SUICIDAL ABYSS

Russian-American painter Mark Rothko, 5 years before he committed suicide on Feb. 25, 1970.



From DemNow: "An Army medic who became famous for being photographed in 2003 carrying an Iraqi child to safety has died at the age of thirty-one after overdosing on a computer cleaner aerosol. Army Specialist Dwyer had been struggling with post-traumatic stress syndrome. After he returned from Iraq, his marriage fell apart, and he spiraled into substance abuse and depression. In 2005, he shot up his El Paso, Texas apartment and held police at bay for three hours with a 9-mm handgun, believing Iraqis were trying to get in. The March 2003 photo of Dwyer was published around the world and has been described as one of the most iconic images of the US invasion. His motherhas said, “He loved the picture, don’t get me wrong, but he just couldn’t get over the war. He wasn’t Joseph anymore. Joseph never came home.”

And from TheAge.com.au

"[he]brought the battlefield home with him, often grappling violently with delusions he was being hunted by Iraqi killers.
His internal terror became so bad that, in 2005, he shot up his El Paso, Texas, apartment and held police at bay for three hours with a nine-millimetre handgun, believing Iraqis were trying to get in.
On June 28, police in Pinehurst, North Carolina, said the 31-year-old collapsed and died at his home after abusing an aerosol, which he had taken to sniffing to drug himself to sleep. Mr Dwyer had moved to North Carolina after living in Texas.
Mr Dwyer, who joined the army two days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, was assigned to a unit of the 3rd Infantry Division that one officer called "the tip of the tip of the spear" in the first days of the US invasion.
Since then he had battled depression, sleeplessness and other anxieties that military doctors eventually attributed to post-traumatic stress disorder.
The war that made him a hero at 26 haunted him to the last moments of his life."

RUSSIAN RAPUNZEL COMMITS SUICIDE

"Twenty-year-old model Ruslana Korshunova jumped to her death from her ninth-floor Water Street apartment building at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday; the medical examiner's office has officially ruled the case a suicide. It was just days before Korshunova's birthday. A Con Ed worker standing nearby heard the fall and raced over. The New York Post reports:
Cops said there were no signs of a struggle in the one-bedroom apartment, where she lived for only two months. And the balcony from which she plunged had construction netting around it that appeared to have been deliberately ripped.
Korshunova, a green-eyed beauty, known as "The Russian Rapunzel" for her long, flowing chestnut locks, worked with the elite modeling agency IMG, which boasts top models Heidi Klum and Kate Moss."

"At around 2:30 in the afternoon on Saturday, a 20-year-old model named Ruslana Korshunova jumped from the balcony of her ninth floor apartment in New York's financial district. A Kazakhstani of Russian heritage, she had modeled since the age of 15; top London agency Models 1's Debbie Jones tells a great story about her discovery and tracking-down of Korshunova after seeing her pictured at German club in an in-flight magazine. (I suspect Jones is spinning a typical fashion creation myth: Korshunova told UK Elle magazine that when she was 15, she submitted her own photos to the Moscow agency iCasting, a version somewhat shorter on romance and international intrigue but vastly more believable.)

Korshunova followed the usual career path of an Eastern European model — working abroad from a young age to send money back to her parents, who remained in Kazakhstan — albeit with considerably more success than is common. A slight 5'7.5" with braces and Rapunzel-esque hip-length hair, Korshunova nonetheless shot out of the normal model demi-monde of sometimes sweet, sometimes snide, always obsessive commentary on TheFashionSpot.com."
Full text on Jezebel




foto: T-shirt produced by a West coast company utilizing Kurt's suicide letter to his family.


"Ladies and gentlemen, the late Marilyn Monroe..."



Mr.Ethyl Eichelberger is a fabulous performance artist that helped epitimize the legendary east Village of the 1980s- I think I met him through John Sex or vice versa. Ethyl was the first person I knew who had committed suicide, though John Sex had died just a bit earlier. Here he performs I believe at PS122 on 9th street- one block away from Jimmy who would hang himself (Armani tie) in his Saint Marks studio apartment one block away by the mid 90s.

UPDATE:APRIL 2009



UPDATE MARCH2010