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Suicide and Artists

Two Successful Artists Kill Themselves

Jul 28, 2007 Mary Rayme

Two seemingly successful American artists commit suicide in New York City in July 2007. A look at the lives of Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake.

There are few clues as to what went exactly wrong with the beautiful, art power duo of Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake. Both seemed to be on an upward progression to even more success. Jeremy had accepted a job with Rockstar Games, the publishers of popular computer games such as Max Payne and Grand Theft Auto.

Theresa Duncan is perhaps best known for creating the computer games for girls with names like Chop Suey, Smarty and Zero Zero. She also kept a blog called The Wit of the Stairs, a funny scrapbook of Duncan's personal and professional life. Reading her blog gives no clue as to her fateful decision on July 10, 2007 to take her own life. A week later Jeremy Blake was witnessed walking naked into the ocean at Rockaway Beach. He left behind his clothes and a note that mentioned the loss of Duncan as his motive for suicide.

At age 35, Jeremy Blake's art is included in museums such as Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Jeremy Blake had also worked with rock star Beck on album cover art for Sea Change in 2002. Beck is a Scientologist and this is perhaps where the paranoia begins.

According to an article in the L.A. Times, Duncan and Blake had become paranoid in the last few months of their lives, convinced that Scientologists were following them and out to get them. Duncan also blogged about Project Monarch the C.I.A. code name for their research into mind control, also known as psychological warfare.

There is more than just a whiff of the grand conspiracy theories that seem to have taken hold of both Duncan and Blake and that finally led to their demise. What is unusual with this scenario is that conspiracy theories are usually a currency reserved for the down and out, two things that this art star couple were not.

The final blog entry on Duncan's page is this, her suicide note left for the world to see:

"A need to tell and hear stories is essential to the species Homo sapiens--second in necessity apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter. Millions survive without love or home, almost none in silence; the opposite of silence leads quickly to narrative, and the sound of story is the dominant sound of our lives, from the small accounts of our day's events to the vast incommunicable constructs of psychopaths."

It is sad that these two visual storytellers have left our world and left us more confused.

The copyright of the article Suicide and Artists in Art & Society is owned by Mary Rayme. Permission to republish Suicide and Artists in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.