gerry bergstein

Death is an awesome metaphysical mystery. One minute you’re here and the next you are God knows where. Does the world disappear or do you? As the blues singer Memphis Slim sang, “Don’t care how rich you are, don’t care what you are worth, mother Earth (is waiting for you).” In that sense it is a horror but also a great equalizer. It is fascinating, frightening, inexplicable and universal.  My work has been about mortality for decades– my own but also the mortality of all things natural and cultural including cultural and esthetic systems, empires, and ideologies. Perhaps the universe itself will die one day.

Part of my interest in images of death and ruin is about not only biological death, but the recurring phenomenon of birth, growth, the seeking of power and meaning and pleasure in all spheres of human activity. For instance, art movements are born, gain strength, mature, die and if they are lucky get resurrected. The same with empires, political systems and ideologies. To quote Delmore Schwartz’s great poem THE HEAVY BEAR:

Breathing at my side, that heavy animal,

That heavy bear who sleeps with me,  

Howls in his sleep for a world of sugar,  

A sweetness intimate as the water's clasp,  

Howls in his sleep because the tight-rope  

Trembles and shows the darkness beneath.  

—The strutting show-off is terrified,  

Dressed in his dress-suit, bulging his pants,  

Trembles to think that his quivering meat  

Must finally wince to nothing at all.

On the other hand there is something wonderfully and magically mysterious about death. It is even hilarious. My father was fond of saying, “Don’t take anything in life too seriously because you’ll never get out of it alive.” Only slightly funny but quite wise.