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All art is tribute in some sense—artists borrow, steal, reframe, and homage all work in their lineage, whether incidentally or not. Ideas meld, interact, grow, bloom, and die. So too do artists. And in their absence, tribute is made in another sense: grave stones and monuments. Here, other artists or fans can pay tribute to the once vibrant volley of ideas as well, even in death. And gravestones in themselves can be a kind of art, as Rodin and Rand have shown. Even if many of these happen to be in France, they all worth contemplating as the lasting testament to those they represent. This is Where the Graves of Famous Artists Are Located.
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Henri Rousseau
Year buried: 1910
Location: Cimetière parisien de Bagneux, Montrouge, France
Rousseau died in a hospital in Paris after he cut his leg in his studio. He couldn't pay the medical bills, and by the time a friend insisted on taking him to a hospital, it was too late. He was buried in a mass grave in Bagneux Cemetery, in Paris. In 1913, Picasso and Apollinaire championed Rousseau's work—a more honorific ceremony was held, and an individual plot was made for the painter. The epitaph was written by Apollinaire and read, "We salute you Gentile Rousseau. You can hear us, Delaunay, his wife, Monsieur Queval, and myself. Let our luggage pass duty free through the gates of heaven. We will bring you brushes, paints, and canvas that you may spend your sacred leisure in the light of truth painting, as you once did, my portrait facing the stars."
Marc Chagall
Year buried: 1985
Location: Saint Paul Town Cemetery, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Departement des Alpes-Maritimes, Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur, France
Remarkable of Chagall's death is the circumstances in which he was buried. The Russian-born Surrealist dreamscape painter was a strict practitioner of Judaism. Yet, his wife had him buried in a Catholic cemetery under a cross. Only at the urging of his daughter Ida was the Kaddish, the Jewish mourning prayer, read at the funeral ceremony.
Paul Rand
Year buried: 1996
Location: Beth El Cemetery, Paramus, N.J.
Noted designer Paul Rand didn't want a normal or traditional headstone by the time he passed in 1996. Instead, he commissioned his friend, the Swiss designer Fred Troller, to come up with something out of the ordinary for the monument. Troller came up with two cubes, one aslant from the other, one inscribed with Hebrew, one inscribed with English.
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Man Ray
Year buried: 1976
Location: Cemetery of Montparnasse, Paris
Surrealist filmmaker and conceptual artist Man Ray has a particularly touching gravestone in Paris. His wife of 36 years signed the marker—already with the inscription "unconcerned but not indifferent"—with an added touch: "Love Juliet." She was buried next to him when she passed in 1991.
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Mark Rohtko
Year buried: 1970/2008
Location: Green River Cemetery/Westchester Hills Cemetery
Mark Rothko first was laid to rest in a quiet cemetery on Long Island, N.Y. But after 38 years under earth, his relatives put in a bid with the New York State Supreme Court to have his body exhumed and moved to Westchester Hills cemetery further west. It was said to be a bitter feud, reigniting the battle for Rothko's estate that occurred following his death in 1970.
Edward Hopper
Year buried: 1967
Location: Oak Hill Cemetery, Nyack, N.Y.
The American painter Edward Hopper, as vibrant as his paintings can be, is buried in an understated plot in upstate N.Y. He shares the marker with his wife, Josephine, who outlived him by a year.
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Michelangelo
Year buried: 1564
Location: Basilica of Santa Croce, Florence, Italy
The indomitable master of all things sculpture and paint, Michelangelo had but one last request upon his deathbed: to be buried in Florence. He was taken from Rome, where he spent the last years of his life, and entombed at the Basilica of Santa Croce. He lies alongside some of Italy's most notable figures, including Galileo and Machiavelli.
Paul Cezanne
Year buried: 1906
Location: Saint-Pierre Cemetery, Aix-en-Provence, France
Dying of influenza is not particularly romantic, nor artistic. But that's how Impressionist painter Paul Cezanne went, three days after coming down with the disease. Fortunately enough, he was able to die in peace in his native province. He was buried in a community cemetery there.
Georgia O'Keeffe
Year buried: 1986
Location: The Pedernal, N.M.
Georgia O'Keeffe embodied the landscape of New Mexico both in the way she lived and in the work she consistently churned out. Her landscapes are unmistakable, particularly when she painted the New Mexico mountaintop, The Pedernal. A subject that comes up time and time again in her work, which became the inspiration of hundreds of other painters, her body was inured to the earth when she died in 1986—her ashes were scattered there.
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Vincent Van Gogh
Year buried: 1890
Location: Auvers-sur-Oise, France
Though Van Gogh didn't achieve much acclaim during his lifetime, his death is marked by matching the paintings of his last years to the place he spent his final years. It's said that a pilgrimage to Van Gogh's grave is like walking through painting after painting of his own—a kind of posthumous visual tribute.
Edvard Munch
Year buried: 1944
Location: Vår Frelsers gravlund, Norway
Death and illness was a fixture of Edvard Munch's work, so it's only fitting that a proper tribute be erected in his stead. In Oslo, a statue was erected, albeit years after his death of pneumonia in 1944. It is a stoic and dark representation of a man who lived his life in inner turmoil. Notably, Henrik Ibsen is also buried in this cemetery.
Auguste Rodin
Year buried: 1917
Location: Meudon, France
Rodin's Thinker might be the most widely known sculpture of all time. It's fitting then that the monument marks the side of his grave. The French sculptor who rewrote the rules of the media is buried on the grounds of his home in France, beside his wife Rose. They had married only 10 months earlier.
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Wassily Kandinsky
Year buried: 1944
Location: Neuilly-sur-Seine community Cemetery, France
Following the expulsion of Jews from Germany and the closure by the Nazis of the Bauhaus school where he taught in Germany, critic and Expressionist painter Wassily Kandinsky moved to Neuilly-sur-Seine, France in 1933. He died of arteriosclerosis there in 1944, just months after Paris was liberated by the allies.
Claude Monet
Year buried: 1926
Location: Giverny Cemetery, Haute-Normandie, France
When Claude Monet died of lung cancer in 1926, the world lost the founder of French Impressionist painting. His work was so celebrated by the time of his death, Georges Clémenceau, the former President of France, attended his funeral. If only all art was as diplomatically celebrated, even posthumously.
Rembrandt van Rijn
Year buried: 1669
Location: Westerkerk, Amsterdam
For all the masterpieces credited to Rembrandt, it seems a bit of a disservice to put him in an unmarked grave. And yet, that's where he lay for years and years, in the West Church in Amsterdam. Though the exact location of his body is still unknown, a monument has been erected at the site of his burial.
Charles Eames
Year buried: 1978
Location: Calvary Cemetery and Mausoleum, St. Louis
One of the most celebrated furniture designers of the mid-20th century, Charles Eames passed away at 71 years in 1978. His grave is unmarked, on a family plot shared with his father. But if you wish to pay tribute, you can do so in Eames' native St. Louis.
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Andy Warhol
Year buried: 1987
Location: St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery, Pa.
As Warhol's casket was lowered into the ground, following speeches by Yoko Ono and John Richardson, Paige Powell threw a copy of Interview Magazine onto the casket, along with a bottle of Estee Lauder's Beautiful perfume and an Interview T-shirt. He's buried in a suburb of Pittsburgh.
Salvador Dalí
Year buried: 1989
Location: Dalí Theatre and Museum, Figueres, Spain
You might expect Surrealist lynchpin Salvador Dalí to have his ashes formed into an egg and placed a top a pedestal untouchable for eternity, but his burial was remarkably sentimental and plain. In the basement of his own museum, Dalí lies in a tomb that is across the street from the church he was baptized and had his first communion and funeral. It is also three blocks from the house in which he was born.
Sandro Botticelli
Year buried: 1510
Location: Church of Ognissanti, Florence, Italy
Botticelli's muse, Simonette Vespucci, is thought to be the influence for his most famous work, The Birth of Venus, though she died years before he painted the masterpiece. His dying wish was to be buried at the feet of Vespucci, in the Church of Ognissanti in Florence, Italy, which was granted in 1510 after he passed away. He is still buried there.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Year buried: 1919
Location: Essoyes Cemetery, Essoyes, Champagne-Ardenne, France
Buried next to his wife Aline, Renoir passed in 1919 at his in Cagnes, France. Known as "the happy painter," he was laid to rest in an open space befitting his nickname.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Year buried: 1988
Location: Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn
The enfant terrible of Expressionist Primitivism, Jean-Michel Basquiat died on August 12, 1988, in NYC from a drug overdose. His body was buried in Brooklyn, where he called his childhood home, five days later. His modest headstone simply bares the epitaph "artist."
Leonardo da Vinci
Year buried: 1519
Location: Chapel of Saint-Hubert in Château d'Amboise, France
As the funeral procession of Italy's most-celebrated Renaissance painter wound its way to the grave, 60 beggars trailed behind, as was laid out in Leonardo's will. The first church da Vinci was put to rest in was destroyed in 1789 during the French Revolution. He was reburied in this smaller chapel in 1874. In 2010, an inquest was made to exhume his body to solve once and for all whether he had painted himself in the Mona Lisa.
Frida Kahlo
Year buried: 1954
Location: La Casa Azul, Mexico City
Kahlo died of a pulmonary embolism, just a couple years after writing "I hope the exit is joyful—and I hope never to return—Frida," in her diary. Though she's not buried, technically, her remains can still be paid tribute. Her ashes sit in an urn in her home, which now functions as a museum, in Coyoacan, Mexico City. La Casa Azul, as the place was called, was donated by none other than Diego Rivera upon his death in 1957.
Jackson Pollock
Year buried: 1956
Location: Green River Cemetery, Springs, N.Y.
After dying in a drunk-driving accident less than a mile from his home, Pollock was buried at Green River Cemetery in upstate New York. This was traditionally a blue collar cemetery. But, after Pollock's burial, it became a place where artists and writers of all stripes where interred. His wife, Lee Krasner, is buried nearby Pollock's stone grave.
Pablo Picasso
Year buried: 1973
Location: Château of Vauvenargues, Aix-en-Provence, France
Cezanne is said to have painted the hills around this opulent estate more than 30 times, a discovery the led Picasso to buy the chateau in 1958. He lived there until his death on April 8, 1973. He was buried on the hilltop eight days later. The huge sculpture Woman With A Vase was placed on top of his resting place.
