Strange Christ: Part 4
Strange Christ
The gospel takes work, it makes demands, and it requires a posture of humility and naïveté to which most people are averse to. In a world sustained by the individual over the collective, self-affirming belief systems, seeking knowledge and truth from within, and being self-proclaimed masters of our own destiny, the concept of humility cannot know when, where, or how to take root in our hearts. Yet this is the only way we can move through discomfort to uncover truth. In 1855, art critic Charles Baudelaire shares the necessity to arrive at a point of humility to extract a deeper experience and meaning from life and from art. Baudelaire writes,
“I became content to feel, I returned to seek refuge in impeccable naïveté…it is there that my philosophic conscience has found its rest; and at least I can declare…that my mind now rejoices in a more abundant impartiality…if those whose business it is to express beauty were to conform to the rules of the pundits, beauty itself would disappear from the earth…The Beautiful is always strange.”
Baudelaire observes how haughtiness can inhibit the joy and rest that comes from humility. When a work of art is judged too harshly and quickly, there exists an assumption that we are right, and a declaration that there should be no more energy spent on determining whether it has beauty or value. Baudelaire refers to this kind of narrow-minded thinker as “a godless man who substitutes himself for God.” With this kind of thinking, there is no room for the touch of strangeness which Baudelaire counts as beautiful. This beautiful strangeness helps us to see the variety and diversity of God’s creativity. If it were up to a homogenous few, any diverse, unconventional representations of Christ would be snuffed out.
In modern art, the recognition of beauty requires humility. This beauty is not limited to ancient Greek notions of taste and aesthetics but instead it expands to include both the gruesome and the pleasant, for one cannot exist without the other. In his essay Leading Characteristics of the Late Roman Kunstwollen, Alois Riegl shares the ideology of St. Augustine on essential beauty. Riegl states that according to Augustine, “essential beauty lies only with God; yet on the other side there is no object in nature that would not contain traces of beauty: even ugly objects are not excluded from this…[St. Augustine] sees unity as the expression of beauty….” In speaking of unity and rhythm, Riegl points out something which can only be described as the sublime in both life and art by expressing that “ugly is merely intervals of beauty.” It is the shadows which allow the light to be, and without shadow, light would not be possible. Through this dichotomous relationship, the ugly, offensive, or uncomfortable serve a significant role as the intervals of beauty, and this occurrence creates a natural rhythm and unity. Imperfection is created by intervals of beauty and ugliness, or from moments of comfort and discomfort. These experiences offer a truthfulness, but it requires humility. When in encountering a work of art, Heinrich Wölfflin states that “people not only see differently, they see different things.” Each viewer of an unconventional image of Christ could come away with a new knowledge of themselves or with a glimpse of God’s complex, mysterious nature. It is possible to hold simultaneously the comfort of the image of Christ with the discomfort of our unpredictable, complex, and flawed minds and hearts.
Twenty-first century society is divided when confronted with interpretations of Jesus like in Beecroft’s Black Christ, Andre Serrano’s Piss Christ, or David Mach’s Die Harder. This belief that Christ should look and act a certain way is what makes works of art like these uncomfortable for the viewer because the artist is placing a figure in the place of Christ who is not considered worthy or equal to the perceived ideal. To this kind of critic, these interpretations of Christ are uncomfortable because the person embodying Christ is deemed not good enough to be in Christ’s position, even as a work of art. Contrary to the message of Jesus and his ministry, many believe that there are people groups who are not worthy of grace, forgiveness, equality, and love.
To be confronted with an image of Christ like the imprisoned Mexican man in Pieter Hugo’s Black Friday, or the depiction of a Jamaican Christ in Lorna May Wadsworth’s Last Supper, who do not have the conventionally accepted appearance of Christ, is to be confronted with the truth that all are worthy of Christ’s love. This serves as a reminder that:
“God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.”
The discomfort that the modern artists featured in this Strange Christ series create with their alternative representations of Christ is the ideal posture for the viewer to experience truth about God and themselves. According to Hegel, a work of art is “essentially a question, an address to the responsive breast, a call to the mind and the spirit.” The discomfort from a work of art points the viewer towards seeing versus perceiving truth, and in response calls for humility to accept what needs to be heard. It is a humbling experience to realize one’s own unworthiness, and to recognize that the grace of God and glory of heaven is offered to all, not only a select few. The root of the uncomfortable feelings of Black Christ and other works which obscure the perceived vision of a perfect Christ, lives in the viewer’s recognition of their own unworthiness, and in their ability to take on a posture of humility, allowing God to speak the truth of his gospel through the powerful image of Christ.
References for Strange Christ Series
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