c. 1999 Religion News Service

WATERTOWN, Mass. _ A horrified man clings to life with frayed fingers as the abyss of death yawns below. Santa Claus, descending a chimney, plants his boot on the Christ child. A decapitated man devours himself as the Roman god of war Mars looks on approvingly.

They’re bright, brazen and unapologetically political. They are the artistic visions of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the crusader for physician-assisted suicide currently serving a 10- to 25-year prison sentence in Michigan for second-degree murder.

An exhibit at the Armenian Library and Museum of America in this Boston suburb attempts to highlight lesser-known facets of the controversial doctor’s personality: Kevorkian as artist, Kevorkian as Renaissance man, Kevorkian as an Armenian-American whose world view was shaped in part by the historical traumas of his people.”The campaign for assisted suicide is only 2 percent of this amazing man,”said his legal assistant, Ruth Holmes, pointing to the displays of Kevorkian’s paintings, poems, artwork, musical lyrics and books of whimsical wordplays.

Museum executive director Mary Ellen Margosian said her institution began planning this _ the first exhibition of Kevorkian’s work outside the Detroit area _ two years ago, before the start of the court case that landed him in prison.”One of the purposes of the museum is to showcase the work of noteworthy Armenians,”she said.”He’s someone we can be proud of for his culture and education. We take no position on his medical ethics and practices.” Only supporters of these practices were on hand at the opening of the exhibit, which runs through Oct. 24. The 100 or so who attended the Sept. 18 opening gave a standing ovation when Kevorkian’s sister, Flora Holtzheimer, announced that Kevorkian was donating his art collection permanently to the Armenian museum.

They also applauded a short talk by Melody Youk, the widow of Thomas Youk, who suffered from Lou Gehrig’s disease until Kevorkian assisted in his suicide last year. The incident, televised on”60 Minutes,”led to Kevorkian’s conviction in March 1999 of second-degree murder.

Melody Youk said in a voice breaking with emotion that Kevorkian is fighting”so we can all live in freedom, and that includes the final moment.” The sentiment was echoed by many in the crowd, including the Rev. Vartan Hartunian of neighboring Belmont, Mass., a retired minister in the Armenian Apostolic Church in America.”If I could walk in there and get him out of jail myself, I’d do it,”said Hartunian, calling Kevorkian’s sentence”the most unjust thing that ever happened.” Hartunian and most others at the exhibit also spoke highly of Kevorkian’s artwork, though one viewer remarked that”the guy’s obsessed with death.” Holtzheimer said her brother was portraying the suffering he has seen as a doctor and pathologist.”He is depicting reality. Too many people don’t like to talk about this,”she said, pointing to a series of paintings depicting medical disabilities: a comatose man lying in the gaping mouth of a spectral skull; a feverish man burning in an inferno; an agonized paralysis victim with his brain and spinal column in chains.

Kevorkian’s Armenian heritage is highlighted in the exhibit. According to the museum catalog, Kevorkian’s parents survived the mass killings of Armenians by Turks from 1915 to 1922 _ this century’s defining experience for the Armenian community.

Armenians maintain they were victims of genocide, and a permanent display at the museum puts the death toll at more than 1 million. The Turkish government denies genocide, attributing the deaths to chaotic conditions during and after World War I.

In one painting,”1915 Genocide 1945,”Kevorkian depicts a woman’s severed head held aloft by two arms, one wearing a Nazi insignia and the other the symbol of the Ottoman Turks.

One viewer, Nancy Kalajian, saw a direct connection between the Armenians’ trauma and Kevorkian’s assisted-suicide campaign:”He doesn’t want people to suffer like his ancestors did.” Kevorkian began painting in the 1960s but stopped after all his works were stolen from a storage facility. He resumed in 1993, copying from photos of his originals and creating new works.

(He cannot paint at the medium-security Kinross Correctional Facility in Kincheloe, Mich., where he is being held, though he does have access to the prison library and keeps busy writing, said Holmes.)

With their brazen messages, many of Kevorkian’s works seem more like elaborate political cartoons than refined painting.”It is not art for art’s sake,”Kevorkian writes in the catalog for the exhibit.”I use bright colors to get people’s attention.” With characteristic self-assurance, he says his paintings”challenge hypocrisy, which is in our `civilization’ rampant.” Kevorkian adds written commentaries to his paintings, some of them mystifying. For a painting of Easter bunnies using puppet strings to pull a risen Jesus from a colored egg, he writes:”The annual resurrection by dumb bunnies of a pathetic, despairing, almost scorned image of purported divinity is hardly noticeable amid the garish paraphernalia of irresistible paganism at its vernal orgy.” One of the more glaring yet effective works, sardonically entitled”Nearer My God to Thee,”shows a soul wide-eyed with dread, his fingers worn to the bone while vainly clinging to life.”Despite the solace of hypocritical religiosity and the seductive promise of an afterlife of heavenly bliss, most of us will do anything to thwart the inevitable victory of biological death,”Kevorkian writes. Below the panicked soul are faint, calm faces of the dead who”have made the insensible transition and wonder what all the fuss is about.” IR END SMITH