Painting eternity: what can art tell us about the afterlife?

Joseph Evans listened in to a discussion about art, death and what might follow it between people of widely different backgrounds and beliefs.

Is it possible to talk calmly about death and what comes after? And how could art contribute to this discussion?

A recent event at a London university sought precisely to grapple with these questions and brought together a communications expert, an art historian, a psychiatrist and a priest (himself a former auctioneer) to do just this.

The purpose of the October event, explained Maggie Doherty, a communications specialist turned university researcher, was to try to be ‘the beginning of a conversation about what the afterlife might look like’.

Maggie, who runs the Centre for the Art of Living and Dying Well at St Mary’s University Twickenham, which had organised the discussion, told me following the event: “Death is a taboo, but the afterlife is a taboo within a taboo. And yet within our culture, literature and music the afterlife is such a present reality.”

Why is this? I asked. Does it show that, try as we might, we cannot excise the reality of life beyond death from our mental horizon? Maggie seems to agree. Indeed, she says, it is actually good to think about death.

“We all have a life bubbling within us, which, I believe, doesn’t stop with death. And being aware of death brings an intensity to living. It’s a chance every day to say thank you, I love you, I’m sorry. We live every day with meaning.”

But isn’t it morbid for a university to have a research centre focused on dying? “Quite the opposite – keeping death in mind can help frame the day to day reality of our lives,” answers Maggie. “The more we can become comfortable with dying, the more we can seize the day now.” The centre’s mission, she says, is to help people of all faiths and none both to live and die well and be supported in grief. 

So, perhaps the question is not why does St Mary’s University have a centre specialising in death, but why do other universities not have one?

She feels that the current bill going through the United Kingdom parliament seeking to legalise assisted suicide is good in that it ‘is helping us reflect on our mortality’ but fundamentally shows a flawed vision of human life and suffering. What is needed, she argues, is not to help people end their lives, but rather improved palliative care.

“There’s no magic money tree, so we have to manage our resources. We need a more creative and holistic vision to support people in the dying process, where people are more accompanied, not just through care in the hospice, which is usually incredible, but also through care in the community.

“We need to invest in community nurses, developing networks of volunteers, promoting compassionate neighbours, and of course supporting family members as they strive to support their dying loved ones.” And, she adds, invest in and research more into management of pain.

In this way, she thinks, the dying process becomes a growth process – in love, in creative and sensitive compassion – for all involved.

“Does pain have a value?” I asked her. “As a Catholic, I believe that suffering has a purpose,” she answers. “But I am very aware, having accompanied suffering people, how much pain can cause intense distress.”

In the St Mary’s discussion, Baroness Sheila Hollins, Emeritus Professor at St George’s University of London, shared insights from her professional and personal life into how art can become a tool to help people process their suffering.

“For a lot of my career, I’ve worked as a psychiatrist with people with learning disabilities, trying to help them to understand their lives, what matters in their lives. This is a group of people who are often not told about things, certainly aren’t told about death and dying.

“35 years ago I started making a series of word free picture books, which tell stories, but they tell stories about the real things that happen in life. So trying to use art, I’ve worked with about eight artists over that time to create stories, which to begin with were a therapeutic tool and now are read in book clubs all over the country.”

Another discussion participant was Lynne Hanley, an art historian and founder of Beyond the Palette, an initiative which seeks to make art history entertaining. Lynne herself is not a believer, adding another dimension to the discussion.

She talked about a 4th century BC funerary vase as an example of how one ancient culture sought to grapple with the mystery of death. It was probably placed in the tomb with the deceased, a young man, to remind the gods he was a follower of Dionysius.

Members of this mystery cult, Lynne explained, hoped to “die safe in the knowledge that Persephone would look after you in the underworld. The funerary vessel depicts what you were letting yourself in for as a follower of Dionysus which was, essentially, a continuation of worldly pleasures. Not all ancient Greeks were impressed. Plato quipped, possibly with an eyebrow raised, that ‘the highest reward for virtue was eternal drunkenness’.”

Plato raises a good question: is happiness in the afterlife merely the continuation of pleasure in this one?

Surely it must be more. I ask Lynne. She tells me she does not have a clear belief in the afterlife as such. In her own mind and painting, she depicts it as colour. “I can’t articulate a ‘place’, as it were, in my mind’s eye. I think of any kind of afterlife more as energy.”

Though as a firm believer in the afterlife myself, I do not share this position – for me, heaven and hell point us towards the responsibility we have for our actions on earth: these echo in eternity – I appreciate Lynne’s sincerity and her willingness to engage with a group of Christians in discussing this topic.

Later Lynne spoke to me about the Ghent altarpiece as a Christian attempt to explore the mystery of life after death. What most characterises this work, she said, is that it is ‘too big, too much’. And she continued: “That is the point of the Ghent altarpiece: we can’t comprehend it. As one single art work, it’s an incredible interpretation of the afterlife. It’s telling us that with our naked human brain we can’t absorb it all.”

Finally, Father Patrick van der Vorst, a former auctioneer at Sotheby’s turned Catholic priest, presented a painting by the 17th century Dutch artist Peter Klaas, who specialised in still life painting, often representing the vanity of things. Fr Patrick, who worked as Director of Sotheby’s Europe and founded the Christian Art website, described the painting as “a kind of a big warning sign: when you look at its figures, they say, well, enjoy today, but always think what they will be after this life.”

The event was chaired by the LBC radio presenter Shelagh Fogarty and the panellists were joined by the Vatican bishop Paul Tighe, who is Secretary of the Holy See’s Dicastery for Culture and Education. He concluded by saying: “We need to deepen our culture, not to be afraid to think about death, to see death as ultimately opening up this question to us about the meaning and purpose of life.”

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