The skull beside you (Appointment in Samarra)

While contemporary art’s most famous skull is encrusted in diamonds, skulls continue to be a potent symbol of the masses made by the masses for Day of the Dead, the ceremony that invites the demised back to earth to party in the graveyard.

Between the rarefied and the populous exist Marcus Martenson’s. They tap into a deep thread of darkness, a dread that any moment, your time on earth could be up. (Via Garde Rail)

Marstenson’s paintings evoke W. Somerset Maugham’s version of a folk tale that serves as epigraph for John O’Hara’s Appointment in Samarra, his first novel, published in 1934:

 A merchant in Baghdad sends his servant to the marketplace for provisions. Shortly, the servant comes home white and trembling and tells him that in the marketplace he was jostled by a woman, whom he recognized as Death, and she made a threatening gesture. Borrowing the merchant’s horse, he flees at top speed to Samarra, a distance of about 75 miles (125 km), where he believes Death will not find him. The merchant then goes to the marketplace and finds Death, and asks why she made the threatening gesture. She replies, “That was not a threatening gesture, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”