Art and Jesus--His Burial

The Deposition, 1435, Mathias Grunewald,

Entombment of Christ, 1450,
Rogier van der Weyden

The story of Jesus Christ did not end with his crucifixion, either in the gospel accounts or in the visual images provided us by artists. Within hours of his death, the body was taken down from the cross. In 1435, Germany's Mathias Grunewald, as he did with so many other moments in the life of Jesus, depicted this effort with his usual intimate, gruesome honesty in his Deposition (above). A few years later, in 1450, one of his countrymen, Rogier van der Weyden painted a similar scene titled The Entombment of Christ (left). In that they are closely related as to style and content, together the two paintings provide an almost moment-by-moment narrative of the mournful aftermath following Jesus' crucifixion.



Christ Carried from the Tomb,
1560, Tintoretto

Entombment, ca. 1500,
Michelangelo

Michelangelo, about 1500, also began, but did not complete, his version of the event (above, right). As we've seen before in the work of Tintoretto, his depiction, Christ Carried to the Tomb, (above, left) is a darkly dramatic scene full of mannerist diagonals and complex masses.

Descent from the Cross, 1611-14, Peter Paul Rubens

Descent from the Cross,
1634, Rembrandt.

Peter Paul Rubens' Descent from the Cross (above) from 1611-14, portrays in great detail the difficulty in handling the awkward weight of a dead body by Jews adverse to even touching it. The altarpiece was painted for the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp, Belgium. Rembrandt's version by the same title (left), dating from 1634, is similar but much darker and less highly populated with struggling figures. He painted a second version around 1652.

My own depiction, The Burial (bottom) borrows elements from both the descent from the cross and various depictions of the burial. It is no less realistic (I'm told the flesh tone is exactly right for a dead body). However, the use of only the arms and lower bodies of Jesus' attendants avoids the distraction of so many faces, figures, and background.



Copyright, Jim Lane

The Burial, 1999, Jim Lane

Joy Garnett

Castle Bravo, 1998, Joy Garnett (from the Bomb Project).

Joy Garnett, 2013

Can human tragedy or catastrophic natural events be the source or artistic beauty? Is an artist permitted to take a photo from a newspaper, magazine, or the Internet and use it as the basis for a work of art? If you're like most people, even most artists, you would probably hedge your answers to both questions with a thoughtful "that depends." Of course, that's no answer at all but simply begs more questions, principally, "on what?" And when pressed, that's where everything gets complicated, murky, legalistic, even criminal. Those are both questions posed by painter Joy Garnett (left) through her work. Joy is among the very few artist younger than I am whom I have written about. She was born in 1965. I'm not in the business of making or breaking the careers of living artists. Moreover, whatever you or I think of her work is not the point. It's the questions raised by her work that make this attractive young artist important.

Plume 2, 2005, Joy Garnett--powerful, dynamic, beauty or horrible death and destruction?

The first question is relatively easy when it comes to the "on what" part. Creating beauty from catastrophic or tragic events depends mostly on the skill of the artist, both technically and intellectually. Garnett's Castle Bravo (top) depicts a nuclear detonation based upon government photos obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. I guess if you like really "hot" colors you could call it beautiful, but only if you can divorce the painting itself from the image content. Nuclear weapons would not be deemed "beautiful" in any sane subjective context. Garnett's Plume 2 (above) presents a different dilemma. That's not one tornado but appears to be three or four, and they're not "test tornado." People are dying. The lives and livelihoods of those not killed are, nonetheless, being destroyed, given the damage such "plumes" leave in their wakes. Can, and perhaps more importantly, should artists and viewers attempt to separate the painting from its content? Should artists even create such work? Is it morally obnoxious? Is the freedom of expression claimed by artists broad enough to encompass such works? If you look at art history, the answer has to be, yes. Artists have been painting human tragedies since the first painting of Eve biting into the apple. However, few have tried to make such works into things of beauty. Beauty being in the "eye of the beholder" probably makes that a moot question.


Rise, After Bosch (Superdome), 2006, Joy Garnett. Here, the two questions meet.

It's in Garnett's Rise, After Bosch (Superdome) (above) from 2006, that the two questions posed at the top begin to meet. Though noticeably short on the intensely colorful, eye-catching "beauty" seen in the other two works, there is a sort of poignant beauty, knowing as we do the story of human suffering that occurred in this massive "shelter" and in seeing it deserted, the sun rising, shining down on the wreckage representing the hope of a new day. Beyond that though, this painting, is based upon a, no doubt copyrighted, news photo. What Garnett has done rests on the legal concept called "fair use." I've not seen the original photo but I'm guessing she did not use the entire photo, probably didn't replicate the original colors (it's pretty drab and low-contrast for that to have been the case). It's obviously an Expressionistic piece, making no attempt whatsoever to actually copy the photo, and in all likelihood changing it significantly as to size. She no doubt left out details and perhaps even adding some on her own. In other words, she's probably safe from a lawsuit.

Molotov, 2003, Joy Garnett
(from the "Riot" exhibition)

That wasn't the case in 2003 when Garnett posted her painting Molotov (left) on her Website. It hadn't been there very long before Joy got a nasty little letter from lawyers representing photojournalist, Susan Meiselas, demanding she "cease and desist" and threatening a lawsuit if she didn't. The painting was based upon a news photo taken by Meiselas during the Nicaraguan Sandinista Revolution (left) in 1979. Caution being the better part of good sense, Joy removed the image from her Website. Though Meiselas had originally demanded Garnett transfer all rights to the painting, once it was removed online, the matter was not pursued.



The original Meiselas photo used by Garnett.

Interesting story, but it doesn't end there. A rogue Internet Website, which had been following the controversy, posted the offending image and soon the were dozens of others doing the same, some mirroring Joy Arnett's entire Web page as it had been before she removed the painting. Some years before there had been a big copyright infringement battle between eToys.com and another site, eToy, which came to be called the "Toywar." Joy's case was dubbed, "Joywar." In little more than a week, Joy found her cause (and her painting) had spread to protesting Websites around the world. Sometime later, Susan Meiselas and Joy Garnett met face to face at a conference dealing with the legal problems of fair use. Their differences had to do with context. Meiselas objected to the historic context of her photo being stripped away while Garnet argued that one artist should not seek to censor another using copyright laws. As can be seen above, the painting did not utilize the entire Meiselas photo and omitted background details, its cropping serving to create a totally new structural composition. There was no lawsuit; Meiselas neither lost nor gained financially from the whole affair.

Shepard Fairey's Hope poster based on the AP photo at left
--significant changes, but not significant enough to avoid legal "hot water."

Joy Garnett was not the first artist to become enmeshed is such legal entanglement. A New York street artist named Shepard Fairey nearly went to jail as a result of his Hope poster painting of Barack Obama derived from an Associated Press news photo he'd "Photo-shopped" as the basis for a well-known campaign poster. Though such cases would normally be limited to civil suits, Fairey's sin was that of anticipating such a lawsuit and destroying the photographic working papers he'd used in creating the painting. That's called destroying evidence. A plea agreement allowed him to avoid jail time but cost him $25,000 in fines and 300 hours of community service. The civil case was settled out of court.

Air Strip, 2003, Joy Garnett--the joy of Joy.

 

Thomas Gambier Parry

Thomas Gambier Parry's angelic decoration high up in the lantern
of the Octagon Tower of England's Ely Cathedral

Artists seldom become wealthy. More often, if they have money, they've inherited it. This often causes them to fit into a peculiar class of artists, not beholden to clients or public acceptance of their work. Paul Cezanne fell into this group. The same could be said of Impressionist Frederick Bazille, Edouard Manet, and Gustave Caillebotte, to name just a few, all of whom were French. Across the channel in England we might include John Constable, Peter Tillemans, and Joshua Reynolds in such a group. However, a British artist who perhaps best fits this category is Thomas Gambier Parry (a name which should be hyphenated but isn't).



Highnan Court and gardens, ancestral home of the Gambier-Parry family.

Thomas Gambier Parry ca. 1850

The Gambier Parry family fortune derived from the artist's father and grandfather who had both been directors of British East India Company. Thomas was born in 1816 in the Surrey region of England. Both his parents died when Thomas was quite young, causing him to be raised by two aunts from his mother's family (the Gambiers). He was educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he apparently studied art, though there seems to be little or no mention of his art training in any biography I could find. However, in judging his work, I can see little evidence of his being self-taught. In any case, at the age of twenty-one, he purchased his own country manor house, Highnam Court (above) in Gloucestershire. He spent the rest of his life (he died in 1888) restoring it and creating an appropriately English garden setting for his estate and the nearby village.

 

Gambier Parry's Church of the Holy Innocents, 1849-51,
Highnan, Gloucestershire, England--tall, slender, and quick.

In 1839, Thomas Gambier Parry married Anna Maria Isabella Fynes-Clinton, the daughter of an English historian and writer. They had six children but only two survived childhood. In 1848, Isabella Gambier Parry died of tuberculosis shortly after childbirth. Wishing to properly memorialize his beloved wife (and later their deceased children), the wealthy landowner and artist hired architect Henry Woodyer and ordered the construction of a parish church for the nearby community of Highnam, which he called, The Church of the Holy Innocents. Never in the history of English churches of any size did such a Gothic structure go up so fast--a mere twenty-one months (followed shortly thereafter by a parish house and a school). Once the church was finish, Gambier Parry set about decorating the interior himself with frescoes.

 

Thomas Gambier Parry' highly decorated Gothic frescoes, Church of the Innocents.

The nave of the Church of the Holy
Innocents. Gambier Parry's fresco
(above) is just above the arch.

It is for these Frescoes which Thomas Gambier Parry is most well known as an artist. And while they are quite beautiful, it was not so much what he painted as how. In general, England tends to be too damp and humid for true frescoes to survive their usual centuries of carbonatated beauty. Therefore, perhaps forever marking himself as a better chemist than painter, Thomas Gambier Parry invented a new kind of Fresco painting, not too unlike what Leonardo da Vinci had unsuccessfully attempted during the Renaissance.

 

There was nothing simple about it. Gambier Parry combined with his pigments a spirit medium for use on specially prepared plaster or canvas ground. Originally it used beeswax, Spike lavender oil, lavender, turpentine, elemi resin and copal varnish. It was quite a complex ordeal both in preparing the wall surface and applying the paint. In 1862 Gambier Parry published his recipe. Once the technique of painting with such a noxious mixture became popular with other artists, the whole process was simplified as it became commercialized. Later, Gambier Parry painted six large sections of the vault of Ely Cathedral using his successful concoction.

 

The Strand block of London's Somerset House, which today houses the
Courtauld Institute of Art and Thomas Gambier Parry's former art
collection, was once the home of Britain's Royal Academy of Art. 

Quite apart from his limited portfolio of church decoration, and his novel paint chemistry, having great wealth has tended to overshadow Gambier Parry, the artist. Besides becoming a very generous philanthropist he was also a very astute expert on Medieval and Renaissance art history, all of which was reflected in his highly refined collection of such art. Today, his collection is part of the that of the Courtauld Institute of Art housed in the Strand block of London's massive Somerset House overlooking the Thames. The institute is the place to go for students wishing a degree in art history and also the place to go for anyone else simply wanting to see art history (mostly Italian) at its finest. Thomas Gambier Parry married a second time and fathered a second family of six children, all of whom survived into adulthood. Several of Thomas Gambier Parry's sons made notable contributions to the fine arts in the areas of music, painting, writing, and architecture. This later generation has also had the good sense to insert a proper British hyphen in between the family names.

Highnan's Church of the Holy Innocents makes a beautiful
central focus for the estate's English gardens.

 

The New Woman



A Storms Approaching, 2012, Sally Edelstein

Women in the Arts

Many, whom we might term "history challenged," tend to think of "The Feminist Movement" sometimes termed the "Women's Movement," or in slang, "Women's Lib," as a product of the 1970s when female baby boomers came of age and hit the streets in mass numbers. Even many women today think in terms of such a limited perspective. Those giving the matter a bit more thought might hearken back to the "Women's Suffrage Movement" in the U.S. which resulted in women gaining the right to vote in 1920. But so-called "Women's Rights" did not just happen overnight. Though there was some American movement in that direction during the late 1800s, mostly it all began to take shape after the turn of the century. The year 1900 is a convenient place to start. In terms of the arts, there had long been women artists, always painting in the shadow of their male counterparts and hardly even noted by art historians until it became socially incumbent upon them to do so in the past fifty years. Although women from all walks of life and virtually all professions (with the possible exception of urologists) had a part in this revolution, it's safe to say women artists were in the forefront demanding gender equality.

 

Wilhelmina Weber Furlong ca. 1910

I think this is a painting by Wilhelmina
Weber Furlong, but the signature is
indistinct and her work is virtually
invisible on line.

Working women in the field of illustration such as Jennie Augusta Brownscombe, Jessie Wilcox Smith, Rose O'Neill, Elizabeth Shippen Green, and Violet Oakley often found themselves manning the battle lines during this period. Of course the "war" didn't end with the ratification of the 19th Amendment. Two real wars had an impact as well. Any number of women painters could be cited as having been important in trying to gain for their gender an equal standing in the arts. One in particular, Wilhelmina Weber Furlong stands apart from the others. She was the wife of Thomas Furlong, who was an unexceptional Realist painter of murals born in 1886, making him eight years younger than his wife (born in 1878). Both were active with New York's Art Students League where Wilhelmina had been a student during the 1890s. Her husband taught at New York University.
 

Jackson Pollock and wife, Lee Krasner, another Modernist couple from the early days.

Weber Furlong (as she came to be known) further stands apart as an artists because of her affiliation with the American Modernist movement, first Impressionism, then Expressionism, and finally, after the death of her husband in 1952, Abstract Expressions. As anyone familiar with the New York School before and after its rise to prominence in the postwar era knows, it was (especially in the early, formative years) overwhelmingly, unabashedly, exceedingly, excessively MALE. There were a few exceptions, especially among the second generation of the movement (above), but in the beginning, Weber Furlong was pretty much alone. Her impact and influence was not so much in what she painted but in what she taught...for fifty-six years. She and her husband established an artist colony in upstate New York in 1921 near Bolton Landing, which they called Golden Heart Farm (below). There they entertained the likes of John Graham, Willem de Kooning, David Smith, Dorothy Dehner, Jean Charlot, Edward Hopper, Alexander Calder, Rockwell and Sally Kent, Thomas Hart Benton, Allen Tucker, Max Weber (no relation), and Kimon Nicolaidies. Artists came and went. Some taught, some were taught. Weber Furlong died in 1962, as did her Bolton Landing artists' colony. Nonetheless, the Furlong's Golden Heart Farm was what we might call the "incubator" for the Modernist movement in the U.S.


Thomas and Weber Furlong's Golden Heart Farm, 1921, Bolton Landing, New York

 

Art and Jesus--The Crucifixion

The Crucifixion, ca. 1300, Giotto



Crucifix, ca. 1200, Master Guglielmo

Undoubtedly, the most powerful image from the life of Jesus Christ is that of his crucifixion. Yet strangely, artists were fairly late picking up on the death of Christ, despite it's crucial importance in Christian doctrine. In fact the earliest graphic depiction of the crucifixion was in the form of anti-Christian graffiti (below, right). It wasn't until around the year 1200 that artists such as Guglielmo began to explore Christ crucified as in his crudely painted crucifix from that period (left).



The Alexamenos Graffito, 2/3rd c.
CE, tracing of the drawing

The Medieval artist Giotto, around 1300 (top), was one of the earliest to evoke the pathos of this theretofore unspeakable act of torture in fresco (painting on wet plaster). Though highly decorated, with angels swarming like gnats, the saints, donors., and royalty at the bottom add a certain contemporary poignancy to the scene. His Crucifix of Maria Novella in Florence (below, left), is closely related to the fresco.

 



Crucifix of Santa Maria Novella,
1290-1300, Giotto di Bondone

Holy Trinity, 1425, Masaccio

Masaccio's Holy Trinity fresco (right) dating from 1425, while depicting the crucifixion, goes beyond that to explore the relationship of God the Father, Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit to Christian worshippers (depicted at the bottom).

 

Crucifixion, 1455-60, Andrea Mantegna

Christ on the Cross, 1541, Michelangelo

A generation later, around 1455-60, the Italian artist, Andrea Mantegna (above), was one of the first to paint the crucifixion in oil in this rather garishly colored altarpiece. About a hundred years later in 1541, the great Michelangelo tried his hand at depicting Christ on the Cross (left). The head seems too small.



Crucifixion with Centurion, 1538, 
Lucas Cranach (the elder).

By the 16th century the crucifixion had become a standard item in most artists' repertoire, though it remained a difficult subject to embrace. Some artists were not as successful as others, as seen in the work of Lucas Cranach (the elder), and his ineptly rendered, totally unscriptural Crucifixion with Centurion (left), which adds an almost comic element to the scene.

Isenheim Altarpiece Crucifixion, 1510-15, Mathias Grunewald

By the same token, the German artist, Matthias Grunewald moves to the opposite extreme in his excruciatingly detailed, melodramatic image. The work is the central panel of the famous Isenheim altarpiece (above) from around 1512. His style is typical of northern Renaissance artists.

Crucifixion, 1622, Anthony van Dyck

Christ on the Cross with the two
Marys and St. John, El Greco

The Baroque artist Anthony van Dyck (above, left), painting in 1622, was among the first to give us the naturalistic image of Christ's death, to which we've become much more accustomed. Yet, at about the same time, the Spanish artist, El Greco (above right), renders a much more spiritual, more stylized depiction.

The Crucifixion of Christ, Tintoretto
 

The Crucifixion, 1632,
Diego Velasquez

We've looked at the work of the Mannerist painter, Tintoretto, earlier and here we see that his Crucifixion (above), though perhaps quite accurate, is every bit as darkly dramatic as his Last Supper. Mary and John are seen at the far left. What appears to be an entire Roman legion fills the background.

The Spanish artist, Diego Velasquez moves to the opposite extreme in his straight-forward, highly simplified, 1632 depiction of The Crucifixion (left). Rembrandt, on the other hand, though also Dutch, is much more subdued in his handling of the very same subject (below, left). The figure in the background wearing a turban is Rembrandt himself, who, because of his sins, is symbolically taking responsibility for Christ's death. Far more Baroque, the Dutch artist, Peter Paul Rubens overwhelms us with brute force in his muscular Raising of the Cross (below, right), also dating from the early 1600s.




Crucifixion, 1633, Rembrandt, includes
a self-portrait in the background.

Raising of the Cross (center panel),
1610-11, Peter Paul Rubens

Flagellation, 1880, Bouguereau,
Active violence was more "Romantic."

Sketch of Christ on the Cross,
1845, Delacroix.

Pieta, 1876, Gustave Moreau

During the 1700s, religious painting, and thus crucifixions, took a rest. The subject was hardly suited to the frivolous, light-hearted Rococo style of this era. But with the advent of the Classical style in the early 1800s, we find French artists such as Bouguereau not only returning to the subject but depicting the crucifixion in brutal, almost photographic detail. His Flagellation (above, left) from 1880, is not actually a crucifixion but an even more actively violent depiction of an event occurring hours earlier. By mid-century, with the coming of the Romantic era, the French artist Eugene Delacroix gives us a much more heartfelt oil sketch, seemingly done at the foot of the cross during the event itself (above, right). Gustave Moreau's Pieta (left, Mary with the body of Christ) also from the Romantic era around 1876, though not a crucifixion, is much in the same vein.

White Crucifixion, 1938, Marc Chagall

The 20th century brought us Modern Art. The crucifixion was hardly a mainstay of this era but it's not without highly individual renderings such as Russian artist, Marc Chagall's White Crucifixion (above) dating from 1938. He depicts Jesus against a background of anti-Semite violence. Interestingly, Chagall was Jewish.

Crucifixion, 1954, Salvador Dali

Christ of St. John on the Cross,
 1951, Salvador Dali

During the 1950s, the Spanish surrealist artist, Salvador Dali took the crucifixion and made it his own as seen in his Crucifixion, (above, left) from 1954 as seen in his own brand of exquisitely rendered, strangely supernatural Surrealism. Perhaps his most powerful piece, Christ of St. John on the Cross (above, right), gives us a "God's eye" view of Christ's suffering. Whether with paint on canvas or on paper, Dali explored the crucifixion  like no other artist before or since. From the same point of view, the famous Riker's Island Crucifixion (below), was donated by the artist in 1965 after he had to cancel a lecture and demonstration there. For many years, it was displayed in the New York City prison.

Riker's Island Crucifixion, 1965, Salvador Dali