Death Mask（1970），Mixed technique on paper，60 × 46 cm、61 × 51 cm、59 × 42 cm，The Parkview Museum Collection

Contemplating on the subject of death, Death Mask represents what Austrian painter Arnulf Rainer considers as ‘the extinction of expression’. He is best known for his ‘overpaintings’, where Rainer paints over photographs and existing artworks of well-known figures with large, gestural strokes using pigments, until they are an old-yet-new amorphous mass. This symbolic act simulates the process of death, dissolving a previous masterpiece into utter oblivion.  

For Rainer, the death mask is also “a record of the last stage of human expressiveness… the final exertion of life still striving for expression… a cast of a self-portrayal at the moment of entry into facelessness… In all my overpainted photographs, I induced in myself a search for identification, self-transformation, dialogue, empathy; at the very least curiosity or an attempt to communicate.” 

By intensifying emotional and psychological aspects of his work with each ‘painting-over’, Rainer discards what death masks attempt to hold on to: a likeness to life, just as death’s progress reveals our future decay of our own faces.