AMERICAN TOTENTANZ

It was almost 500 years ago in 1526 when in Southern Germany Hans Holbein d. J. published the popular theme of “Totentanz” (Dance of Death) as a series of small woodcuts in book form. Ever since then, there has been a tradition in the visual arts, as well as in music, poetry, and performing arts to revisit it in a contemporary context every so often. The “Danse Macabre” theme first appeared in Germany and France in the 14th-century. Totentanz depicts persons from all walks of society, high and low, while death is teasing and beckoning them to follow in the dance. It is a reminder that in the end, we are all mortal, and that death is the great equalizer. Strangely enough, there appears to be no such tradition in American art and for many people in this country the subject is not familiar.

It was time to do a contemporary version of the theme, American Totentanz. Two prints go together, each one carrying a line of a simple rhyming couplet, followed by the next pair. The suite does not follow the sequence or quantity of Holbein’s Totentanz exactly. Obviously, some important characters then are no longer so, and new ones have replaced them in our lives today. Some have kept their relevance through the centuries. Death was frequently depicted appearing with a musical instrument and the prints follow that tradition – in this version I use American instruments whenever possible.