Jason Foumberg

One of the enduring motifs in the history of art is the lively skeleton, more specifically, the walking, dancing, talking and laughing skeleton. The body of bones that is made to perform human actions, who is re-animated with life by an artist’s hand, is a cheery fellow; he isn’t decaying or in a state of putrefaction. No, the skeleton is not a frightful thing to behold. He is, in fact, an old friend.

That is not to say he is a welcomed friend, but he is dependable. He is a consultant who always gives the same advice no matter the question. He is a guide who always leads us to the same place no matter where we are going. He is a lover, propagating himself with each kiss. He lifts us up, but only in waiting for the time when he can be freed from his meaty clothes and to live once again in the imagination, on paper or canvas.

The "danse macabre," or the Dance of Death, emerged as a graphic and sculptural form in the Middle Ages in Europe among plague and war as a sort of comic relief; ironic optimism is better than no optimism at all. His image was embraced and promoted in plays, on tombs, in literature and in the hands of draughtsman. He became a character that reminded us of a dire lesson with weighty finality, upstaging Christ and the devil’s game of good versus bad. Being of the human world, the "danse macabre" is the joker’s counterpart—he is our ancestor and our future.

Last summer, David Colman of The New York Times reported on the trend of the skull that now adorns everything from hipster t-shirts to trendy purses, citing designer Ralph Lauren, who appropriated the laughing skull and propelled it into the season’s biggest hit, as the ultimate example of the symbol’s popular rise and intellectual demise.

Over centuries the "danse macabre" appears and reappears. He endures simply because we do, yet he manifests according to the certain needs of the time, immortally adaptable.

Steven Hull has crafted a twist on the danse by giving the skeleton an antagonist, a pink, helium-filled balloon. The party balloon has attached its tail to the skeleton’s waist and begins to lift it up off the ground while the skeleton remains a gravity-ridden pile of itself, refusing resurrection like a child’s tantrum. The sculpture, in essence, connects the heavens with the earth, each the anchor for the other, providing an existential joke in which life and death are tied in a circuitous struggle. A skeleton wrestling a balloon: the two ought to be friends to the end.

In a more traditional vein, yet no less humorous, Lora Fosberg draws skeletons in a variety of human poses. Like the renowned Mexican artist José Guadalupe Posada, whose classic Day of the Dead imagery exemplifies the life and work of the lively skeleton, Fosberg’s skeletons kiss, hug and get drunk. In "37 South Wabash" (so named because the drawing is rendered on stationary with that address, similar to Posada’s broadsides), a skeleton chef, complete with puffy hat and apron, stir-fries a skull. In "French Kiss," the bony tongues of two skulls touch in an act of love. The whole affair has a lighthearted quality that one wouldn’t normally expect from a skeleton, but there it is—we like a good-natured and jolly Death.

As part of the "War" portfolio of fifty prints from 1924, the German artist Otto Dix incorporates several skull and skeleton figures, although these are of the gruesome variety. "Mealtime in the Trenches," for example, depicts a soldier casually eating his lunch while he is cradled within a mountain of bones. Dix made drawings while fighting on the front lines in World War I and published his portfolio six years after the fighting ended. As such, his observations are first-hand and personal. In the trench, the soldier nonchalantly chews his sandwich. He simply must ignore the surrounding chaos, the bones that have been digested by the war. It’s just lunch; it’s just death.

Peregrine Honig’s "Death Dance" shows the traditional "dancing" skeleton, strutting along after its human, limbs raised in a mocking gesture of conviviality. The skeleton entreats a woman wrapped in winter attire, cradling her beloved latte from Starbucks. One can only imagine that the chatterbox skeleton is going on and on about the same old thing, but one must trudge along listening to the yapping thing. Bear with it.

Steven Hull shows at Lisa Boyle Gallery, 1821 West Hubbard, 2nd Floor,(773)655-5475, through July 7; Lora Fosberg shows at Linda Warren Gallery, 1052 West Fulton Market, (312)432-9500, through August 18; Otto Dix is presented at The Smart Museum of Art, 5550 South Greenwood, (773)702-0200, through September 16; Peregrine Honig shows at gescheidle, 1039 West Lake Street, 2nd floor, (312)226.3500, through July 14.

(2007-07-02)

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