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Course: Europe 1800 - 1900 > Unit 6
Lesson 8: SwitzerlandBöcklin, Self-Portrait with Death Playing the Fiddle
Arnold Böcklin, Self-Portrait with Death Playing the Fiddle, 1872, oil on canvas, 75 x 61 cm (Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin). Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- Why is Death playing the fiddle? What does the fiddle have to do with dying?(12 votes)
- During the times of the Black Death/Bubonic Plague which started in Europe in 1347, it was common to begin representing death as an animated skeleton. Since people were dying at such a fast rate, someone who was here today could be dead tomorrow. Death as a fiddler was a common representation for centuries. The speakers talked about the fiddle having only one string. I guess the symbol was that once that string broke, the painter's life would be over.(25 votes)
- Who's self portrait is shown just before Rembrandt's?(3 votes)
- Its Christian Schad, Self-Portrait, 1927 at the Tate Modern in London.(4 votes)
- How come death has one string(1 vote)
- Death has one string because it signifies that the painter may only have one day live. Because according to Greg Boyle above, he [the painter] was alive during the black death.(2 votes)
- What is Arnold Bocklin's nationality?(1 vote)
- He was born in switzerland.(2 votes)
- why is grinning in such a frightful way? Its almost like he is laughing as the man dies.(1 vote)
- Death knows it has triumphed - or will triumph (as it always has)(1 vote)
Video transcript
(piano music playing) Steven: Usually, when you
look at a self-portrait, you see an artist staring
directly at himself in a mirror, but in Self-Portrait
with Death by Böcklin, he seems not so much to
be looking, as listening. Female: That menacing figure of death is not only playing the violin, but seems to be whispering
something in his ear. Steven: He seems ecstatic,
where you can see clearly the skull, with all of its teeth,
that seems to be smiling demonically. Female: Grinning, I would say. Steven: Yeah, eager and rather excited. We see that claw-like hand of bones that clutches the bow. and the violin is being played, but it's being played on
a single remaining string, as if Böcklin has only
that one string to go. It seems so final. Female: Death knows he's won here. Steven: Art outlasts
the life of the artist and so there's something
very self-conscious about the act of making a work
of art and especially about making a self-portrait. Female: That sense of death
is present in portraits, generally, not just in self-portraits. Portraits can make the dead alive, so I think often when
we look at portraits, we have a sense of going back in time of looking at someone who has lived. But you're right, it's
certainly more poignant in self-portraits, especially
in the way that Böcklin has collapsed the space here. Steven: The personification
of death, that skeleton, is so intimate. It's so close. You said "whispering in his ear", it's almost as if Böcklin can
literally feel his breath, if there were such a thing. Female: The artist, himself,
is very close to us. His palette is half in our space. Steven: And you see the raw paint, it's a depiction of paint made of itself, that speaks to the lie of painting. The raw materials that
make up this painting are made present. Female: Made honest. Steven: Made honest. That's right. Stripping away the veils of
our life, the veils of society. The palette and the raw
depiction of the paint is a kind of reminder of the essential. Böcklin is showing us
both the flesh and blood representation of the artist of the man clothed in the fashions of his day, but then he also shows us this skeleton, in a sense this essence
of what he will become. The painting as a whole
is beautifully manipulated to show us the illusion of these figures, but then it's also laid bare. Female: The idea of man returning to dust, from which he was created. That's what I was reminded of when you talked about the materiality of the paint. Steven: He's holding
a rag under his thumb. Female: To wipe his brush. Steven: To wipe his brush, but the way that death wipes us all away. There is this wonderful way in which the act of painting is
echoed by the way in which death transforms us. (piano music playing)