The expression “YOLO” might now be simply passé sufficient to require explanation. It stands, as solely a few of us would attempt to deny remembering, for “You solely reside as soon as,” a sentiment that displays an eternal reality. Some bodies of religious perception don’t strictly agree with it, in fact, however that was additionally true 24 centuries in the past, when an unknown artist created the so-called “YOLO mosaic” that was unearthed in Southern Turkey within the twenty-tens. That artireality, whose depiction of a wine-drinking skeleton living it up even in loss of life has delighted thousands upon thousands of viewers on the interinternet, is on the center of the brand new Hochelaga video above.
To the aspect of that merry set of bones is the Greek textual content “ΕΥΦΡΟΣΥΝΟΣ,” typically translated as “Be cheerful and reside your life.” As Hochelaga creator Tommie Trelawny factors out, that’s a somewhat unfastened interpretation, for the reason that phrase “toughly means ‘pleasureful-minded,’ or simply ‘cheerful.’ ” A extra important element not typically taken into consideration is the mosaic’s contextual content.
It was discovered during the excavation of a third-century Greco-Roman villa, the place it constituted one finish of a dining-room journeytych. Within the middle was a scene, a trope in comedies of the time, of a toga-clad younger “gatecrasher” running in hopes of a free dinner. On the other finish is a mostly destroyed picture of a kind of figure generally known as “the African fisherman.”
Taken together, this domestic artworkwork may replicate the Epitreatmentan training that “life needs to be about pursuing happiness and luxuriate ining the simple pleasures whilst you nonetheless can.” But when the “cheerful skeleton,” as Trelawny calls it, attracts attention from the remainder of the journeytych, that speaks to its symbolic power throughout the ages. Common not solely in historic Rome, the symbolic figure additionally makes vivid seemances in medieval artwork (especially during the time of the Black Demise), Renaissance portraiture, the Día de Muertos-ready drawings of José Guadalupe Posada, and even Disney automobiletoons like The Skeleton Dance. So long as loss of life stays undefeated, every period wants its personal memento mori, and the cheerful skeleton, in all its paradoxical attraction, will little doubt preserve fliping as much as the job — someoccasions with a drink in hand.
Related Content:
Nineteenth-Century Skeleton Alarm Clock Reminded People Daily of the Quickness of Life: An Introduction to the Memento Mori
An Animated Introduction to Epicurus and His Reply to the Historic Question: What Makes Us Happy?
Celebrate The Day of the Useless with The Classic Skeleton Artwork of José Guadalupe Posada
The Skeleton Dance, Voted the 18th Greatest Automobiletoon of All Time, Is Now within the Public Area (1929)
Based mostly in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His initiatives embody the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the ebook The Statemuch less Metropolis: a Stroll by means of Twenty first-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social internetwork formerly generally known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.
