The Vanitas Record

A Vanitas painting is a form of a still-life consisting of a collection of objects that symbolise the brevity of human life and the transience of earthly pleasures and achievements. Vanitas paintings were most popular in the Netherlands in the 16th and 17th centuries. The Belgian artist Koen Theys has built an impressive Vanitas still-life (‘the biggest in the world’), a wooden construction (20m by 16m) crammed with skulls, candles and books, along with thousands of live snails. The installation is completed by a video, which is not a recording of the installation, but a work in itself. In the first part, the camera slowly strays past the contraption, as echoes of press commentaries and interviews about the occasion are heard. In the second part, this touch of self-irony takes on more grandiose proportions as Theys also layers images of the press themselves. One of the ambitions of The Vanitas Record is to point a finger at the erosion occurring within the press when it comes to reflecting upon visual arts and culture. Critical stances are pushed far aside by the media’s ‘hype mechanism’ – something Theys himself provokes with this spectacular ‘record’ attempt. Paradoxically enough, this is at odds with the original reading that a Vanitas scene urges on to its spectators: a call for humility, a warning about vanity and an understanding of how life passes by in an instant.