January
• ⁠5th – return to normal Services @ 10:30 @ Abbeyfields School ///acted.presuming.suiting

http://www.uniurb.it/Filosofia/bibliografie/Bataille_GiuliaFrattini/citazioni.htm

Fair use rationale:

1. low web-resolution image that adds considerably to the Wikipedia article which discuss the image (Piss Christ).
2. the image is significant due to the controversy which surround it.

Trigger Warning – today we meet Offensive/ Provocative Jesus.

You know the score –  look at the image first. Spend some time really looking at the image, the face, and the background. How does the image make you feel? What questions does it raise? Do you think it’s a good representation of Jesus, and if so what attributes do you feel the artist is trying to portray? You may wish to write some of your thoughts down.

Here’s the first link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_Christ#/media/File:Piss_Christ_by_Serrano_Andres_(1987).jpg


When I saw today’s image for the first time, I was offended. In fact, that’s not true. When I saw it I thought it was beautiful. I was offended when I saw it’s title and when I was told how it was made. The photo is of a small wooden and plastic crucifix floating in the artist’s urine. This artwork has caused loads of controversy. It’s been picketed, vandalised, and discussed in various governments. The artist, Andres Serrano, states that he didn’t create the piece to be controversial. He’s Catholic and self-identifies as a Jesus follower. He sees the work as saying something about the cheapening of religion in commercialised society, and that the bodily fluids say something about the horror of the crucifixion. It’s not everybody’s cup of tea.

But, I think it does have something to say to us about the life of Jesus. We may have reacted, over the past few days, to a sanitized version of Jesus portrayed in the previous artworks – you cannot say that of Immersion. Maybe we react to the swearing more than the image, so I choose to focus on that bit of the artist’s title for the work.

The incarnation of God as man should be controversial. If we have an understanding of who God is, and we know the mess of the world, then the two coming together is shocking. And Jesus as a person and what he said caused huge offence in His community. People tried to throw him off cliffs, his family tried to snatch Him away because they thought He was mad, and the leaders wanted him dead. And eventually, people conspired to have Him executed in a brutal way. Crucifixion didn’t make Jesus special – plenty of people were executed by the Romans by crucifixion all over the empire. But Jesus was special, and He died in a brutal way.

In 1 Corinthians 1 Paul say he preaches “Christ crucified” which is scandalous to the Jews and foolishness to the gentiles. Skandalon, in Greek is to trap or to shipwreck; moria (foolishness) means to make fools of those who are obsessed with rationalising everything. Is our view of Jesus so sanitized that we forget to see how contrary to our human nature God’s mission through Jesus was and is? Are we tripped up because we’ve sanitized the story so much that we fail to be outraged and offended by it? Do we have everything so worked out that we skip over the Jesus who does things we don’t like?

I know this image is probably much harder to handle than the others we’ve looked at, but maybe we need to come afresh to the offensive/provocative Jesus sometimes.

Sit again with the image and allow God to speak to you. Read a gospel account of the passion story with the image in front of you and allow God to speak through it.


I’ll send the last image tomorrow…


John

Don’t forget to consider the image first. Spend some time really looking at the image, the face, and the background. How does the image make you feel? What questions does it raise? Do you think it’s a good representation of Jesus, and if so what attributes do you feel the artist is trying to portray? You may wish to write some of your thoughts down.

Here’s Wednesday’s link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Heart#/media/File:SacredHeartBatoni.jpg

“Another series of images of Jesus that affects the imaginations of many can go under the heading of what we call spooky Jesus. They are similar to the bearded-lady Jesus in that they present a somewhat feminized picture of Christ, but they go further by adding a variety of highly symbolic, ethereal elements to the picture. Many of these are referred to as sacred heart images, where an ethereal-looking Christ holds open the folds of his robe to reveal a glowing heart. These immensely popular portrayals of Jesus present him as an otherworldly being, swathed in swirling haloes and unearthly auras (probably to ensure that the viewer would not miss the fact of his divinity). This Jesus seems almost heretical. Why? Because these images seem to portray Christ’s divinity at the expense of his humanity. It’s as if his God nature can be barely contained by his ill-fitting human shell. The early church worked hard to ensure that while it affirmed Jesus’ divinity, it did not lose sight of his complete and total humanity. And it was right to reject any notions that diminished his humanity. Portrayals like spooky Jesus can rightly be labelled docetic (the heresy that claims that Jesus only seemed to be a human but was not). When we look at the Jesus of the Gospels, we find this was exactly what Jesus was not. The incarnation emphasizes the fact that Jesus’ humanity so contained the divinity of Jesus that his family, his neighbours, his friends, and even his disciples did not fully realize that God was present in the human person they encountered in Jesus—so hidden was his divinity in his humanity. Glowing halos, exposed hearts, and dramatic posturing—all regularly included in these depictions—take us away from the Gospels rather than toward the real Jesus. One ancient icon shatters these conventions. It was found in the monastery of St. Catherine in the Sinai desert. While still sporting a dramatic halo, the St. Catherine’s icon depicts Jesus as tranquil and unruffled. To be sure, he has the face of a Roman scholar rather than a Palestinian rabbi, but the artist has nonetheless tried to eliminate the spookiness often transposed onto pictures of Jesus. He has painted him as an all-wise teacher. His face is not symmetrical like that in many spooky Jesus icons. It is more flawed, less lovely than the others. Such religious portraiture was rare though. The Romanesque depiction of Jesus’ face characteristically portrayed him with a mask-like visage and a radically expressionistic, transfixing gaze. This, along with the halo, was supposed to convey a sense of the transcendent or the holy. Early Christian artists were conscious that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine, but when depicting him in icons, paintings, murals, and stained glass, they erred on the side of the divine, assuming that a divine human wouldn’t look quite like a, well, human human. If the Holman Hunt Jesus is a benign, insipid, emasculated man, then spooky Jesus is an otherworldly and distant being. One raps respectfully at the door to your heart, while the other waits serenely for you to approach him. The Holman Hunt Jesus cares, while the Romanesque Jesus knows! If we asked you to show us your Jesus, and you said he looked like spooky Jesus, we’d guess you feel most comfortable with the intangible, wise, ethereal, other-worldly, composed aspects of Jesus. And yet the Jesus we meet in the Gospels is not always serene, his emotions held masterfully in check. Nowhere is this more movingly portrayed than on the night of his betrayal and arrest. After celebrating Passover, the grand Hebrew story of exile and restoration, Jesus and his friends take a late-night stroll in the garden called Gethsemane. There, as he prepares himself for the sacrifice he is about to make, Jesus asks, even begs, his Father three times for some alternative course. Far from the unflinching automaton he can sometimes be portrayed as, Jesus is filled with anxiety and uncertainty. Having asked his dearest friends to wait with him and pray during this his darkest hour, he expresses such sadness and loneliness when they fall asleep: “Could you not stay awake with me one hour?” (Matt 26:40). More than sadness, we can sense his frustration and annoyance at their abandoning him for sleep. Scott Peck once noted that one of the chief reasons for his trusting the Gospels was their all-too-real description of Jesus. In his agnostic days, before reading them, he had assumed that they were simply works of hagiography, exaggerated accounts of this mythic holy man, invented by those of his followers committed to creating a cult of personality around him. However, when Peck first read the texts themselves, he was astonished to discover that the Jesus in their pages was nothing like the Romanesque icons he had previously seen. Jesus was richer, more textured, more authentically human than any invented folk hero could possibly be. In fact, Peck went on to conclude that the Gospels must be true. If they were inventions by his followers, those followers would have invented a better messiah than the one found in the Gospels—they would have invented a flawless messiah, one who never showed fear, sadness, or anger. That he isn’t portrayed as Super-Jesus was proof enough that the Gospel writers were faithful reporters, not cunning inventors.”


Frost, Michael; Hirsch, Alan. ReJesus: Remaking the Church in Our Founder’s Image [Revised & Updated Edition] (pp. 60-61). 100 Movements Publishing. Kindle Edition.


I’ll send the next image anon…


John

Remember to look at the image first. Spend some time really looking at the image, the face, and the background. How does the image make you feel? What questions does it raise? Do you think it’s a good representation of Jesus, and if so what attributes do you feel the artist is trying to portray? You may wish to write some of your thoughts down.

Here’s todays link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_and_the_Woman_Taken_in_Adultery_(Beckmann)#/media/File:Christ_and_the_Sinner_1851955_.jpg


‘Claire suggested this painting. I like that Jesus isn’t easy to spot. There’s isn’t the ‘Holy Glow’ that we see in a lot of paintings, and the scene depicted – the woman caught in adultery from John 8 – is busy and full of movement.

Max Beckmann served in the German army during World War 1, and this is one of the first paintings he made after returning. His style changed in response to what he had experienced. One writer described it as ‘a drama of hands’.

When I asked Claire to name this Jesus, she named it – outsider Jesus. His hands make Him stand out from the other people and, unlike the ‘Holy Glow’ he’s almost muted, His face still, but turned into opposition to the crowd, and His foot planted squarely on the ground. Maybe this is the first of our images which doesn’t fit into the usual ways Jesus is portrayed. How does that feel? Does the way Beckmann has painted the picture fit with how you see the story from John? Perhaps you could read it with the picture in front of you.’

I’ll send the next image anon…


John

Here’s the second image for you to consider: Who is Jesus?

Remember to look at the image first. Spend some time really looking at the image, the face, and the background. How does the image make you feel? What questions does it raise? Do you think it’s a good representation of Jesus, and if so what attributes do you feel the artist is trying to portray? You may wish to write some of your thoughts down.

Here’s the link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_of_Christ#/media/File:The_Head_of_Christ_by_Warner_Sallman_1941.jpg

“Not dissimilar to Holman Hunt’s depiction is Warner Sallman’s 1940 painting Head of Christ. We’re sure you’ve seen this one. It is estimated to have been reproduced over half a billion times worldwide, from framed copies for church walls to wallet-sized prayer cards for devotional use. Stephen Prothero has said Sallman’s painting has “become the basis for the visualization of Jesus for hundreds of millions of people.”7 We call it the bearded-lady Jesus. Flowing blond locks swept back from the face, high cheekbones, groomed eyebrows, full lips, with heavenward gazing, gentle eyes—he’s beautiful, isn’t he? David Morgan, a professor of religion at Duke University, reflects on the androgynous nature of the portrait, saying, “for many Christians during the Cold War, Sallman’s portrait did symbolize a virile, manly Christ, while for others it embodied a more intimate and nurturing Jesus, a personal saviour for modern times.”8 But is this a valid biblical representation of Jesus? Or is this a mere fantasy object for an overly sentimental, cultural Christianity? This is the inoffensive Messiah, clean and tidy, pleasing to the eye. This is no disturber of our souls. This image of Jesus reflects a spirituality that is anchored in an adoration of the wonderful Christ, the unattainable Jesus. Warner Sallman’s version of Jesus exudes an abstracted serenity, gentleness, and peace. And yet the Jesus we meet in the Gospels is at times frustrated, disappointed, annoyed and, worse still, angered. He is full of holy pathos. He exasperated his rivals, unsettled his friends, and drove his enemies mad. Says Alison Morgan, “Jesus was a difficult and uncooperative revolutionary who so threatened the established order of the day that there seemed to be no option but to have him executed.”9 Is the man in the pictures we’ve described such a spiritual revolutionary?”

Frost, Michael; Hirsch, Alan. ReJesus: Remaking the Church in Our Founder’s Image [Revised & Updated Edition] (p. 60). 100 Movements Publishing. Kindle Edition.


I’ll send the next image soon…


John