The Gentleman's Suicide Club

Anonymous asked: what is this?

Hello,

It is simple a blog dedicated to looking at suicide. Why, how, when, where people do it.

It offers no judgment. Seeks not to offend.

That’s about as much as can be said at this stage.

Thanks for visiting.

Mark Rothko (September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970)

EXIT STRATEGY: Wrist Cut

Rothko was a Russian-born American painter. He is classified as an abstract expressionist, although he himself rejected this label, and even resisted classification as an “abstract painter”.

In the spring of 1968, Rothko was diagnosed with a mild aortic aneurysm (defect in the arterial wall, that gradually leads to outpouching of the vessel and at times frank rupture). Ignoring doctor’s orders, Rothko continued to drink and smoke heavily, avoided exercise, and maintained an unhealthy diet. However, he did follow the medical advice given not to paint pictures larger than a yard in height, and turned his attention to smaller, less physically strenuous formats, including acrylics on paper. Meanwhile, Rothko’s marriage had become increasingly troubled, and his poor health and impotence resulting from the aneurysm compounded his feeling of estrangement in the relationship. Rothko and his wife Mell separated on New Year’s Day 1969, and he moved into his studio.

On February 25, 1970, Oliver Steindecker, Rothko’s assistant, found the artist in his kitchen, lying dead on the floor in front of the sink, covered in blood. He had sliced his arms with a razor found lying at his side. During autopsy it was discovered he had also overdosed on anti-depressants. He was 66 years old. The Seagram Murals on display at the Tate Gallery arrived in London on the very day of his suicide 

ALAN TURING (23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954)

Exit Strategy: Poisoned Apple

Alan Turing was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalization of the concepts of “algorithm” and “computation” with the Turing machine, which played a significant role in the creation of the modern computer.

Turing’s homosexuality resulted in a criminal prosecution in 1952, when homosexual acts were still illegal in the United Kingdom. He accepted treatment with female hormones (chemical castration) as an alternative to prison.

On 8 June 1954, several weeks before his 42nd birthday, Turing’s cleaner found him dead; he had died the previous day. A post-mortem examination established that the cause of death was cyanide poisoning. When his body was discovered an apple lay half-eaten beside his bed, and although the apple was not tested for cyanide,  it is speculated that this was the means by which a fatal dose was delivered. An inquest determined that he had committed suicide, and he was cremated at Woking Crematorium on 12 June 1954.Turing’s mother argued strenuously that the ingestion was accidental, caused by her son’s careless storage of laboratory chemicals. Biographer Andrew Hodges suggests that Turing may have killed himself in an ambiguous way quite deliberately, to give his mother some plausible deniability.Others suggest that Turing was re-enacting a scene from the 1937 film Snow White, his favourite fairy tale, pointing out that he took “an especially keen pleasure in the scene where the Wicked Witch immerses her apple in the poisonous brew.”

The half eaten apple in conjunction with the ground breaking work in computer science is what some believe is reflected in the Apple Corp logo.

YASUNARI KAWABATA: 14 June 1899 – 16 April 1972)

EXIT STRATEGY: Gassing

Author of the sublime ‘House of Sleeping Beauties’ Kawabata apparently committed suicide in 1972 by gassing himself. Many theories have been advanced as to his reasons for his suicide, among them poor health (the discovery that he had Parkinson’s disease), a possible illicit love affair, or the shock caused by the suicide of his friend Yukio Mishima in 1970. Unlike Mishima, Kawabata left no note, and since (again unlike Mishima) he had not discussed significantly in his writings the topic of taking his own life, his motives remain unclear. However, his Japanese biographer, Takeo Okuno, has related how he had nightmares about Mishima for two or three hundred nights in a row, and was incessantly haunted by the specter of Mishima. In a persistently depressed state of mind, he would tell friends during his last years that sometimes, when on a journey, he hoped his plane would crash.

Kawabata Yasunari was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, the first Japanese to receive such a distinction. His Nobel Lecture was entitled “Japan, The Beautiful and Myself” (美しい日本の私). Zen Buddhism was a key focal point of the speech, of which much was devoted to practitioners and the general practices of Zen Buddhism, and how it differed from other types of Buddhism. He presented a severe picture of Zen Buddhism, where disciples can only enter salvation through their efforts and where they are isolated for several hours at a time, but how from this isolation there can come beauty. He noted that Zen practices focus on simplicity, and it is this simplicity that proves to be the beauty. “The heart of the ink painting is in space, abbreviation, what is left undrawn” From painting he moved on to talk about Ikebana and Bonsai, also as art forms that emphasize the simplicity and the beauty that arises from the simplicity. “The Japanese garden too, of course symbolizes the vastness of nature”

In addition to the numerous mentions of Zen and nature, one point that was briefly mentioned in Kawabata’s lecture was that of suicide. Kawabata reminisced of other famous Japanese authors who committed suicide, in particular Ryunosuke Akutagawa. He contradicted the custom of suicide as being a form of enlightenment, mentioning the priest Ikkyu, who also thought of suicide twice. He quoted Ikkyu, “Among those who give thoughts to things, is there one who does not think of suicide?” There was much speculation about this quote being a clue to Kawabata’s suicide in 1972, two years after Mishima had also committed suicide.

We warmly welcome you to the Gentleman’s Suicide Club. An establishment designed for those with a respect or sympathy for those, in one way or another, opted out.

You have a choice. Live or die. Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. To be or not to be.