Strange Christ: Part 3
Modern Christ
In recent decades, contemporary artists have been representing Christ in different ethnicities as modern society focuses more on the individual’s contribution, identity, and purpose within the greater realm of humanity. This democratization of art allows the image of Christ to be of the people, by the people, and for the people through the representation of the diverse ethnic backgrounds of the artists and their communities. Yet, the unconventional image of Christ in modern art has been met with hostility mostly by conservative commentators who believe that a nonwhite Jesus is not only historically inaccurate, but also sacrilegious. In 2010, British painter Lorna May Wadsworth painted her interpretation of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper in her own painting of the same name (fig. 9). Wadsworth modeled Jesus after Tafari Hinds, a Jamaican man, and he stands in the center above the disciples with his arms outstretched in a posture of invitation. Wadsworth stated that she wanted to challenge “the western myth that Jesus had fair hair and blue eyes.” While hanging at St. George’s Church in England, the painting was shot by an air rifle on the right side of Jesus’ body, piercing the canvas. Upon discovery of the hole, Wadsworth stated, “It really upsets me to think that someone was so aggrieved by my portrayal of Christ that they wanted to attack it. It must have been an iconoclastic act. I was in shock all weekend, on the verge of tears the whole time.” It is profound that the air rifle shooter was so challenged by deep feelings of discomfort that they felt they must vandalize this work of art. Their internal struggle manifested in a physical act of hostility.
Figure 9. Lorna May Wadsworth, Last Supper, 2010
Lorna May Wadsworth, Last Supper (detail)
However, modern artists persist in depicting Christ in unconventional representations, determined to portray a facet of Christ’s diverse nature. In 2018, artist Pieter Hugo photographed a Mexican man serving a sentence in an Oaxacan prison as Christ with a crown of thorns, titled Black Friday, Oaxaca de Juárez (fig. 10). The artist crops the composition from his chest up, as he stands outside in front of a light gray, textured wall. The man is wrapped from his collarbone down in an emerald-colored satin, with a white cloth tied around his head, concealing his hair. Atop the white cloth, a twisted crown of thorns rests as it throws jagged shadows over the prisoner’s face. The harsh sunlight exaggerates the crevices of his facial features and emphasizes his expression marked with fortitude. Hugo titled this work after Black Friday, also called Good Friday, which is a day during holy week marked by grief and penance as Christians remember the crucifixion of Christ. The man in Hugo’s Black Friday, Oaxaca de Jaurez was sentenced to serve time in a prison to pay for his crimes. He may have been sentenced to give his entire life in payment for his crimes, while the Christ he represented was sentenced to death to pay for the crimes of others, and his death in turn brings life to all who believe in his gospel.
Figure 10. Pieter Hugo, Black Friday, Oaxaca de Juarez, pigment ink print, 2018
In 1997, Father John Giuliani painted Christ as a Navajo man holding the sacrament of bread and wine in Navajo Christ (fig. 11). Seated within a sea of undulating red, brown, white, and black patterns, the man is centered in this narrow and vertical composition, the edges of the canvas cropped tight to his body. Surrounding his head is a solid gold circle, placed in the same way Renaissance artists illuminated the heads of holy figures in their paintings. Cascading over his shoulders, arms, and legs is a white, black, and red patterned cloak, which reveals a section of moss green fabric underneath. The velvet-like folds of this green fabric create lines which twist slightly and bring the eye down to his right hand, which holds a broken piece of bread, and his left hand, which holds a cup of wine. Knees bent slightly outward as his feet rest gently on the tessellated floor where a small jar and large platter lay. The man stares directly at the viewer, his face is neutral and relaxed. His posture and expression invite us to take part in this sacred moment, and we are both calmed by his presence and energized by the colors and patterns which surround him. A Navajo man as Christ challenges the Eurocentric Christian identity and the intimate nature of this work may be uncomfortable for some. The intentional close cropping of this painting limits our field of vision, forcing us to see him, to look him in the eye and respond to what he is offering.
Figure 11. Father John Giuliani, Navajo Christ, oil on wood, 1997
In 2008, contemporary artist Kehinde Wiley painted Sleep (fig. 12), which portrays a Black man laying with a white cloth which wraps around his groin and spreads below him, covering a wooden structure which props his resting body up. His gleaming brown body is painted with drama and detail as he appears to be suspended in a mosaic of flowers. The evidence of life exists in his large veins that protrude from the top of his hand. Sleep is one of the countless images Wiley has created depicting Black figures in scenes reminiscent of Renaissance or Baroque paintings. Wiley’s choice in portraying the Black figure in this way is met with both praise and criticism. Research associate at the Brooklyn Museum, Connie H. Choi, applauds Wiley’s choices in the 2016 exhibition catalogue for Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic,
“In inserting the urban black male figure into the art-historical canon, the artist brings the canon up to date and at the same time questions its centuries-long exclusion of such figures. His manner of portraying African American men is Wiley’s way of affirming their presence in a society that has long discounted or undervalued them.”
Figure 12. Kehinde Wiley, Sleep, oil on canvas, 2008
Cultural critic Touré describes Wiley’s work as an “attempt to rehabilitate black images by putting them in the context of nobility, of import, of beauty.” In response to Wiley’s work, senior features writer for The Guardian, Andrew Lawrence, expresses how pretentious viewers see Wiley’s work as a simple remix and the inconsequential musings of a former art student, while more conservative commentators see “racism in every brushstroke.” These conservative critics believe that Wiley is portraying his anti-White commentary with brashness and hostility. His painted Black figures are often glaring directly at the viewer, holding their gaze as they move around the gallery, and many see this as a threat.
Figure 13. Kehinde Wiley, Judith and Holofernes, oil on canvas, 2012, The North Carolina Museum of Art
In his 2012 painting, Judith and Holofernes (fig. 13.), Wiley reimagines a biblical story by painting Judith as a dominant Black woman holding the severed head of a White woman. Judith was modeled after a woman Wiley met while shopping in Brooklyn, and the head of Holofernes was modeled after one of his assistants. The debut of this work at The North Carolina Museum of Art incited an ardent social media response by the public who “wanted to know how the museum would feel about the painting if the races were reversed.” An alt-right critic on Twitter asked, “If he painted a white woman brandishing the head of a black woman…can you imagine the outrage?” In response to the criticism, Wiley states “There are so many emotions because it’s not costume. This is something that’s much more approachable, something you could actually imagine yourself living through. This is skin.” In an essay on the presence of Christian iconography in Kehinde Wiley’s oeuvre, independent Christian scholar Victoria Emily Jones observes that by “translating European devotional paintings—fashioned in the image of the white ruling class—into a contemporary idiom that places black bodies up front and center, Wiley rectifies the lack of representation of racial minorities in and as the body of Christ.”
In Wiley’s Sleep, the man’s body in space is imperceptible, and the details of the setting are unknown, yet his posture is recognizable. His body lays in the same heavy way as the lifeless Christ in Peter Paul Rubens’ The Descent from the Cross (fig. 14) painted between 1612 and 1614. Portrayed diagonally in the center of the composition, Ruben’s Christ is lowered to the ground after his death using a large swath of white cloth held by his mother and his disciples. His body is pallid and drained of its blood. The mood is filled with grief and sorrow, as they prepare Christ for the grave, unaware to what would follow three days after he is placed in his tomb. The background in Rubens’ painting is dark with the large wooden cross looming behind the figures, and there remains a feeling of loss and finality in this work. Ruben’s Christ is one that portrays hopelessness, it is frozen in grief, and asks nothing of the viewer except for their pity. In contrast, Wiley’s interpretation omits the additional figures, the cross, and the ominously dark sky in the background that exists in Ruben’s Crucifixion. Instead, Wiley includes bright colored flowers that consume the composition, injecting hope, life, and beauty into this scene of despair. Rubens paints his Christ limp and lifeless, while Wiley paints his Christ with firm and sculpted muscles, his veins full of pulsating blood. In Ruben’s depiction, Christ is dead; in Wiley’s depiction, Christ lives but appears to be only resting, akin to the short period of time between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. In Sleep, Wiley depicts Christ in such a way that the viewer waits breathlessly for him shake off his slumber and rise. Wiley’s Sleep remains true to the human condition by acknowledging suffering while preserving hope. Inversing traditional religious imagery challenges the viewer to expand their perspectives on what is and is not acceptable in portraying the image of Christ. When asked about his work, Wiley responded with, “Artists are tricksters. The ultimate goal of a trickster is to say, ‘You think you know what something is, but let me show you the inverse.’”
Figure 14. Peter Paul Rubens, The Descent from the Cross, oil on panel, 1612-14, Cathedral of Our Lady, Antwerp
Figure 15. David Mach, Die Harder, metal hangers and wood, 2011.
In 2011, London artist David Mach created Die Harder (fig. 15), a public sculpture made from 3,000 coat hangers with the hooks straightened so they appear to be sticking out of the body of Christ as he hangs on the cross, face screaming in agony. Mach is a professed irreligious person yet found the image of Christ to be the most powerful subject to portray in a show celebrating the 400th anniversary of the Kings James Bible. Mach’s Christ in Die Harder is an uncomfortable, visual representation of Jesus’ burden of an agonizing death. If we encounter this work and turn away from it too quickly, we can write it off as radical. And if we read the title Die Harder, and learn that Mach isn’t a Christian, we can feel offended, assuming that the artist wants Christ to die more than he did, eradicating both his presence and power in this world. But this is the perceived ownership of the image of Christ which passes judgment, for the truth exists deeper if we choose to linger longer in front of this work. Mach places thousands of metal hangers into the sculpted figure, and we are reminded that Christ was pierced for our transgressions. To see this physically represented in such an excruciating way makes the experience of the Crucifixion even more real. As a viewer, we can almost hear his cries, and feel the punctures entering our own flesh. The vast number of metal hangers sticking out of the body is overwhelming, yet it can remind us of the vast number of people Christ died for. Regarding anguish reflected in Laocoon (fig. 15), Winckelmann observes, “the physical pain and the nobility of the soul are distributed with equal strength over the entire body and are, as it were, held in balance with one another. Laocoon suffers…his pain touches our very souls, but we wish that we could bear misery like this great man.” The image of Christ in our modern world is not one of pure comfort and pleasure, instead it is rightfully unsettling and uncomfortable. In reference to Die Harder, Mach shares in an interview for The Telegraph,
“You could say, 'Why the hell are you doing that? It’s been done 20, 30 times better than you can do it.’ Pathos is not something you talk about in contemporary art. But an altarpiece is dripping with emotion and drama. And they’re really not cool at all, and I like that a lot. In the world of contemporary art, things are supposed to be cool. I think cool is for w------.”
Echoing the sentiment of Sister Wendy, Mach’s use of the term cool can be interpreted as comfortable. The world is comfortable with Christ not being a radical presence in modern art or in pop culture. Even the irreligious population can permit images of Christ being around, provided that they are not portrayed in an uncomfortable way that would remind them of the reality of his gospel.
David Mach, Die Harder, 2011.
Figure 16. Athanadoros, Hagesandros, and Polydoros of Rhodes, Laocoon and his Sons, marble, early first century C.E.
Laocoon and his Sons (detail)
We want modern art to validate our constructions and not challenge them, because it is not comforting to be confronted with the truth about our reality. Siedell accurately observed that “we want art to comfort us, to serve our needs.” We also want Christ to comfort us and serve our needs, but instead he came to upend our modus operandi by challenging our laws and self-constructed belief systems. Siedell recognizes that “the goal of Christian life becomes wholeness—acceptance of this complicated and muddled bundle of experiences as the possible theater of God’s work.” To encounter modern art is to encounter God, and we are invited into a conversation where we are challenged to accept the wholeness of Christ—his humanity and his holiness—as well the limits of our humanity and the potential holiness of ourselves.