has spent more than twelve years on a subject that would strike many in the Western world as macabre - the traditions of mummification and rituals surrounding death in societies throughout South America and Asia, among many other places. He's photographed more than 250 sites around the world and has just published his third book on the subject. Click through to take a look at something a bit different, and find out more about his work. Read more
A new book reveals the bejewelled and decorated skeletons that have been hidden in churches for more than a century. Photographs by Paul Koudounaris
Baba the cat is both storyteller and photographic model in what is perhaps the most unique cat history book ever published
November 1st – December 1st, 2013
Some of the grim displays date back 400 years. The images come from more than 250 sites in 40 different countries. The decorations may seem macabre but they were created 'out of love'.
In 1578 word spread of the discovery in Rome of a network of underground tombs containing the remains of thousands of early Christian martyrs. Many skeletons of these supposed saints were soon removed from their resting place and sent to Catholic churches in Europe to replace holy relics that were destroyed during the Protestant Reformation. Once in place the skeletons were then carefully reassembled and enshrined in costumes, wigs, jewels, crowns, gold lace, and armor as a physical reminder of the heavenly treasures that awaited in the afterlife. More
When I was in Los Angeles last week, I had a really fascinating conversation with my friend (and former Observatory presenter) Paul Koudounaris, author of the beautiful and essential book The Empire of Death: A Cultural History of Ossuaries and Charnel Houses. I asked him to do a guest post on the topic of our conversation--a series of relatively unknown preparatory paintings for Géricault's Raft of the Medusa that were based on human remains checked out, library like, from the illustrious Paris Morgue; following is Paul's writeup; really fascinating stuff! Despite being among the finest early nineteenth-century macabre-themed paintings, Théodore Géricault’s various versions of still lifes with human body parts have remained little known and commented upon. Géricault is best remembered as a pioneering French Romantic and the auteur of the massive Raft of the Medusa [see bottom image]—an over-life-sized painting of the survivors of a shipwreck which had been a tabloid sensation in France in the 1810s. While Géricault’s public personae was that of a hard-living, chaotic, and tempestuous personality, as an artist he maintained an often obsessive dedication. The ship known as the Medusa sank in June of 1816, and Géricault soon began preparatory studies for his painted version, including interviews with survivors, and the construction of a scale model of the raft on which they escaped. At the same time, Géricault also became increasingly interested in the naturalistic rendering of distressed anatomy, and started making frequent trips to morgues—in particular, that of the Hospital Beaujon in Paris. Initially these trips were intended simply to sketch body parts, but Géricault eventually found beauty in the severed limbs and heads he was studying, and began rendering them as subjects in their own right. At the time, there were programs in local morgues to lend human remains to art students for anatomical study—something like a lending library of body parts. Géricault would take them home to study them as they went through states of decomposition. He was known to stash various heads, arms, and legs under his bed—or alternately store them on his roof—so he could continue to render them in increasingly putrid states and in various angles. The upper torso in the so-called Head of a Guillotined Man in the Art Institute of Chicago (the title is misleading—the head is not guillotined) is one of those which is recognizable from multiple paintings, and is believed to be a thief who died in the insane asylum of Bicêtre; Géricault painted this head from multiple viewpoints over the two week period he kept it in his studio. In particular, the artist seems to have been fascinated by the subtle gradations of color body parts attained as they rotted. He delighted in playing the morbid tones of putrefying flesh against a warm chiaroscuro which fades into a dark background and seems timeless and quiet, giving these anatomical fragments a presence that is almost iconic. Géricault made frequent jokes about the reaction of his neighbors to this kind of study—not surprisingly, they were displeased, especially with the smell emanating from his studio. Most of these paintings date to the later half of the 1810s. They were apparently entirely for the artist’s own edification—they were not sold to collectors, and most remained in his studio when he died at the age of 32 in 1824, and were offered as lots in his estate sale. Perhaps the reason that Géricault’s still lifes with body parts have so frequently been overlooked is that they seem to defy interpretation, or lack any kind of editorial intent on the part of the artist. In that sense, they have always seemed perverse. Other, contemporary Romantic artists won great fame for their macabre scenes, but those scenes provide a context to guide the viewer’s reaction. In the Disasters of War by Goya, for example, severed body parts are placed within a moralizing relationship of cause and effect—war produces casualties, and the viewer is invited to disapprove of war itself as futile and barbaric. In various versions of the painting Nightmare by Henri Fuseli, macabre motifs such as demons are menacing, implying the threat of paralysis and loss of free will. But Géricault’s version of the macabre lacks this kind of interpretive framework—he presents his dismembered remains to the viewer simply as collections of objects, nothing more. His insistence on depriving his body parts of any identifiable context has ensured that they remain elusive, and thus marginalized in the history of art. But it is this same lack of context which has preserved them as unique objects of beauty.To find out more about Paul's work, you can visit his website by clicking here; you can purchase a copy of his book (highly recommended!) from the Morbid Anatomy Giftshop by clicking here. Paul will also be participating in this years's iteration of The Congress for Curious People at The Coney Island Museum, so stay tuned for more on that!
Dr. Paul Koudounaris has spent more than twelve years on a subject that would strike many in the Western world as macabre - the traditions of mummification and rituals surrounding death in societies throughout South America and Asia, among many other places. He's photographed more than 250 sites around the world and has just published his third book on the subject. Click through to take a look at something a bit different, and find out more about his work. Read more
