When Death Becomes Art

Everyone knows the story of Pompeii, and has probably seen the plaster casts of the victims. It is very interesting how these casts, statues forged with human flesh, came to be.

For a very long time, the archeologists excavating Pompeii would systematically clear a horizonal grid of earth, and they kept coming across these strange voids that would collapse inward before they could be fully viewed. Finally, someone had the bright idea of digging vertically, and noticed these voids would stay stable enough to examine. Then they started poring plaster into these voids and were stunned to see they had created statues of the victims in their last agony filled moments.

In many ways, these statues are art unto themselves. They are the evidence of people who could not find help in those moments, and would have otherwise disappeared entirely, if not for these statues. No matter how ancient, their deaths are still relevant and fresh in our minds. Because they died there, they have become immortal. And art.