Death: A Graveside Companion. 1000 Macabre Illustrations

Death is an inevitable fact of life. Throughout the centuries and around the world, humanity has sought to come to terms with this sobering thought through art and ritual. A volume of unprecedented breadth and sinister beauty, Death: A Graveside Companion examines a staggering range of cultural attitudes to death within seven themed chapters. Nineteen experts contribute thought-provoking essays on specific aspects of humanity’s cultural legacy of ideas concerning death. The essays are followed by gallery pages presenting a breathtaking variety of death-related imagery drawn from every major culture, from Neolithic China and Bronze Age Mexico to medieval Germany, 18th-century Nepal and 20th-century France. From catacombs, crypts and bone-pits to reliquaries, embalmings and mummies, and from memento mori, vanitas and danse macabre to vernacular tokens, found photography and curios from bygone rituals, this astonishing compendium incorporates high art, kitsch and all points in between.