The examination of the death theme in contemporary art in the aspects of ethics and aesthetics

In the parallel of Memento Mori culture's reflection on the art of painting, and the effects of wars over the artists, have influences on the Vanitas pictures themed death. The death representations in his paintings during that period influenced his art of photograph; the death images were reflected on his photos, too. The artists' critical points of view towards war, the usage of images reminders of death, the representation of what not to be seen in the context of modern aesthetics and with the anti-aesthetics expressionism, while bringing up new arguments in art , caused a shocking effect on the visitors on contrary to joy. The critical point of view towards existence via artistic images by the artist, was assessed by the visitors and the critics in terms of ethic and aesthetic expressions. With the emphasis on the image of death and in order to draw attention to visualized meaning, implicating violent images to the artistic expressions raised opposion from the visitors and the critics. In order to understand its basis,when we look throught the art's historical development in terms of aesthetics and ethics, it is clearly seen that the beauty had been idealized during the classical period, after the reform movements, the images of the truth aim to have vital ethics and the modern aesthetics processes we encountered while critisizing the classical art beginning the 19th century, it is mostly seen that, the ugliness' scenery have been avoided. That is,the violence content images fallin out of the images which seem lovely to the viewers who look throught the modern aesthetics habits, and beautified scenes are illicit, hence they shock the viewers. This situation generates modernism's starting point of the artistic tendencies and post modern doctrine that critisize the basic concepts including aesthetics. Under these circumstances, modern art work embracing a politic and provocative attitude,puts forward a new ethics and aesthetics and harmony/disharmony demolishing the modern aesthetics. In the artistic movements after 1960s, many artists working on bodies as material, represents the death theme with performances close to death or with the digital mediums using bodies as materials. In that way,they free this theme out of being an image, they present it as a theathrical experience zone. In this process when the life turns into art, as the death theme changes its shape into a performance in life, these performances bring up personal ethic problems in terms of the viewers. The death theme coming into shape in the frames of anti- aesthetics which is an arm of the aesthetics in the concept of representation in modern art, has been represented as an ethical matter in the art forms after 1960s.