Above: Dead Bird by Edward Fielding – https://edward-fielding.pixels.com/featured/dead-edward-fielding.html
My parents live in a continuous care retirement community down in Florida. Across the hall from their apartment lived a couple of artists who lived among a massive, haphazard collection of their canvases.
Unable to part with and unable to sell as fast as they created, the apartment had become a rats warren of passageways between the large canvases propped against the walls. They barely had room for furniture and the weekly housekeeper had given up months ago trying to maneuver a vacuum around the remaining floor space.
Eventually, the wife ended up moving into assisted living and the husband was left on his own. Alarmed that he didn’t show up one morning to have breakfast with his wife, management entered the apartment and found him trapped beneath a pile of paintings. Luckily for him, he wasn’t one of the people killed by “Killer Art” – others haven’t been so lucky.
Death By Large Steel Sculpture
I’ve been through the Toronto airport and walked through Richard Serra’s massive large steel plate site-specific sculptures called “No. 3” and never considered that it might kill might. Well, it should be called #One for the number of people it killed. While installing one of the 5000+ pound plates, it fell on one of the installers and killed him.
Death toll by abstract art: 1
Death by Giant Umbrella Art
Remember Christo’s site installation of the giant umbrella in Japan and California? Unfortunately for one 150 pound woman was no match for one of the 500-pound umbrellas when gale-force winds toppled it on her head.
Disheartened that the art might be a killer, Christo immediately called for the exhibit to be taken down. Unfortunately, that was not the end of the deaths surrounding the art installation as when the exhibit was being dismantled, a crane operator was electrocuted and died.
Death toll by umbrella art: 2
Photographers Killed by Their Art
The list of photographers killed in the process of making their art would be long indeed. From war photographers caught in the crossfire to amateurs falling off cliffs in pursuit of selfies. Photographers often put themselves in precarious positions or are not paying attention to their surroundings and get trampled by a buffalo, eaten by a bear or get run over by a train.
One such photographer was Connor Cummings who specialized in rooftop photographs taken from dizzying heights. He died falling off a 52 story building in Manhattan.
Another was ocean photographer Jacob Cockle. He developed an interest in photographing whirlpools and drowned when he got sucked into a whirlpool’s vortex.
Even painters taking photographs for their paintings can be killed by photography (and a lack of YMCA swim lessons). German painter Ekkehard Drefke died while taking reference photos in Venice. He tripped, fell in a canal and drowned. The series was to be called “Venice, Lost Paradise”. He end up being the one lost in Venice.
Death with camera in hand: Too numerous to count
Death by Jesus
Artist Marco Gusimi built a 100-foot crucifix to honor Pope John Paul II It fell over and crushed the 21-year-old artist to death.
Death by Jesus: 1
Performance Art is Dangerous
Performance artists assume all sorts of risks including purposely getting shot and nearly dying as in the case of one of Chris Burden’s early pieces all the way to actually dying as in the cases of these performance artists.
- John Jairo Villamil’s performance piece about Bogotá, Colombia and his perception of it – death by garbage bag around his head.
- Bas Jan Ader performance ended with the artist lost at sea in a tiny sailboat.
- Pippa Bacca hitchhiking from Italy to the Balkans in a wedding dress, raped and murdered.
Death toll performance art: Too numerous to count.
Death By Mustang
Back to killer sculptures created for airports… Airports seem to commission large deadly sculptures – “Blue Mustang” was a 32-foot sculpture made for the Denver International Airport by artist Luis Jiménez but before it could be installed, the 9,000+ sculpture fell on the artist and killed him.
Death toll by large wild horse: 1
Death by art materials
Artists throughout the ages have exposed themselves to some rather toxic elements from lead paint, to graffiti artists breathing in nasty chemicals in spray paint. Nineteenth-century stained glass artist Giuseppe Francisci, may have died from exposure to harmful gases from working in his studio with the glass.
Many paints include heavy metals such as antimony, barium, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, copper, lead, manganese, strontium and zinc.
Death toll – exposure to harmful chemicals – Too numerous to count