"Marcus Reichert (1948 - ) is a painter and a poet who has also worked
in film. He was given his first exhibition of paintings at the age of twenty-one
at the legendary Gotham Book Mart and Art Gallery, New York, home to the
Surrealists during WWII. In 1990, he was honoured with a retrospective organised
by the Hatton Gallery of the University of Newcastle which toured in various
forms to Glasgow, London, Paris, and the United States. His Crucifixion paintings have been described by Richard Harries, the Bishop of Oxford, as being
among the most disturbing painted in the 20th Century ..."
"Exhibited at Canterbury Cathedral (1999) and Winchester Cathedral (1999-2000),
these massive paintings confront one with what Sister Wendy Beckett has called
their terribilita ... Reichert's Crucifixions command the viewer's attention not only with
their depiction of the magnitude of Christ's agony but also with the eloquence
of their painterly qualities. The American critic Donald Kuspit has written that
both Picasso's and Bacon's Crucifixions, in their singular lack of commitment to
the subject, pale when compared with Reichert's. Kuspit writes: 'The image of an
isolated human being in the process of being annihilated by the world and his
own anxiety is one that speaks to every person in our anomic society. What
makes Reichert's crucified Christ modern is his angry incomprehension at his
suffering.'"
Reichert has written: "As a subject to paint, the Crucifixion has preoccupied me since I was
eleven years old. I should explain that my father was a painter and I began
painting with oils when I was just eight. It was not until 1990, when I was
forty-two, that I felt wholly compelled to begin work on the Crucifixion. For
me, the question will always be: to what extremes is one willing to go to
express the agony -- physical, psychological, and spiritual. No one knows what
Jesus suffered. We do know however that such a death is the ultimate expression
of man's cruelty. The anxiety and despair of being subjected to such forms of
torture and annihilation at the hands of one's fellow human beings is nearly
beyond comprehension. Although it is impossible to truly express such suffering,
this was my intention."
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Gary Cherone - Difference.
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