Deaths of Artists

Moske, an archivist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, delves in his textured debut into two forgotten scrapbooks of artists’ obituaries that he found at the museum in 2018. Spanning from 1906 to 1929 and conveyed in the “brutal poetry” of Progressive Era journalistic prose, the obituaries occasionally taunt their subjects (“Famous Artist Dies Penniless and All Alone” is the title of an entry describing the 1908 demise of painter Imogene Robinson Morrell) and reinforce stereotypes about an artist’s life being tantamount to her work (the 1911 obituary for Elizabeth St. John Mathews posits that the sculptor’s death was “hastened by grief and disappointment due to the rejection of a plaster bust of President Taft she had made.”). Other selections note the all too real role art played in some subjects’ deaths, such as 70-year-old photographer August Obermüller, who met his end in a vat of developer fluid in 1910. Moske also provides a detailed biography of the scrapbook’s compiler—enigmatic felon turned assistant curator Arthur Hervilly, who dedicated himself to rescuing these artists from becoming “the prey of death and oblivion,” and whose project was continued by colleagues after his 1919 death. Taken as a whole, these obituaries make a surprisingly enjoyable case for celebrating the artistic devotion, creative sacrifices, and strange legacies of artists whose memories have been lost to time, as well as for reconsidering how artists are viewed in the public eye. Art history buffs will relish Moske’s quirky approach to the subject. Photos. (Apr.)