P03-313 - Art And Suicide

Abstract

Introduction

Suicide is a major public health problem, one of the leading causes of death and one of the first causes of years of life lost. It is a voluntary act that can be carried out by men and women, children and adults, rich and poor, people of every race and religion.

Objectives

The aim of this text is to outline the most popular suicides and briefly discuss the representation of suicide in art. Painters such as Vincent Van Gogh, Edvard Munch, Jackson Pollock, musicians as Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, the actresses Lupe Vélez, Carole Landis, Pier Angeli, Capucine, Marylin Monroe, Lucy Gordon and the actors Heath Ledger and Freddie Prinze decided the end of their lives in different ways and at different stages.

In the literary field, we find the world renowned suicides of Socrates, Seneca and Caton. Other famous and more recent suicidal writers are Ernest Hemingway, Dylan Thomas, Virginia Woolf, Yukio Mishima, Alfonsina Stormi and Cesare Pavese among others.

Conclusion

Suicide has been represented in several plays and operas, not only people of flesh and blood kill themselves but also fictional characters. the love-death of Liu in Turandot and Tosca in the opera of the same name Are noteworthy, both were composed by Giacomo Puccini. In Hamlet, tragedy written by William Shakespeare, is Ophelia who dies drowning at the sea.