Cross Purpose - Esther

Jesus – in art at least – has always been with me. There seemed to be many sides to Jesus when I was a kid. Mostly it didn’t seem like he was hurtling towards the horror of Easter. That seemed like a different Jesus from the baby Jesus or the Jesus that told stories. There was also Christ. There were apparently times when “Christ” was a more appropriate name.

St Veronica's Handkerchief (Gabriel Cornelius Max)

Growing up in the Church of Scotland, Christmas was the thing. It was flashy, fun. In church at midnight at Christmas, someone would press a button & as if by magic, some non-existent bells would ring. I’d sit beside my brother & Grandma, looking between old lady hats & mothball-scented fur coats at my parents all dolled-up in the choir & thinking about how great it was to be staying up late. One time it even snowed on the way back home.

Easter was not flashy. There were just as many Easter songs – not hymns – as Christmas carols. At Sunday School you’d sing the songs printed beautifully on large sheets of paper propped up on an enormous wooden easel where there would also be pictures. There was a certain way that biblical scenes were presented to & painted for 1970s children, wholly unrepresentative of the community of children I grew up in. On researching this week’s blog entry, I find works in a similar style by Warner Sallman, Mariana Maia & Harry Anderson. Designed to indoctrinate, they’re unbearably saccharine, ethnically ridiculous but technically amazing.

 Jesus & Children (Mariana Maia)

 Good Shepherd (Warner Sallman)

What Happened To Your Hand (Harry Anderson)

Jolly songs & sentimental but striking paintings of a white, benevolent Jesus often with outstretched arms didn’t match the message that you were a sinner although you were told this over & over again. & it wasn’t clear what you were meant to do about it. What did “repent” mean to an eight-year old? I clearly recall believing full well I was a sinner & that I should try to be good. Jesus had died for my unexplained, unspecified sins & I was to supposed to be grateful. I was too – he seemed like a good guy, he liked to help & he’d had a pretty rough time. I was also informed that Easter was much more important than Christmas “really,” but no-one ever behaved as if that was the truth. Yes there was chocolate but no decorations, lights, presents nor good feelings.

As - & I can’t emphasise this enough - an entirely secular adult, I finally get the fuss. It’s not for me, but I can see why Easter would raise Jesus, in Christianity at least, above the status of John the Baptist & his desert ravings, Joseph with his dreams or even Moses & his many associated miracles (despite my own Ten Plagues fascination - perhaps another time). & Easter’s much more beguiling for artists than Christmas. There’s no conflict about Christmas, no confusion. Christmas is a feel-good story with a happy ending. Easter is sacrifice, death, forgiveness, life, selflessness, torture, passion, stillness, bereavement & cycles. 

I think some of the more effective art illustrating the death of Jesus is of the 20^th Century, as in Roy de Maistre, Stanley Spencer or Francis Bacon...

Crucifixion (Francis Bacon)

 The Crucifixion (Roy de Maistre)

Crucifixion (Stanley Spencer)

...but I also like earlier, overwrought & cold examples by Rubens or El Greco. (I confess to being haunted by El Greco’s Crucifixion as a child. My parents owned several small books of art that I used to flick through from time to time. The print quality was bad & poor old Jesus looked even more purple than I’m sure the Spanish Renaissance master intended).

 The Entombment (Peter Paul Rubens)

Christ Carrying the Cross (Doménikos Theotokópoulos or El Greco)

Christ in Agony on the Cross (El Greco)

The greatest crucifixion artwork in my opinion remains Salvador Dalí’s Christ of Saint John of the Cross; whether or not you think the piece is subversive, his Christ is undoubtedly a focus for meditation. We’re lucky to have him here in Scotland & I’ve viewed him many times in a couple of different locations. There are nearby boards & little film clips explaining him now. While it’s nice to have some background information, I still think it’s just best to look. If you look really closely & tilt your head to get the right light, you can just see (despite astonishing restoration) where the painting was attacked & torn by a visitor in 1961. In fact it has suffered a lot of criticism despite lacking the gruesome details of blood, facial contortions & stigmata. It’s a skilfully clean crucifixion & I think that adds to the magical realism of the work. That said, it renders the pose more painful looking & rather than looking down on Christ as if the viewer (or artist) was God, as has been suggested, I get more of the sense of a real & suffering person. Dalí even hired a stuntman to model the pose.

Christ of Saint John of the Cross (Salvador Dalí)

Harry Clarke on the other hand, did his own stunts. He modelled the Christ on the cross pose for a Crucifixion window in St Joseph’s Church, Terenure, Dublin in the mid-1920s but this isn’t a suffering Jesus. This is a Jesus glorified & majestic. In fact, Harry himself looks infinitely more uncomfortable than his stained glass Christ. To me, the photograph - taken by his brother Walter - is also more interesting because it shows something of his process & in doing so brings me closer to the artist.

 Harry Clarke in Jesus Christ pose

The Crucifixion (Harry Clarke)

The earliest depiction of Christ that caused me real emotional disruption wasn’t even a painting. Or a crucifixion. It was a tapestry & in it Jesus had risen. Designed by Graham Sutherland for the post-war, rebuilt Coventry Cathedral, it was overwhelming in its size. I recall having the details of the Evangelists explained to me & that the tiny figure of Man between the mighty Christ’s feet was a reminder of our puny feebleness in his presence. Jesus himself wore a benign enough smile but he was a monster Jesus, a Godzilla (if you’ll allow me the pun) & I had the distinct impression of mistrusting him. Despite my subsequent years of admiration of Graham Sutherland & his work, his Coventry Jesus creeps me out – whilst also fascinating me - to this day.

 Christ in Glory in the Tetramorph (Graham Sutherland)

 Coventry Catherdral

Perhaps the most poignant & contemporary depictions of the risen Christ are Timothy Schmalz’s Homeless Christ statues. In these pieces of public art scattered around the world, a homeless Jesus lies on a park bench, protectively pulling his robes around him & over his head. The only indications of who this person is are the stigmata in his feet. These works invite us to consider the question: how would we greet a risen Christ today? How would he be treated? Wouldn’t the true test of who we are depend on not knowing who he was? Or would he be just another homeless person being ignored & walked past on the streets of our cities? We’d like to think we’d be kind to a ragged stranger with unusual ideas questioning the status quo but human history doesn’t bear that out, whether we are people of faith or not.

Homeless Christ (Timothy Schmalz)

Ultimately then, perhaps Jesus’ best message is earthly & human & now.

We must remember to be kind. If we can do that, it perhaps doesn’t matter whether he comes back, whether we believe or whether he is who he says.

During one of the more challenging holidays in modern human history, art can still help us navigate paths, help ask questions & help make connections within our most existential explorations.

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