Art and art history are littered with corpses, many of them inserted into some sort of narrative of redemption, lesson-learning, or historical progress. Damien Hirst’s obsession with death shows up in twenty-first century versions of Dutch memento mori pieces, whether he uses animal corpses or, more recently, a diamond-encrusted human skull. Corpses feature luridly in the record-breaking edutainment exhibits of German scientist-artist Gunther von Hagens. His plastinization process enables dual-purpose art or science shows (all of them remarkably popular and successful). In past centuries of art history, a majority of corpses were those of beautiful and about-to-be resurrected saints and holy figures. For female martyrs the torture was often sexual, giving rise to bizarre semi-erotic representations like St. Agatha carrying her sliced-off breasts on a platter. Feminists, among them Luce Irigaray, have gone so far as to suggest that body of Christ on the cross becomes feminized by his bleeding and wounds, an interpretation that seems less far-fetched if we recall numerous Renaissance images where believers hold up golden cups to catch the Savior’s gushing, revitalizing blood.

For a non-Catholic, such imagery strikes a rather bizarre anthropological note, like the belief system of some tribal group one cannot quite “get”. Secular tradition offers an alternative iconography of ravaged female bodies. Here, instead of religious redemption in death, what is foregrounded is rape as an element of foundational histories. What art historian Diane Wolfthal has dubbed “Heroic Rape” was required for progress, as shown for example in Poussin’s Rape of the Sabine Women. The Roman theft or “raptus” in this case was necessary in order to originate a great city. In Poussin’s frieze-like painting, babies are tossed aside and women struggle to fend off abductors, but still the scene is oddly quiet, as if all the participants acknowledge the inevitability of history.

- Cynthia Freeland

Author of the book But is It Art?

Excerpt from Crime Seen: Catalog Essay for Exhibition by Ashley Hope, 2007

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