The Crucifixion in American Art - Part 2

A recent post focused on artists included in The Crucifixion in American Art by Robert Henkes. This book 'features artists living and working in America from the mid-18th to the 21st century who depicted the crucifixion of Christ in their artwork.'

Abraham Rattner is one such and in his book on Rattner's art, The Spiritual Art of Abraham Rattner, Henkes mentions other American artists known for painting the Crucifixion that were not included in the later book. These are:

• David Aronson received an education from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, under Karl Zerbe, and began teaching at Boston University in 1955 where he was invited to direct the emerging Fine Art Department. In 1962 Aronson was appointed as a tenured professor and taught up until his retirement in 1989. Aronson daringly combined religious symbolism with figurative expressionism, capturing universal human emotions through his striking representations of Biblical allegories. Some of Aronson's media includes oil pastel, bronze casting, and pencil on paper. Known worldwide as an influential Boston Expressionist, a variety of his work is represented in over forty public collections. See here.
• Jonah Kinigstein was an artist who worked in the scorched earth tradition of such 18th- and 19th-century cartoonists as James Gillray, George Cruikshank, and Joseph Keppler, and embraced their somewhat rococo pen and ink technique as well as their penchant to exaggerate the grotesque. In the 1990s, he used to paste his cartoons to the sides of buildings in SoHo in the 1990s, eliciting a variety of responses. He was also an accomplished painter. See here and here.
• Fred Nagler was best known for his oil paintings on religious subjects. He also did wood carvings. His works were exhibited from the 1930's at the Midtown Galleries in Manhattan. His paintings and drawings are in many private collections, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City and at Southern Methodist, Vanderbilt and Temple Universities. Nagler was a serial prizewinner and considered by this peers a painter's painter. After graduating from the Art Students League in New York City, he focused his attention on liturgical subject matter. His paint handling style and pallet are reminiscent to the works of Marc Chagall. See here.
• William Pachner’s "major themes in the years that followed were the crucifixion, motherhood, and the embrace. He saw these not as specific incidents but as universal expressions of the deepest human emotions. As the interpretation of these themes grew broader, Pachner’s style became more ambiguous. Figures dissolved almost beyond recognition, with only the emotional gesture remaining.” ELIHU EDELSON (March 18, 1961) See here.

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John Tavener - Darkness Into Light.

The Crucifixion in American Art

The Crucifixion in American Art by Robert Henkes 'features artists living and working in America from the mid-18th to the 21st century who depicted the crucifixion of Christ in their artwork. The 19th century saw painters like Julian Russell Story, John Singer Sargent, Vassili Verestchagin and Fred Holland break from the Renaissance tradition of the 18th century to begin a religious art revolution. The 20th century saw painters like Thomas Eakins and George Bellows continuing the traditions of the 19th until the Realist style became dominant, which lasted until the latter part of the century and the rise of Abstract Expressionism and a number of experimental styles such as Op, Pop, and Super-realism.'

Of the artists featured in the book about whom I have yet to post here are the following:

• John J. A. Murphy made a name for himself as a dynamic illustrator and artist. Printmaker and painter, wood engraver and book-maker, Murphy studied at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Art Students League. He moved to London to be painter Frank Brangwyn's assistant before serving in the camouflage section of the Army Corps of Engineers in France and illustrating posters during WWI. He returned to New York in 1921. A full set of his Way of the Cross wood engravings can be seen on the website of the Art Institute of Chicago.
• 'Bror Julius Olsson Nordfeldt came to America from Sweden when he was thirteen. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, working for a Swedish newspaper before and after his classes in order to make money. He made several trips to Europe and, like many other Chicago painters, settled for a while in New Mexico, where he was part of the Santa Fe group Los Cinco Pintores (The Five Painters). He made prints as well as paintings, and developed a new technique of woodblock printing that allowed multiple colors to be transferred in just one impression. Toward the end of his life, he believed that painting should be stripped down to semi-abstract shapes or ​“idea-bones” in order to express emotion, and created dreamlike compositions of religious figures, birds, and landscapes.' 'In 1921, Nordfeldt and his wife observed the re-enactment of the Passion of Christ during Holy Week. The dramatic ceremony left a strong impression on Nordfeldt, inspiring a series of etchings and paintings including Crucifixion with Birds.'
• William H. Johnson said. “My aim is to express in a natural way what I feel both rhythmically and spiritually—all that has been saved up in my family of primitiveness and tradition, and which is now concentrated in me.” 'Drawing on African American culture and history, as well as African lore, he executed several series of paintings that featured religious subjects, political themes, the rural South, and the modern military.' Amy K. Hamlin 'suggests that Johnson chose the subject of the dead Christ in response to the increased number of lynchings in the United States during the interwar period.'
• Romare Bearden 'achieved early success through his series The Passion of Christ, based on the gospels of Matthew and Mark... Whether Bearden shows us a street scene, an image of people in church or at play, a family at home (such as The Woodshed, 1970.19) or in a lush tropical landscape, the message is in the dignity of the black community and the poignancy of opportunities—both gained and lost.'
• Abraham Rattner 'searched for a philosophy of "oneness" as he depicted religious scenes from both the Old and New Testaments as well as some secular scenes. He struggled with his own life as he compared himself with Abraham or the crucified Christ. His prayerful life was dominated by a hope for peace and an abhorrence for war and the suffering it carries with it... Rattner's suffering as well as his deep spirituality and love for humanity was expressed through the dominant figures of St. Francis of Assisi and Moses.'
• 'Philip Evergood had been studying abroad when he returned to the United States in the middle of the Great Depression... Like many artists of the 1930s, Evergood was sympathetic to the plight of workers. His participation in strikes and protests often landed him in jail, and he believed that art was a weapon and a means for social change.' 'Evergood’s art, like his other activities, reflects his devotion to egalitarian ideals, and his early paintings, especially, are statements of sympathy for those who struggle against oppression.' He wrote of The New Lazarus, "Christ, with all his generosity, his goodness, his love for people is crucified, drained of his blood, and left for the vultures to devour."
• For John Steczynski, 'his images evolve out of colored ink hatchings. They relate to post-modernism in their use of the appropriation, eclecticism and focus on the body. They are to operate as visual prayers that have their roots in devotional experience. They derive from the tradition of imagery inspired by devotion, piety and faith. The imagery is focused on as mystery and presence.' Steczynski viewed himself as a liturgical artist but one who felt isolated as there seemed to be little comprehension of liturgical art and few other artists who viewed themselves as such.
• John Talleur’s 'ardor for life comes through in his work. Playful geometric forms dance on primary-colored canvases. A go-go girl dances wildly. Earlier works are more solemn. Talleur often used traditional religious iconography early in his career. “He was a very serious person who was just very alive and very happy to share what he loved with anyone willing to take part.”
• 'The vast loss of life and horrors of World War II affected Umberto Romano’s work, with a particular example being his painting Cargo (1942-43). Cargo’s central figure is a Merchant Marine sailor dying on a raft. World War II triggered a definite change in Romano’s work. A New York Times art critic on October 8, 1944 wrote, ”Something amazing and glorious has happened to Umberto Romano. This is an art transfigured.” His painting Ecce Homo (Latin for “Behold the Man”), portrays a Christ-like figure representing the effects of war and violence on man and became an ongoing motif in Romano’s painting. New York Times critic Edward Alden Jewell then wrote of Romano’s work (October 14, 1943) “I think it is the most galvanizing and purifying war show I have seen.”' 
• Aileen Callahan's 'work has expressionist line and charcoal glimpses of a head, shoulders, crown of thorns, and dark instruments as though a scene is moving and one's view is a fragment. The drawings are not places in a sequence which records an event, but rather are places to repeat the feelings and focus on the theme as a meditation. The titles work with the drawings to allow multiple meanings and capture "gestures" of the images. The viewer is near the image. The viewer is in its space.' Callahan writes that 'First cognitions encounter color, shape and line. Later these are attached to ideas, associations and collective and personal human experience. Within all people and cultures, art expresses astonishingly profound levels of meaning.'
• ​Enrico “Henry” Pinardi, an Italian-American artist and legendary Rhode Island College art professor, left an impact on the lives of an extraordinary number of former students. Throughout his lifetime he has not only created recognizable and influential pieces of art, but also formed lifelong connections that have impacted the lives of many. Born in 1934, Pinardi faced hardships growing up between Cambridge, Massachusetts and Sant’Ambrogio di Valpolicella and Verona, Italy, where living through polio and post-war European reconstruction helped him find his path to his unique, dark art. “My work may veer away from the comfortable, but it is my sense that work should draw upon what is in the real world, even if it means the work is unsettling, or disturbing,” said Pinardi. His pieces, most commonly oil paintings, drawings and wooden sculptures, feature representations of death, religion and his love for the sea.

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Bob Dylan - Solid Rock.

Airbrushed from Art History: Ben Shahn and American Expressionism

In Common Man Mythic Vision Stephen Polcari compares and contrasts the work of Ben Shahn with his postwar American art peers:

'During and after World War II, whether one was a Social realist like Ben Shahn and the WPA artists, a Regionalist like Thomas Hart Benson, an Expressionist like Rico Lebrun, Hyman Bloom, or Abraham Rattner, or an Abstract Expressionist like Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, and Willem de Kooning, most American artists engaged the principal crisis of their time: the survival of the nation and of humane civilisation.'

'Shahn ... reshaped his style with new subject matter, a more universal outlook, and a new artistic language of symbolic emotion ... his adoption of a new mythic and allegorical language was only one of the ways he contributed to a new American approach to art; particular expressive themes were another ... With works such as Sound in the Mulberry Tree, 1948, with its Hebrew lettering and biblical verse, Maimonides, 1954, which evoked the medieval Jewish sage, Third Allegory, 1955, with its shofar and prayer shawl, and The Parable, 1958, with its drowning or emerging patriarch, Shahn sought to express universal truths. Yet, these works undoubtedly reflect Shahn's new appreciation for the heritage that he had restrained in his early work. The Holocaust brought forth a renewed identification with, and need for reaffirmation of, Shahn's Jewishness ...

fellow radical painter Philip Evergood was also moved to depict the effects of the war in mythic and symbolic language. Evergood's The New Lazarus, 1927 - 54, conflates his typical Social Realist edginess with a mythic biblical image of the evils of war and death, and the hope that these horrors will be redeemed by resurrection ...

Benton Murdoch ... Spruance's Souvenir of Lidice ... depicts three men nailed to crosses - in other words, a modern Calvary. This contemporary crucifixion was inspired by the Nazi slaughter slaughter of the citizens of Lidice, Czechoslovakia ... Spruance followed his war work with a further use of this symbolic language. it is reflected in works of 1943 such as Riders of the Apocalypse with its air war; Pietà - From the Sea showing Christ as a dead seaman; and Epiphany, in which the stars of social reconstruction imagery ... appear in a new context ...

With America's entry into the war, Benton altered his approach, now using biblical imagery to address America's political needs. In 1942, he produced a suite of paintings called the Year of Peril ... the series narrated the war in terms of biblical images and themes ...

The expressionist Abraham Rattner ... painted the subject of lamentation several times. In his Lamentation, 1944, and Pietàs, 1945 and 1949, Rattner created a compact emblem of sorrow ... Although the war is not explicitly represented, it was implicitly understood in the frequent depictions of the crucifixion by Rattner and other artists ...

Lamentation was the formative idea of the Entombment paintings, the largest series in the early work of the Abstract Expressionist Mark Rothko ...

Rico Lebrun employed bestial imagery when he represented the dumb soldiers surrounding Christ as horned and armored animals in The Crucifixion, 1950 ...

Although a Jew from the Baltic like Shahn, the expressionist Bloom was a Boston artist and much more devoted than Shahn to visionary, nightmarish imagery, born of the study of Dürer's allegories, and to the work of Rouault (like Rattner and Spruance), Bresdin and Soutine ...

During the 1940s and 1950s, many artists were engaged in representing their personal responses to history ... Shahn joined these artists in coming to terms with history through allegory, myth and tradition.'

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Joanne Hogg -  I Heard The Voice Of Jesus Say.

Artists valued by theologians

I've recently been reading and re-reading several theologians who write about theological aesthetics. It's interesting to note those artists that they view as having synergies with their own work. I've posted previously about Paul Tillich and Expressionism and John Dillenberger and Abstract Expressionism but these theologians - Hans Urs von Balthasar, Calvin Seerveld and Cecilia González-Andrieu - are rather more eclectic, often valuing the work of artists without significant mainstream reputations.

Aidan Nichols writes that "Balthasar's beau idéal of a Church artist was the Swiss Hans Stocker" who he claimed "as representative of a 'new Catholic art in German Switzerland'." For Balthasar, "Stocker represented a pleasing contrast to the many artists claiming to serve the Church yet producing 'kitsch' ... Stocker would do full justice to the Kingdom of the Son in its redemptive economy; to the communion of saints; to the Church, her sacraments, her functions. Balthasar sees as paradigmatic Stocker's Sankt Gallen fresco of the open Heart of Christ with, arranged around it, scenes of the Old and New Covenants, the Angels, and the 'weeping Key-bearer, Peter'. This extended image testifies to an experience of the Heilskosmos, the 'world of salvation', that is central, not peripheral, and the will and capacity to represent it in an original way."

Calvin Seerveld has said of Gerald Folkerts that he "has the wisdom to let his Christian faith subtly percolate in the spirit of his painterly art by showing compassion for the problematic figures he treats": "Self-portrait shows Folkerts himself startled by the viewer's gaze, pounding a nail into the wrist of Christ on the cross lying on the ground. Curled lip, furtive eyes, aggressive hammer, tensed body, all under churning nest of vipers - it is a well-drawn almost melodramatic drawing of the guilt that lodges in the best of us."

"The engravings and paintings of Georges Rouault reinvest the Byzantine tradition with a sombre, stained-glass seriousness that is definitely biblical in its horror of modern dehumanising atrocities, and is truly compassionate in composition, colour, and gritty style that bespeaks Christian art, whether the topic be kings, prostitutes, or Jesus Christ's passion. The Nobel Prize winner for poetry in 1945, Gabriela Mistral of Chile, updates a Franciscan holiness and gives it a poignant, singing voice that casts haloes of comfort around girlish hopes, forgotten prisoners, and even the nest of birds. Canadian painter William Kurelek weds a love for the Bruegel world of low life with a Roman Catholic slant on the poverty of success gained without the presence of the cross; his mark of pristine folk happiness is normally touched by an existential sense of nuclear war apocalypse, so the careful observer can never rest easy. Significant about such varied Christian art born out of Catholic sensitivities today is its unchurchy, world-wide, sorrow-sensitive aura.

A more hidden, 'autonomous', or even tangential expression of biblical faith in art of the twentieth century deserves mention: the sculpture of German Ernst Barlach articulates with rough austerity a forceful cry in wood and metal for reconciliation with God and neighbour that so incurred the anger of the Nazi government it destroyed much of the work. The New York Jew Abraham Rattner not only conceived an enormous stained-glass wall of apocalyptic emblems for a major Chicago synagogue but also grappled time and again in painting with the crucifixion of Christ, trying to exorcise both Golgotha and Auschwitz, as it were, from Jewish experience. Gabriel García Márquez of Colombia, 1982 Nobel prize winner for fiction, exposes small-town political corruption in South America with fantastic horizons that juxtapose real angels, supernatural forces, and the comic foibles of weak people.

The black spiritual song of American Civil War days takes on new evangelical fervour in the melodies and lyrics of Mahalia Jackson, whose simple Baptist roots act prophetically through the cascades of rhythmic beat and glorious sound. The paintings, prints and constructions of Henk Krijger body forth reminiscences of both Bauhaus and German expressionism muted and melded into strong, restfully honed shapes and expertly chosen colours that reveal artistry integrated by the Reformation perspective that ordinary life is a vocation to be lived directly before God and to be redeemed while sharing sadness, humour, and hope." (In The Fields of the Lord)

In Bridge to Wonder Cecilia González-Andrieu holds up as exemplars of the approaches she articulates the founder of modern Chicano theatre and film Luiz Valdés, the poet-playwright Federico García Lorca and the artists John August Swanson and Sergio Gomez.

La Pastorela, which González-Andrieu describes in the book, is performed biannually by El Teatro Campesino during the Christmas holidays, alternating with La Virgen del Tepeyac, in the historic Mission of San Juan Bautista, established in 1797. Pastorelas, or Shepherds Plays, originated in medieval Europe as religious dramas and were later brought to the new world and Alta California by the Spanish missionaries. La Pastorela recreates the long trek of those first pastores to the holy site of the Nativity.

González-Andrieu argues in Bridge to Wonder that the: "possibility of a religious reading of Mariana Pineda has been generally disallowed by Lorca scholars precisely because of political ideologies bent on bifurcating her self-sacrifice from her religious faith. Such an evasion of the complexity of Lorca's work continues even in the face of the playwright's own emphasis of the heroine's Christian identity."

"Even though his works are part of art collections from the Vatican to the Smithsonian, John August Swanson (American, b. 1938) routinely admits to feeling like an amateur, even after four decades as an artist. In one of his early works, the beautifully rendered visual story Inventor, he summarizes the work of the artist and the humility he feels every time he works. The eight panels present an artist, as the newspaper headline announces, who claims to have invented a machine that transforms junk into beauty. Juxtaposed between this claim and the last panel, Swanson presents the young inventor working and draws the beauty that emerges as swirling colors, spheres, concentric circles, and stars. The last panel reports, this time through an old radio, that “an amateur is someone who doesn’t know something can’t be done, so he does it.” ... In Inventor ... Swanson calls into question the image of artists as geniuses and of art as an elite pursuit." (Bridge to Wonder)


González-Andrieu has written that "Gomez's works also act like modern icons opening windows and doors into the depths of Spirit, where death never has the last word and the sacred beckons. In his passionate and passion-making art Sergio Gomez tells a community's story, raises a cry of pain, mediates a vision of hope, and points with care and reverence toward that eternal Other whose love the very beauty of these works brings into relationship with a thankful world."


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Mahalia Jackson - How I Got Over.