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Label from 2014.Art for Social Change:
Corpses on Fire comes from British-born artist David Hockney’s book Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm, for which he created thirty-nine illustrations. One of the tales, “The Boy Who Left Home to Learn Fear,” is about a boy who is not afraid of ghosts, black cats, skeletons, etc. In order to learn fear, he spends the night under a gallows where some men have been hung. Not spooked but worrying that the corpses are cold, he takes them down and puts them by the fire. Their clothes begin to burn, so the boy rehangs them and then goes peacefully to sleep. Hockney said he included this story simply because it was strange. It seems to expose superstitions that create fear. His etching politicizes the tale by giving the two hanged men the faces of Hitler and possibly Mussolini, who appear to be burning in the fires of Hell. He thus reminds us of the horrible atrocities that humans can and do commit.Label
This work illustrates a scene from the Brothers Grimm fairy tale about a boy who wandered the world to learn the one thing he could not understand: fear. He spent the night beneath seven men who had been lynched. He lit a fire and lowered their bodies to warm them, igniting their clothing. The two human figures in this work appear to suffer, as seen by the burnt lacerations across their bodies. However, their faces remain pale and expressionless, revealing that they are already dead. Although Hockney is well known for his brightly-colored Pop paintings, this artwork from his etching series Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm presents darker themes inherent in the Gothic stories. While not directly related to politics of the time, the inclusion of fire and darkness in this etching could reflect the Cold War fear that the spread of Communism would “set the world on fire.”
Text by Lee Turner, Washburn student