Images of Christ: Part V: Matthias Grunewald, The Isenheim Altarpiece

Comparing his Christ of Saint John of the Cross to Matthias Grunewald’s The Isenheim Altarpiece, Salvador Dali announced, “I want to paint a Christ that is the absolute opposite of Grunewald’s materialistic savagely anti-mystical one.” Whereas Dali’s Christ is cosmic universality, Grunewald’s is earthly specificity. Where Dali is wrong is in thinking that there isn’t a place for both.

Grunewald’s altarpiece is the most visceral presentation of the physical pain of Christ I have ever seen. Christ seems to be decomposing on the cross. There is seemingly nothing redeeming about the pain and suffering represented. This altarpiece was designed for a monastery whose monks specialized in taking care of people with horrible skin diseases, so the level of grotesqueness they experienced every day was reflected by the main object of their worship. But just when all hope seemed lost, the door sof the altarpiece could be closed and the vision of the Resurrection appears (below).

As with Hunt’s painting The Light of the World, Christ illuminates the world with the light of his redeeming truth, bringing hope into the darkest corners of the world. This is the end of suffering, he is saying to those who believe. There is an end, and it is I.

It is in this message of hope that Grunewald’s altarpiece serves all humanity, regardless of your specific faith (or lack of). Here is what Joseph Campbell called The Power of Myth to lift everyday life out of itself and imbue it with meaning. Christ provides one of the faces of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, playing out the role of the “monomyth,” i.e., the journey of the hero, that each of us must also play.

The pradella, or lower piece of the altarpiece, shows Christ being lowered into his tomb. Grunewald takes this image one step further by placing Christ off to the side, where the separation of the panels gives the illusion of Christ’s legs being amputated, a very real possibility for the patients who would be worshiping before it. In taking this imaginative liberty, Grunewald remains faithful to the Biblical story written long ago while also remaining faithful to the human beings right there in the 16th century. This is a Christ who suffers as we suffer, Grunewald says, not just on a cross long ago but at the end of a surgeon’s saw right now.

Dali’s cosmic Christ was the right Christ for his time, but Grunewald’s Christ of the earth, journeying and suffering alongside those most in need of a friend, a hero, was right for his time as well, and perhaps for ours today. The biggest lesson I’ve learned from this series is that each of these images has something to offer us, regardless of time, place, or creed.

Happy Easter and a solemn Passover to all who believe. Peace to all others.

Images of Christ: Part IV: Salvador Dali, Christ of Saint John of the Cross

Salvador Dali’s Christ of Saint John of the Cross has been one of the most popular religious images of the 20th century. Dismissed by some critics as another of Dali’s show-off virtuoso works, many other viewers find it greatly moving. Dali’s religious paintings have always ranked among my favorites of his work. For me, although this particular painting wasn't there, they were one of the highlights of the 2005 PMA exhibit.

From a theological viewpoint, Dali’s painting is one of the most visceral expressions of Christ as the intermediary between God and humanity, literally hanging between the two worlds. Dali’s crucified Christ wears no crown of thorns in his tossled hair and the nails have been removed. The cross simply floats behind Christ as he looks down on humanity as the divine but in human form. It is a beautiful expression of the incarnation and the resurrection working together, with the gruesome details of the crucifixion removed to show the fullness of the Christ’s transformed humanity and transformation of humanity.

From a non-theological standpoint, Dali’s painting revives the humanism of the Renaissance for the 20th (and, I hope, 21st) century. Christ embodies human physical perfection, a Vitruvian Man from a bird’s eye view, measuring and embracing the span of all human experience. Growing up Catholic with a Catholic school education, I was amazed upon looking up the word “catholic” (little “c”) in a dictionary to find other meanings such as “universal,” “broad minded,” and even “liberal.” This catholic Christ takes in all of life, accepting and tolerating all. Rather than bind Christ to the cross, Dali superimposes the two, freeing both faith and humanism to coexist. Dali’s Christ is large, to paraphrase Walt Whitman, and contains multitudes, reclaiming the humanism of the Renaissance for the post-World War II, post-Hiroshima world. It is the rebirth of the classicism that prompted Terence to say, “I am a human being, and let nothing human be alien to me.” The same inalienable rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” found in The Declaration of Independence soar in this image of peace. “I want to paint a Christ that is a painting with more beauty and joy than have ever been painted before,” Dali explained. He succeeded.

Images of Christ: Part III: Donatello, Lamentation over the Dead Christ

Donatello’s Lamentation over the Dead Christ seems like a work created in a time other than his own. If you didn’t know who sculpted this, you might guess from the roughness of the images that it was an Expressionist sculpture from the early 20th century rather than an Early Renaissance work from the 15th century. You might even see the hand of Rodin in this group sculpture that made me think of The Burghers of Calais when I first saw it, and not the hand that created the smooth, youthful David. What inspired Donatello to create such work so uncharacteristic of his time?

The religious answer would be Donatello’s desire to capture the anguish of the moment after the crucifixion, centering on the Pieta image of the Virgin Mary holding the dead body of Christ as the other figures each deal with their grief in their own unique way. Pieta is Italian for “pity,” deriving from the Latin “pietas,” and it is pity we are asked to feel for the fallen Christ and his suffering family and followers. The pity generated by this nadir of the Christ story is mitigated by the heights of the Resurrection to follow, but Donatello’s expressive working of the figures draws us in to live in this moment of the narrative and not “skip ahead” to the ending and, thus, rob the triumphant climax of the power derived from the struggle before.

This psychological insight gives Donatello’s Lamentation its relevance for non-believers. I remember reading somewhere some psychologist arguing that Rodin’s Burghers each represent one of the different stages of grief. Donatello and Rodin most likely did not have some checklist of grief in mind, but they did have a firm enough innate grasp of psychology to recognize the diversity of grief and to represent it in their sculptures. The consolation offered here comes from the knowledge that others suffer as we do and that grief has a beginning, middle, and end. What that end may be depends on what we believe.

Images of Christ: Part II: William Holman Hunt, The Light of the World

Could you imagine me choosing a less provocative image than Hunt’s painting after yesterday’s Piss Christ? Here are two vastly different images from two vastly different ages, yet both examining the same subject.

William Holman Hunt’s The Light of the World was the darling of the Victorian age. He painted three versions, two in the 1850s and another around 1900. Men would remove their hats in its presence. Schoolchildren would go quiet when entering the gallery where it was hung.

But why does it seem so unsatisfying to modern viewers? I think it’s because it represents a different approach to truth, religious and not, from our own today. Christ in this painting sheds the light of his theological truth on the world, comforting us with the knowledge that our belief will be rewarded, but that comfort seems cold today in light of the violence of our society. Actually, it is not so much the violence that breaks the spell, but our acceptance of that violence. The Victorian age spawned Jack the Ripper, yet was always able to keep a veneer of respectable gentility intact. The Victorian "faith" in the solidity of truth has dissolved in the great relavitity of truth (religious, political, and otherwise) we suffer under today, robbing us of any buffer from the cruelties of our own time. Comfort in religion today seems more desperation than true relief. We see too clearly the reflection in our world of our worse impulses and have grown too used to that reflection.

From a non-theological perspective, I see an icon of truth, Jesus Christ, playing the role of Diogenes of Sinope, the ancient Greek scold who searched with his lamp for an honest man, but in vain. Can we see Christ as a scold in this picture, his expression changed to one of searching rather than comforting? Is this truth (embodied in Christ) searching for honesty as it looks out from a Victorian framework into the 21st century world? In today’s sea of postmodern relativism and political opportunism, concepts such as honesty and truth may have foundered too deep to ever salvage.

(BTW, Hunt turned 180 years old yesterday. Happy Belated Birthday, Bill!)

Images of Christ: Part I: Andres Serrano, Piss Christ

Could you imagine me starting with a stranger image for this series than the infamous Piss Christ by Andres Serrano? Are you offended? Is this too, say, provocative?

(Of course, the only way this could have been more provocative would be if it were made of chocolate. This post and the whole series were written before I or anyone else had ever heard of "My Sweet Lord.")

From a theological perspective, the message of Christianity is meant to be provocative. Serrano’s image could be seen as a modern sweeping clean of the temple, casting out the modern moneychangers, i.e., those who’ve made a commodity of Christ. Robert Hughes in his American Visions points to Piss Christ as the beginning of the culture wars in America, when the American Religious Right tried to dictate what was and was not art. I see Serrano commenting on the very social climate surrounding his art by placing a cheap plastic crucifix in a container of urine and giving it its vulgar title. In that reading, Christ is cheap and plastic, a fake belief system created by those befouling the truth of Christianity with their vulgar prejudices and power-seeking motivations.

I also see Serrano commenting on the reality of death at the moment he made his image. In 1987, the AIDS epidemic was beginning to take hold of the public consciousness. By placing the most iconic image of death (the crucifix) within the modern context of death (bodily fluids), Serrano links the two, taking the message of hope found in the grotesque image of the crucifix and affixing it to the bodily grossness of urine, here acting as a stand-in for AIDS.

But even more important than either of those readings is the ability of this image to provoke those readings. It shocks you out of your quotidian concept of what an image of Christ should be and makes you see it again. Like all good art (and good theology), it makes you think.

Images of Christ: Introduction

Next week is Holy Week for Christians, the week before Easter Sunday. I’ll be posting each day, Monday through Friday, a different image related to Holy Week and musing on it. These images are not necessarily my favorites in that genre (no Michelangelo, for example), but they’re ones I’ve chosen to examine different aspects of Christian iconography and how that imagery impacts our world and reflects our culture, in the past as well as today. As I’ve warned before, I’m of the Irish Catholic persuasion, but I’ll also try to show how there are elements beyond Christianity in these works that touch upon basic humanity, specifically peace, love, and understanding. And what’s so funny about that?