All Things Must Die
Lithograph (Edition of 10 + 1 AP)
37 x 54 cm
2013
Private collections
Lithograph (Edition of 10 + 1 AP)
37 x 54 cm
2013
Private collections
The stream will cease to flow;
The wind will cease to blow;
The clouds will cease to fleet;
The heart will cease to beat;
For all things must die.
All things must die.
The wind will cease to blow;
The clouds will cease to fleet;
The heart will cease to beat;
For all things must die.
All things must die.
— Alfred Lord Tennyson, "All Things Must Die" (excerpt)
Collins' macabre portrait of a rotting corpse, raising up its own heart to behold is one of his most celebrated pieces. The lithograph is one of his early explorations of the memento mori genre. The concept of mortality has fascinated artists like Collins since the dawn of humanity. The memento mori, a representation of a latin maxim meaning, "remember (that you must) die", has its roots in medieval, funerary art.
Collins' stark take on this enduring genre was inspired by the above poem and by Ligier Richier's "Le Transi de René de Chalon", a life-sized transi of the Prince of Orange from the mid sixteenth century. Collins discovered the Richier's late gothic, funerary, cadaver monument during a sojourn to Paris, France. The grotesque, gnarled sinew seemed to wrestle with the inevitability of its decay.
The skeleton's resistance echoed in its medium: a monument to the deceased designed to defy death's finality. For Collins, all art is an attempt to transcend the artist's own mortality.
Collins created this lithograph as a limited edition of ten plus one artist's proof. It is an early example of Collins' interest in printmaking. His undergraduate studies included lithography and serigraphy (screen printing).
