Unpublished
The most notorious of recent acquisitions is Damien Hirst’s diamond studded 18 th century human skull, which he mockingly entitled For the Love of God and sold for $100 million. His obsession with Christian themes was shown in his most cruel and cynical work of all, where he encased a dead lamb in formaldehyde and called it Away from the Flock. Later on, he used thousands of dead butterflies trying to mimic the splendour of stained glass windows. Hirst’s anti-Christian death-filled crusade, replete with a child’s skull and a crucifix encrusted with pain-killer pills, continues with his latest exhibition “New Religion” currently showing with the 2007 Venice Biennial.
Hirst’s style didn’t rise out of a vacuum. A rundown of the 18 th to the late 20 th century paitners shows that Biblical artists have been veering away from traditional painting and Biblical truth for several centuries now. And both deviances are closely linked. Possibly the earliest example of this divergence starts with William Blake, who was more of an illustrator than a painter. In his most telling illustrative Book of Job, where he presents his own version of the story, Blake’s Jehovah becomes an elevated form of Job himself, and Satan is an abstracted phenomenon whose main fault is an over-reasoning mind. God is morphing into the human, and Satan starts to leave the picture.
Georges Rouault was a prolific Biblical painter of the modernist period between the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries. His enigmatic works somewhat make up for his crude painting style. He painted many heads of Christ with forlorn downcast eyes or face as though overwhelmed by the multitudinous downtrodden, another major theme of Rouault’s paintings. There is a Biblical tradition where mere humans speak up on the behalf of the sufferers, but Rouault elevates himself to God’s height with his even-tempered and relentless admonishments of the Lord’s mysterious ways. To have that as one’s primary outlook is to blaspheme just a little.
Mother and deceased child themes abound in Käthe Kollwitz’s ungainly but affecting drawings and prints, who studied primarily to be a draftsman. Her 1933 sculpture Mother with Her Dead Son tackles Rouault’s dilemma from the other side, where Christ comes down to her level. The sculpture depicts a male figure in a desolate fetal-like position engulfed in the folds of the female’s dress, and is appropriately placed in the Berlin Neue Wache Memorial for victims of war and fascism. Kollwitz adds “ Pietà ” to her title almost as an afterthought. Her sculpture is only incidentally attached to the Bible, and the redemptive and positive element of Christianity is lost in Kollwitz’s depressing art.
George Segal’s 1971 plaster cast sculpture (as opposed to the more skill-requiring carving) of Abraham's Farewell to Ishmael has Abraham holding the dismissed Ishmael in a prolonged and emotional embrace. Yet in Abraham and Isaac, he stands distant while brandishing a knife in front of a pleading Isaac. Once again, the Biblical story is inverted and Ishmael is placed at a higher plane than Isaac. This is an especially prophetic piece, indicative of our era embroiled in the Isaac/Ishmael epic struggle. When Biblical stories are perverted, reality is sure to follow suit.
Biblical commentary from Blake to Segal was slowly turning into a revision of those stories to meet man’s level, as artists themselves were slowly denouncing craftsmanship in their art. God was being removed from his higher realm and replaced by humanistic interpretations. Mothers mourn the unfair deaths of their children and fathers rebel against the choices they have to make between their sons as Christianity was reduced to sympathy with the oppressed and victimized. God’s commands become questionable, and whatever evil may exist is drowned with empathy and undistinguished artistic interpretations.
At least these artists took the Biblical stories seriously. The current inferior crop, especially starting in the early 1990s, have closed the circle with their full-blown cynicism and contempt of anything to do with the Bible and with art. From Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ to Chris Ofili’s dung covered The Holy Virgin Mary, artistic craftsmanship has degenerated so much that it is a wonder that none of them have been struck down with lightening, and instead keep receiving their regular hundreds of thousands. Their rebellion has paid off for now, but for how long can they hope to keep up their barren art?
Yet they only appear rebellious. There are others who are truly defiant. The classical realism painters of the 20 th century formed The American Society for Classical Realism in 1989 protesting the existing art styles. They believe in reviving painting through artistic craftsmanship and beauty and their art has providentially merged with genuine Biblical pieces. Kirk Richards’s 1990 The Way of Suffering has an alert and undeniable Jesus holding his own cross. And Stephen Gjertson’s 2001 masterly The Hem of His Garment sells on his website for $7,500 while a reprint of his 22” by 28” Peace Be Still goes for $115. These artsits still remain relatively unrecognized in the current art world.
But those that are really under the art world’s radar, like the late Warren Sallman, are the ones who’ve managed to disseminate their hopeful paintings with infinite reproductions. For a mere $19, anyone can join the 500 million faithful, and acquire a print of Sallman’s 1941 luminous Head of Christ. The original fittingly rests in Andersen University, a Christian institution, where the hungry hands of art speculators cannot reach it. Fortunately, Hirst’s and his company’s productions are not amenable for reprints since the whole idea of their “art” is the outrageous or controversial original. In the end, the dust will settle, and the truthful and beautiful paintings will come out. They are already starting to do so.