Decay

About

Decay is time made visible: rot, rust, peeling paint and bodies returning to dust. Artists use it as sermon, pleasure and material. Japanese Buddhist paintings of the kusōzu type follow a woman's corpse through nine stages of decomposition as a lesson in impermanence, while Dutch still-life painters of the 17th century slipped wormholes, bruised fruit and wilting petals into lavish arrangements.

Romantic painters found beauty in ruin, as in Caspar David Friedrich's Abbey in the Oakwood (1809–10), a shattered Gothic wall among bare trees. From the 1960s, artists let decay do the work. Dieter Roth made pieces from chocolate, cheese and sausage that mould and crumble, Robert Smithson piled earth onto a shed until its central beam cracked in Partially Buried Woodshed (1970), and Anya Gallaccio has let walls of fresh flowers wither in place. Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre photograph abandoned Detroit theatres and offices.