Martin Guider And The Suicide Artists Of The Late 21st Century

In the second half of the 21st century a new art movement emmerged which combined conceptual art and the suicide bomber of islamic terrorism.
It was called Suicide Art.
Like the islamic suicide bomber, the suicide artist saw themselves as a kind of martyr but not a martyr for a religion but for art and, like the suicide bomber who believed that, in death, they would transcend the material world and enter some other world, the suicide artist believed that in death they would transcend the world of the mundane and enter the world of art, of symbols and pure form; that they, as one artist put it, would become angels of art and, in seeing their artistic transformation, others would become transformed by it or 'blown away'.
Perhaps the most influential of the suicide artists, the person whose name has become most synonymous with the movement was Martin Guider.
Guider had been to Syria and while there had witnessed the self-flagellation of the young muslim men in commemoration of the prophet muhammads grandson Hussein ibn Ali.
Seeing the marks left on the bodies of the young men by the flagellation, Guider become convinced that the flagellation itself was a kind of creative act.
"The act of marking ones body by self-flagellation", he said, "Is not unlike the artists marking of the canvas with a paint brush or the chipping away of marble with a chisel and, just as with those creative processes, the marks made have meaning; the meaning of suffering and devotion to some higher principle or order".
Faced with what Guider saw as an empty, spiritualless and artificial age where people had lost faith in all the old symbols of religion; the state and commerce, Guider sought to create a new art that people could believe in; an art of true integrity and the only way he could see to accomplish this was by putting his own pain and suffering into his art.
He began by creating a series of canvases stained with the blood of his own wounds caused by self-flagellation, entitled 'Scourge'.
"I am truly suffering for my art", he said, "In a way that artists, becoming fat lazy whores of the wealthy elite, have not done since the days when artists like Van Gogh lived lives of poverty and starvation putting their art above everything, even their own health and sanity".
In this act of artistic suffering, Guider saw himself as performing much the same role as the Christian Saints and Martyrs venerated by the Roman Catholic church.
 "What I hope to create is not so much an artwork but a holy relic", he said, "To inspire, enoble and give faith to people in an age when they feel they have nothing left to believe in".
After exhibiting his cavasses at a derelict warehouse that he said represented, "Both the decay of human flesh and the moral decay and emptiness of modern society", Guider met many young artists who, inspired by seeing his work, said they wanted to take a similar direction in their art, like the African American artist Roland Wilson who saw a connection between the religious tradition of martyrdom and the suffering of civil rights activists in 1960's America.
"Seeing the suffering of Martin Luther King and others who marched for civil rights had a power to uplift people, turning them into a human symbol of emmancipation", said Wilson, "The same power to move people and help them to transcend their world that art used to possess but which it no longer possesses".
And before long, said Guider, "What had started with a vision on the road to Damascus had turned into a movement; a movement of young artists for whom a work of art was no good unless they had put their own blood, their own pain, their whole life into it; a movement that sought to lift Art, that had sold out like Judas, become cheapened by money, into something genuinely to be revered".
Guider went onto produce a large body of work, all based upon symbols and stories drawn from religious art, such as his crucifixion photographs; photographs taken of him after his assistants had scourged him and nailed him to a cross.
"Many have painted the crucifixion", said Guider upon taking the photographs in his bloody hands, "But I have lived it for the sake of Art".
His next, last and arguably most famous project however; the one that gave the suicide artists their name and, some have said, a negative reputation in the media as artists of nihilism rather than faith, was one inspired by the suicide bombers of jihadi terrorism.
Entitled, "Creation", it was a video of Guider strapped with explosives, blowing himself up; not like an islamic terorist, with the intention of killing but, as Guider declared just before pushing the button on the detonator, "To inspire artists to go further and give their lives to the noble cause of Art".
A service was held the next day by Guiders friends and fellow artists, in honour of Guider and his work, recorded itself as a piece of video art by the young director Herschel Greenfield.
In it Greenfield says, "Guider showed us a way to save the soul of art that had been sold; to wrest it from the hands of commerce through our sacrifice, our pain and our commitment to our art. For that we will always remember him".