“And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire.” – Revelation 20:14
Self portrait with death playing the fiddle is a painting by Arnold Böcklin which speaks itself through its symbols. It was painted in 1872 when Böcklin was in Munich. Böcklin explored the themes of mortality and death in many of his paintings. No other painting, though, makes the artist’s anxiety and complex relation with Death as explicit as this.
We see the artist holding the color palette and brush, as if he was painting a mirror image in front of us. Death is playing the violin by the side, and is laughing sarcastically – knowing his triumph is certain. It also seems to be whispering something to Böcklin, who looks dithery but composed, listening but continuing his work: it is as if the artist is telling us we need to persist, to do our work, to live our life despite death staring right into our face. The violin has only one string attached to it signifying the scarceness of life. The color palette is smudged giving us a sense of process, yet we know this moment has passed – this duality provides uneasiness to us, a longing for something which we have not even known. The cloth on the palette voices the ability of death over us: of erasing.
Arnold Böcklin’s painting gives us what the artist was facing in his own life. The death of his first fiancée, the loss of his eight children was a sign of the artist contending death at every corner of his life. Yet Death playing the fiddle also gives the viewer the lesson of memento mori: of mediating on one’s own death, loved one’s and the universe. Knowing that all the creation will come to a halt liberates us in a way, it also though reminds us that time is short – that we need to pursue our love with labor as early as we could, as more as we could. This is what Chekhov also reminds us: of slipping of time through our hands. “Without untiring diligence, single-mindedness and a combative spirit, there can’t be any good result,” the artist wrote once, giving his philosophy to stand in midst of the storm, persisting and rising.
