I find it slightly ironic that on the day that I stumbled upon the above image by Gabriel Oronzco, I also had a conversation with another talented artist, Tobias Nikolai Schulz, concerning the death of Parisian culture compared to its previous generations. Tobias is no fool. He’s lived and been involved with the art worlds of New York, Los Angeles, Paris, and currently, Berlin (which, he informed me, has a really upbeat and vibrant scene). We sat down for what was intended to be a short espresso break. One thing lead to another and the much extended conversation ended with the conclusion that Paris has become, more or less, one giant museum: it’s a place people go to see things behind glass, to reminisce. Don’t get me wrong, it’s all very elegant and beautiful, but it’s product of the brilliance that someone thought of decades, even centuries ago. There is little modern or contemporary creativity that originates in Paris anymore.
As morbid as this sounds, death seems to be a theme of my time in Paris. I’ve mentioned the \”dead animal\” fetish a few times, but now I’m finding glorified human skulls everywhere! Of course, I realize that Halloween is right around the corner, but Halloween normally embodies the feeling of creepy or gruesome and the skulls I’ve seen are artistic and symbolic. (Then again, I’m coming to find that everything in Paris is meant to be symbolic.) The largest demonstration of this mortal paradox became apparent to me two weeks ago when I visited the catacombs of Paris. It consists of over 6 million skulls, 20km deep, for a distance that takes 50 minutes to walk, assuming you don’t stop to make “eye-socket” contact with one of the remains. Surprisingly, it wasn’t all that eerie because of the way they were displayed. It took hundreds of years, but all the skulls, arm, and leg bones are neatly aligned to make walls of decaying decor. Why bother to take so much time to display bones in an artistic way?
The following sign is what helped me understand:
It translates to ” Every human seems to disappear without return; but through the illusion of the memory of life, there is recognition and glory.”
Here’s how I see it: you are currently sitting upon at least a dozen bones buried beneath you. You don’t know who or what they belonged to and you’ll likely never give it another thought. The purpose of this massive display is to acknowledge the dead in a way that you can’t easily put aside in your mind. Even in death, they are contributing to something beautiful and their memory lives on, anonymous or not. This display acknowledges memory of life.
So there you have it; above or below, bones or Basquiat, a beautiful, museum-esque display awaits your acknowledgment.
(flûrt), v.i. 