Vanitas: The Work of Rachelle Soucy

A type of Memento Mori, Vanitas is a genre of art that is often characterized by a combination of enticing still life objects such as fruit, and flowers, along with reminders of the transient nature of life such as skulls and hourglasses.  This juxtaposition was meant to point out the ultimate shortcomings of worldly pleasures and aspirations.  In the past, Vanitas made very predictable moralistic statements about keeping one’s hand on the Lord’s plow and steering clear of the temptations of the world, but they also made a great an excuse to paint and contemplate pleasures of the world.

Rachelle Soucy is an artist who has added her creative spin and considerable talents to this genre in two series of photographic compositions, Vanitas and Vanitas (2).  Ms. Soucy has gracefully agreed to share her work and a conversation about it on The Daily Undertaker (please click on the images to enlarge them):  

Pat McNally: Rachelle, your work certainly has a wonderful sensuality to it, along with some very clear references to mortality, and although there is a playfulness to your work, I do not sense an irony or distancing yourself from the genre itself.  Instead, you seem to be honestly engaging with this theme, rather than making a statement about it.  While your work gives the viewer a lot of food for thought, absent are the simplistic moral preaching and guilty pleasure elements that were often a part of Vanitas pieces in the past.  What drew you to explore this form?

Rachelle Soucy:  The entire series originated through playfulness and discovery. It was a playful experiment that led me to explore themes of Memento Mori and Vanitas – I started by arranging still-lifes on top of my scanner. I was quickly inspired by the shallow depth of field created by the scanner – it shows incredible detail that quickly drops into beautiful shadows. This aesthetic is uncanny in its resemblance to 16^th and17^th Dutch paintings of Memento Mori. Coincidentally, I was arranging all these symbolic items, flowers, fruits, shells, and hourglasses, which are typically present in these types of paintings to symbolize life’s fleeting moments, futility of pleasure and ultimately reminders of one’s mortality. For my first series, I decided to place myself amongst these items. So you are correct, I am not making a statement about this theme, more so I am engaging directly as subject matter – just as the flowers are decaying, so too am I. In general, decay is an unusual subject matter that I was intrigued by. I wanted to explore this genre personally by capturing myself in a fleeting moment and to remind myself of the shortcomings of vanity.

PM:  I have seen a lot of work done with scanners, but yours really stands out.  It seems that you have avoided the clichés common to this technique and really made great use of the possibilities and limits of the scanners depth of field, creating a kind of dream world.  Could you tell us about your experiences using this technique, and why you chose it for this project?  

RS: Using a scanner is really just an untraditional or atypical form of photography. In a way, my work is a polished descendant of the “face-down-on-the-photocopier” self portraits most of us have enjoyed. With this technique you can achieve unmatchable detail, because the scanner magnifies hidden details such as wrinkles and pores and even miniscule insects. Also, the colour and shadows create this ethereal-type aesthetic that works with the themes of Momento Mori and Vanitas. I didn’t directly choose this technique for the project; it was more of a happy accident. It was the aesthetics of this technical process that influenced my exploration of these themes, and not vice versa. I think this creative process is rare in art making, especially with new media.

PM: The long format and multiple frames of your work really bring us out of the scanner and add to its otherworldly feeling; chopping up single images and bringing multiple images into a single piece.  Diptychs and triptychs have certainly been a part of artistic expression, particularly in  sacred works since antiquity, but in your work, it brings me to the idea of our fragmented experience in the modern world where we have many images bombarding us from different sources at one time.  Do you think that this fragmentation and information overload has changed the way we think and behave?

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RS: In these works, there is intentional use of diptychs and triptychs as religious reference. Also, the fragmentation on these portraits reminds me of stained glass. This only references antiquities though. As a modern artist, I find that fragmentation and information overload has led me to create by sampling. This process allows me to combine old world aesthetics and themes with new media and technology – resulting in my Vanitas series. It may not be considered purist, but it brings about unusual combinations, novel insights and discoveries. It has allowed me to be more playful and experimental in my artwork

PM: The skull has become such a common image in our society, that either everything has become a memento mori, or perhaps through overexposure, it has lost its power to bring our thoughts to our own mortality.  Your work makes use of the human skull, but in a very subtle way.  This is certainly a departure from the genre tradition.  Could you share your thoughts on the ever-presence of the skull in our culture, and how you chose to use it? 

RS: I chose not to use a single skull in my work, which perhaps has a negative connotation or has been over popularized in our culture. Instead, I strung these carved skull beads into prayer beads, showing the skull in repetition - symbolizing prayer and meditation. I choose to use the skull as a quiet reminder of mortality and not as a logo of death.

PM: Your sensual use of hair in these pieces ties them together, and creates a kind of oceanic depth and surreal texture to the work.  I don’t think I’ll see hair in the same way again, which is something that art at its best, really can do; help us to see things in a new way.  Has your work and thought in this project changed the way you see death?

RS: This is such a compliment, thank you! It is the hair that ties both series together. Piecing different scans together was easiest by matching the hair in different scans … and it is this which connects all of the works. By piecing multiple scans together, I could create the illusion of long flowing hair, a type of hyper-portrait. So these portraits aren’t completely representational, there are still illusions at work in these portraits connected to vanity.

Rachelle Soucy

RS: To answer your question: It has made me view not only death, but vanity differently, and bizarrely how both are so interconnected. It took a personal unarming to show these self-portraits, especially in large format. There is no hiding or concealing in these portraits, they are hyper-realistic, so signs of aging and blemishes are on full display. As a culture, we are obsessed with youthfulness and vanity, which is perhaps a manifestation of fears associated with aging and death. These portraits show impurities as reminder of mortality, but done in a graceful and whimsical manner. Ultimately, this project simultaneously allowed me to address my own aging and grapple with my own vanity. 

PM: And that is a wonderful testament to the power of creative expression.  Through this process, pieces of the overwhelming and unknowable can be addressed and worked through, both for the creator and the viewer.  Thank you so much for sharing your work and your thoughts with us.
8/31/10
For more of Rachelle Soucy's work, please visit her flickr page.
For more posts on the intersection of art and death, visit Art and Death

Live Fast, Die Young, and Leave a Beautiful Bee-Hive

Beauty's Lot

Adorn'd with Tates, I well could Boast,

Of Tons and Macaronys Toast;

I once was Fair, Young Frisky, Gay

Could please with songs and Dance the Hay

Bells reflect Ye Mortals see,

As I now am so you will be

Published in London in 1778

via BibliOdyssey

Vanitas: Memento Mori in the Digital Age

A memento mori is a work of art that reminds us of the vanity of life and the inevitability of our eventual demise. These reminders of mortality have historically taken the shape jewelry with skull motifs, watches and clocks with various reminders of our own time running out, paintings depicting the fleeting objects of life along with skulls, and sculptures of showing half a face or body in youth and the other in old age or death.

A Classic Memento Mori Painting

In recent times, even as our culture seems to be drifting away from the acceptance of death, youth culture abounds with images of skulls and skeletons. While once this death imagery was edgy and controversial, the domain of punk rockers and heavy metal bands, it has gone mainstream along with tattoos to the point that it is not unusual to see skull motifs on the clothing and toys of even the youngest girls and boys.

Above, a half skull sculpture

Below, A memento mori tattoo

Memento mori are not just the gloomy reminders of death or the rebellious symbolism appropriated by youth culture however. They inspire us, as originally intended, to count our days and to make the most of the time we have. Reminders of our impermanence can give us perspective on our trials and our struggles and our accomplishments. whether we look to a reward in heaven, a disintergration of the self into oneness with the universe, or simply to apply our limited energies to our highest priorities, these works can help us lead a fuller, more satisfying life.

Keith Richards' well known Memento Mori, his Skull Ring

is just a modern expression of the Rosary bead shown below

On Sunday, the consistently thought provoking blog on art, medicine, death and culture, Morbid Anatomy, brought to my attention the introduction of a memento mori designed as an application for the Ipod. This App, known as Vanitas, a common title for memento mori pieces of the past, was designed by Tale of Tales, and features a wonderful variety of items to remind us of our fleeting existance, along with a wonderful soundtrack from cellist Zoë Keating. While the technology used in this app, and the way people interact with it may be new, the value of the lesson is timeless.

A Lock

http://seesomethingstrange.blogspot.com/2009/05/mourning-hair-jewelry.html

On Tuesday, Diane on the Good Mourning Glory Blog posted some very nice pictures from Ebay auctions of Victorian mourning jewelry that include locks of hair from the deceased.  Jewelry and other art and craft work made from hair was very popular in the Victorian era, and as Diane notes, it was not limited to the hair of the deceased or to mourning pieces.

There are number of sites that cover this topic very well.  In addition to the Good Mourning Blog at http://seesomethingstrange.blogspot.com/ 

please visit Victoriana at   http://www.victoriana.com/library/harpers/funeral.html 

and The Victorian Hairwork Society at http://www.hairworksociety.org/

http://seesomethingstrange.blogspot.com/2009/05/mourning-hair-jewelry.html

A lock of hair seems to capture a moment in time.  I've seen the lock of hair my mother took from me as a baby, curly and red in a way that it never was again.  My wife and I have a couple locks of our daughter's hair.  One was taken as soon as her hair got long enough to make a lock, and the other was from the time she tangled up the brush so tightly in her hair that it had to be cut out.   We don't look at these locks very often, but they bring back happy memories for us when we do.  So,  I think I can appreciate how the Victorians felt about an art form that gives most people the creeps today.  

http://seesomethingstrange.blogspot.com/2009/05/mourning-hair-jewelry.html

Locks of hair are still requested by grieving families.  Several years ago I worked with a wonderful one.  The widow was from the states, but had met her husband in Southeast Asia, where he was a physician.  She told me about him as we sat together in the small visitation rooms that were common in the Pacific Northwest where I worked at the time.  This vibrant man had worked very hard to earn the funds to pay for his education.  His energy and  drive took him all over very rough terrain to administer health care to the very poor in his country.  This sacrifice had serious consequences and he contracted hepatitis from a needle prick in the course of his work.   Another sacrifice he made was for his wife.  They returned to her home in Portland, but his credentials were never recognized in this country, and this man who had worked so hard to be a doctor had to look for other work.  The couple were nonetheless very active in working for the causes they believed in, even while he was losing his weight and energy, and eventually his life, to the cancer that followed his hepatitis.  

I was fortunate enough to spend several hours on both of the visitation days that we held for this man at the funeral home, mostly hearing about his strength, sacrifice, and the love shared by the two of them.  At the end of the second day before his casket would be closed and his cremation would take place, she asked me for a lock of his rich black hair.  "It's the only thing about him that the illness didn't change." she said.

Parting Gifts

http://animal.discovery.com/guides/butterflies/angelwings-tortoiseshells/mourning-cloak.html

MOURNING CLOAK, Nymphalis antiopa

I have a friend who has no interest in funerals. He'd been to his father's funeral, a dreary and depressing affair, and he had no interest in attending another, let alone having one himself. He didn't see the point. I was surprised then, one day, when we were talking about mementos that are sometimes given out to people attending funerals, that he got very excited. He wanted to give out 'party favors' to his friends when he died.
In the Victorian age and earlier, gifts were often given out to mourners (sometimes as an incentive for complete strangers to attend). Gloves, rings, veils and mourning cloaks were often given out, and have been stipulated in people's wills. (I take this information from Phillipe Aries fantastic book on the history of death The Hour of Our Death). While in the past, gifts may have been used to gain increased status by luring a greater number of public mourners, today, gifts are given to honor the memory, interests and personality of the deceased person. I have coordinated the distribution of many items at funerals and I think that 'party favors' can be a great way to personalize a service, and to remind us of the gift that that person was in our life.

http://www.beecrafty.net/images/DDBB%20-%20Party%20Favors.jpg

Special foods are a popular choice. A man who met his friends at the bakery every morning made his family promise that there would be plenty of doughnuts available at his service (there were dozens and dozens.) Many people spoil their grandchildren with a certain candy and baskets of these candies are laid out at the service. I know that I always associate wintergreen lifesavers with my grandmother.

We did a service for a gentleman at the funeral home who always had a red bandanna in his pocket and always asked for one for Christmas. The bandannas were a running joke in the family and everyone got one at the service. Flower bulbs, golf tees, pine cones, fishing hooks and lures are other items I've seen given to mourners. Each is special and brings back the good memories that help to heal our grief. We take something along with us when we go, and it is a final gift from a dear friend or relative. I don't know what my friend is planning to give out at his service, but I'll be there to find out if I can- I'm sure it's something good.