Lebenszeichen

What is left when death leaves a void, and the way that we deal with the dead changes? Franca Buss examines the way that Enlightenment debates affected European tombstone art in the 18th century. In an art-historical close reading, she analyzes selected funerary ensembles from Central Europe and England and places them in a broader intellectual-historical context. Four strategies are identified relating to the absence of the deceased in the context of the creation of memory, and hope of the afterlife: allegorizing, sentimentalization, poeticizing and naturalization. The modern self-narrative of repressing death is questioned and it is demonstrated how art will pursue its own logic of development defying teleological generalizations.