Tweet
DEATH BECOMES HIM: KEVORKIAN'S ARTWORK ON DISPLAY AT ARMENIAN LIBRARY
By Steve Bagley
Daily News Tribune
Oct 06, 2008 @ 10:49 AM
MA
Jack Kevorkian speaks to a large crowd at the Armenian Library and
Museum of American on Sunday afternoon, October 5, 2008 about an
exhibit of his paintings.
The dying Jack Kevorkian is trying to get his point across.
The man known in the 20th century as Dr. Death marked the opening of
his painting exhibition "The Doctor is Out," at the Armenian Library
and Museum of America in Watertown by speaking largely about his run
for Congress in his home state in Michigan.
Greeted like a rock star yesterday afternoon, the 80-year-old
Kevorkian, who fought and went to jail in his crusade for euthanasia,
brushed the standing ovations, the crowd and the encomia aside.
"There's too much praise for someone doing their duty," Kevorkian
said. "Courage is knowing what's right and doing it."
Diagnosed with a terminal case of Hepatitis C, Kevorkian knows he
has limited time to get his message across.
"It scares me. I'm afraid it curtails my life," he said. "Dying in
prison is a vacuous death. It's meaningless."
Charged with second-degree murder in 1999, he was released from prison
last year.
Kevorkian is waging a campaign to bring his philosophy to the people,
by discussing his paintings and run for office.
But don't call his pieces art.
Art takes training, Kevorkian told an audience of upwards of 300
people, packing the museum's lobby.
"It really isn't art. Its main mission is conveying a philosophic
point. An abstract point," he said. "I call it pictorial philosophy."
By all accounts, that philosophy is indelibly linked to Kevorkian's
years of suicide assistance, but not in the way one might think.
Several of his paintings are grim, depicting strong images. The piece
representing Kevorkian's statement on war features a decapitated man
with Ares, the Greek god of war, over one shoulder and his own head
on a plate in front of him, apple in mouth.
To depict death, Kevorkian painted a man screaming as he falls to a
black pit full of ghosts, his fingers clutching to cliffsides with
such ferocity as to have rent the flesh from their tips.
Simultaneously political and philosophical, Kevorkian's basic
perspective is unified by one idea: A rejection of fear and a powerful
individual freedom.
"We have relinquished our rights because we've been trained to think
that way," Kevorkian said.
American politics is ruled by fear, he said, and American people,
and people of the world, are taught to be afraid of death.
"I think it carries a message," Kevorkian said of his art, "which is
all I wanted."
That message?
"When death is approaching naturally, nature prepares you for it. You
actually welcome it," Kevorkian said. "We'll go to any length to avoid
it. Screaming, terrified, we'll go to any lengths to avoid it. Because
we're taught that. Remember religion says it's our greatest enemy? Can
you imagine that?"
Kevorkian said he had to be taken to prison to get his message out,
that the American judicial system refuses to give people the right
to die as they would see fit, and they are infringing on many other
rights of Americans.
He wants to educate people about the value of the Ninth Amendment of
the Constitution, which says the Constitution cannot infringe upon
people's freedoms.
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not
be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people,"
it reads.
"That's where all the rights are for the people," Kevorkian said. "
That's why it hasn't been used ... And that's one reason why I'm
running: to educate the people more on the Constitutional right we
have, of rights. We had it. We lost it. Can we get it back? Hard
to say."
Kevorkian was trailed by documentary filmmakers, working on
"Kevorkian," about his run for Congress he started after getting out
of prison in 2007.
Producer Steve Jones said of Kevorkian, seemingly in awe, "he's
fearless. Absolutely fearless."
Even if you don't agree with him, Jones said, you admire Kevorkian.
"No matter how controversial he is, he's so logical. It's very hard
to refute him."
Nobody among the crowd tried to refute him. Perhaps the most famous
Armenian American alive today, Kevorkian was greeted at the museum
like a hero.
"He's among friends," Jones said. "He's one of their own."
Kevorkian, son of two immigrant survivors of the Armenian Genocide,
turned to painting as a hobby, and produced 16 canvases over time. He
donated all of them to the museum.
"He's a man of great integrity," said Brigham Moberly, who came from
out of state to see Kevorkian, whom he admired for his political
views. "He knows it's time for the revolution to begin."
Artist Katherine Keogh, who traveled with Moberly, said Kevorkian's
art spoke to her.
"His artwork is amazingly poignant," she said. "He really, really
strikes a chord with his paintings."
By Steve Bagley
Daily News Tribune
Oct 06, 2008 @ 10:49 AM
MA
Jack Kevorkian speaks to a large crowd at the Armenian Library and
Museum of American on Sunday afternoon, October 5, 2008 about an
exhibit of his paintings.
The dying Jack Kevorkian is trying to get his point across.
The man known in the 20th century as Dr. Death marked the opening of
his painting exhibition "The Doctor is Out," at the Armenian Library
and Museum of America in Watertown by speaking largely about his run
for Congress in his home state in Michigan.
Greeted like a rock star yesterday afternoon, the 80-year-old
Kevorkian, who fought and went to jail in his crusade for euthanasia,
brushed the standing ovations, the crowd and the encomia aside.
"There's too much praise for someone doing their duty," Kevorkian
said. "Courage is knowing what's right and doing it."
Diagnosed with a terminal case of Hepatitis C, Kevorkian knows he
has limited time to get his message across.
"It scares me. I'm afraid it curtails my life," he said. "Dying in
prison is a vacuous death. It's meaningless."
Charged with second-degree murder in 1999, he was released from prison
last year.
Kevorkian is waging a campaign to bring his philosophy to the people,
by discussing his paintings and run for office.
But don't call his pieces art.
Art takes training, Kevorkian told an audience of upwards of 300
people, packing the museum's lobby.
"It really isn't art. Its main mission is conveying a philosophic
point. An abstract point," he said. "I call it pictorial philosophy."
By all accounts, that philosophy is indelibly linked to Kevorkian's
years of suicide assistance, but not in the way one might think.
Several of his paintings are grim, depicting strong images. The piece
representing Kevorkian's statement on war features a decapitated man
with Ares, the Greek god of war, over one shoulder and his own head
on a plate in front of him, apple in mouth.
To depict death, Kevorkian painted a man screaming as he falls to a
black pit full of ghosts, his fingers clutching to cliffsides with
such ferocity as to have rent the flesh from their tips.
Simultaneously political and philosophical, Kevorkian's basic
perspective is unified by one idea: A rejection of fear and a powerful
individual freedom.
"We have relinquished our rights because we've been trained to think
that way," Kevorkian said.
American politics is ruled by fear, he said, and American people,
and people of the world, are taught to be afraid of death.
"I think it carries a message," Kevorkian said of his art, "which is
all I wanted."
That message?
"When death is approaching naturally, nature prepares you for it. You
actually welcome it," Kevorkian said. "We'll go to any length to avoid
it. Screaming, terrified, we'll go to any lengths to avoid it. Because
we're taught that. Remember religion says it's our greatest enemy? Can
you imagine that?"
Kevorkian said he had to be taken to prison to get his message out,
that the American judicial system refuses to give people the right
to die as they would see fit, and they are infringing on many other
rights of Americans.
He wants to educate people about the value of the Ninth Amendment of
the Constitution, which says the Constitution cannot infringe upon
people's freedoms.
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not
be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people,"
it reads.
"That's where all the rights are for the people," Kevorkian said. "
That's why it hasn't been used ... And that's one reason why I'm
running: to educate the people more on the Constitutional right we
have, of rights. We had it. We lost it. Can we get it back? Hard
to say."
Kevorkian was trailed by documentary filmmakers, working on
"Kevorkian," about his run for Congress he started after getting out
of prison in 2007.
Producer Steve Jones said of Kevorkian, seemingly in awe, "he's
fearless. Absolutely fearless."
Even if you don't agree with him, Jones said, you admire Kevorkian.
"No matter how controversial he is, he's so logical. It's very hard
to refute him."
Nobody among the crowd tried to refute him. Perhaps the most famous
Armenian American alive today, Kevorkian was greeted at the museum
like a hero.
"He's among friends," Jones said. "He's one of their own."
Kevorkian, son of two immigrant survivors of the Armenian Genocide,
turned to painting as a hobby, and produced 16 canvases over time. He
donated all of them to the museum.
"He's a man of great integrity," said Brigham Moberly, who came from
out of state to see Kevorkian, whom he admired for his political
views. "He knows it's time for the revolution to begin."
Artist Katherine Keogh, who traveled with Moberly, said Kevorkian's
art spoke to her.
"His artwork is amazingly poignant," she said. "He really, really
strikes a chord with his paintings."