the ridiculous painting

I've posted this painting before, pictured here in my old Decatur studio. It now is on the wall in our living room. I had drawn this type of praying figure before, and when I painted it I initially had it in a mandala of flame. I wanted to leave off detail from the figure, giving it a reference to the wax sculptures of Medardo Rosso. I painted this in the spring around the time of Pentecost, and so orange on a blue background relates to a Pentecost banner I'd painted for my church back in Covington. I added lilies and various other flowery references, and a speckled snake - a fantastic creature that refers to no animal in nature. Note that I painted our cat, Cleo, into the painting - as well as a bunny. Note also the black cat painted onto my studio wall. Note as well the word "paint" painted onto the paint on my studio wall. The band of stars refers to Velesquez's painting of the Immaculate Conception. The crescent moon refers to Turkey and French pastry. When I finished this painting, I realized that its iconographic program was so tendentious and overwrought that it was indeed ridiculous.

Every presbytery is a peculiar institution

Today I went to my first presbytery meeting here in NC. As a minister I'm a corresponding member. I can't vote, but I'm recognized. I am still looking for a call here, something I can slip into. Our friend Joey was welcomed into the presbytery at the church in Smithfield, where they'll pay him in sausage and hams. On the stain glass window there Jesus is crucified between two brauts - one of the brauts will be in paradise that day, but the braut that remains is wurst for it. One braut looks at Jesus and says, "We're in a pickle now." The other peppered his speech with ,"I'm not relishing this." "I'm not going to grill you, " Jesus basted - remembering how he and Mary 'ad'n ate some beer battered franks the other day. This window is quite a scene: Jesus, the two brauts, the chorus of angel franks, the sea of relish, the clouds of mustard - the eschatological banquet, complete with doves stuffed with truffles, capers, cherries, with rivers of sauer kraut and lakes of beer, with mountains of rye bread, corned beef aplenty, pigs, geese, cows, fish, chicken, quail, ptarmingan. Cheese and peppers and chips and salsa and hot wings gamboling freely along the table; beers dark and amber and red and pale and brown, chocolatey and berryish and smooth; cheeses soft and hard and crumbly and sharp and mild, with peppers and nuts and wine. And all we come a cross here in this window, this image, this icon. A vision of the heavenly host, a peach tart in chocolate, swells before our eyes and transports us in rapture to a blessed realm where death is swallowed up in victory followed by a nice aperitif, a port or a glass of sherry. At this point we repair to the billiard room and knock some spheres celestial on the green felt fabric of time; we bank our shots and pocket our yearnings, and caroming we go, taking our cues and pooling our resources, cushioning our blows from snookering each other, seemingly without break. Then swinging back in a wing back a thing back in the summer sack we find a knack and cram a stack pan caked and fried our bacon homed and buttered a tale of olden times there not remembered again but spoken a token and folksy trappings extended a trio broke and windowed. Then it's time and time and half a time. But something may be put up in the kitchen, so you stumble back - who broughts a pretzel? who spied a scake? who scaled a fish? And music lofts from throats of the quire triumphant hops and barley sound tapped in harmonious keg, a barrel vault rolling called up yonder. When? Time shall be know'd more. When? The mawning breaks eee-tunnel bride and fair. When? The strummed pet of the Lord shall sound upon that otter sure. When? The called is roll dipped rejoinder eel bee deer. And that's what I stumbled down here for, the octopus salad we had last night. Just enough greens and the octopus sliced and cooked tender, not rubbery - as Christ was between too rubberys in the window. He squid and suctioned limbs, incrimina invertabrate, a trinity of hearts and beakered ink a jet made whiter than any lesser fuller might fill. In an octopus's garden in the shade.
That's all I have got right now.

a fine statue of the madonna at Agnes Scott

I enjoy finding art in odd places. This sculpture of the Madonna is tucked in the back of the art building, under some trees. I'm embarrassed that I don't know if you clean granite or let it develop a patina of pollution. I think that the marble statues of Rome and Athens have the pollution cleansed off. Still this is a good piece of work. Leo Steinberg, a famous art historian at U Penn wrote a book called the Sexuality of Jesus Christ in Renaissance art and modern oblivion. In this book he wrote about how important for an understanding of the incarnation that Jesus' penis be displayed. This sculpture makes me think of that work - a wonderful work and I wish that I had a copy of it. Our library at Columbia should have it, but the development of theology in terms of iconography and the history of art is ignored. There's a little bit - acquired haphazardly through gifts mostly. Last summer when Catherine Kapekian gave a seminar on art in the Church and worship, I had some hope, but now the topic seems lost. Still what do I know. I gladly encourage anyone who works to bring art and music into the conversation of theological and spiritual development in a central way - not in terms of mimesis, illustration, or program, but as disciplines that allow a unique approach to God, where the text is the image. It takes some training in iconography, in symbols, a willingness to be open to poetic and allusional modes of dialog, taking some of the privilege away from the verbal and written. As I read in an issue of Journal of New Testament Studies, it is important to recall that the original message of the gospel was not written but spoken, and that the word was performative: both speaker and audience negotiating the word's meaning, dependent on each other. Here on Agnes Scott's campus is a performative word, that Christ was incarnate as any other baby, frail as any other male, and that Mary was like any other woman, any other mother, and that God's strength is displayed for humans through God as human in weakness and cruciformity, and it is this life and cruciformity that we are called to enter into and participate in.

Remember your baptism

This relief was in the Chapel at Duke. I think it must be Jesus baptizing, since the figure pouring water from a scallop shell is holding a cross. Iconography is an interesting pursuit. Paul is always carrying a sword; Peter is followed by a rooster; Mary Magdalene cavorts with her alabaster jar. I think John the Baptizer carries a lamb - or it could be I'm conflating that from the Isenheim altarpiece, where John is pointing at christ on the cross and the lamb underneath is bleeding into a cup, or I could be conflating that from van Eyck's Ghent altarpiece. I think John has a lamb in Sint James painting of John the Baptist in the wilderness. Iconography makes things complicated: imagine a space where Catherine is with her wheel, Barbara with her tower, and St. Lawrence with his grill and St. Jerome with his lion all crowd together in a line at Kroger, with their buggies filled with food and odd items like batteries. Catherine, as usual, doesn't quite have exact change. It's about time for Jerome's lion to go to work.
Today we're in need of new iconography. Lions, wheels, swords - these symbols have lost their charge; plus other people need iconographic programs to trail along after them, wayward thought balloons. I propose a project for a revised iconographic emblemata for a new millennium.