Art about death often makes us feel more alive. Artist and writer Sean Burns contemplates the nature of death and its tangled relationships with life and love as depicted in art.

Death haunts art. It lurks in the shadows of Edward Collier’s Still Life as a reminder of our fragile mortality. It conquers all in Francis Bacon’s Triptych and Anna Lea Merritt’s Love Locked Out. But how has death emerged as such a persistent theme in art history? From intimate responses to allegorical meditations on the fleeting transience of life, Sean Burns explores how a breadth of historical and contemporary artists in Britain’s national collection have immortalised death in art.

Look Again is a new series of short books from Tate Publishing, opening up the conversation about British art over the last 500 years, and exploring what art has to tell us about our lives today. Written by leading voices from the worlds of literature, art and culture, each book sheds new light on some of the most well-known, best-loved and thought-provoking artworks in the national collection, and asks us to look again.