> That was exactly the sort of complexity, ambiguity, and difficulty I
> was expecting or hoping to generate. Because I am so profoundly
> secular and outside any religious system of any sort, it makes it
> possible to see the crucifix.
I read something once about the invention of secularism by the church. I think it was Said, but it was long ago. That aside, I'm not sure your "secularism" necessarily sees the crucifix in a way my "atheism" can't comprehend. I may have had a very unorthodox Christian training, but that's not the point. Exposure to the diversity of meaning which can be instantiated in the crucifix can be part of a quite orthodox Christian education.
> A long time ago, I tried to draw one and work with some of the
> associated symbolism, the sheet, the nails, the wood, the wounds, and
> I came to the odd problem of depicting the genitals of the tortured
> and dead. They're not supposed to have genitals, or these are the site
> of torture so the solution becomes a kind of shadowy in-definability
> or a rag. Whatever the graphic solution, it is completely
> unsatisfactory from within the drama of Christianity.
Well there's a lot of penises in images of the crucifixion. It's not like when Jesus is walking around he's flashing all the time, but as an infant and as a dying man and corpse, it's more traditional to let it all hang out than not. WHich is not to descredit what you're saying about the weight that would or at least is likely to be given to genitalia in aesthetic representations of a tortured, dying, man. That also seems to often be the case, outside of the body of Christ. I guess I could venture theories as to why, but it's not something I've really focused on. Want to talk about symbolising virginity in Christian art and I'm your girl. I've only seriously thought about the exposure of genitals in relation to Madonna+Child images -- her breast, his penis, that kind of thing.
> ``Hmm, what is Rubens with a sheet? Descent from the Cross? ie. people
> taking the body down and there's a sheet behind him?..''
>
> Yes, that's the one. There is another that I like also, the raising of
> the cross, in extreme perspective. But my interest in these works had
> nothing to do with Christianity in the direct sense. And I suspect
> that their religious significance had already passed into pretext for
> Rubens, which puts the raging religious wars of the period into a
> strange light. But the crucifix was obviously a problem for Rubens,
> and even more so for Michelangelo. In fact I can't think of one that M
> did at all.
Oh oh, actually, there are. There's a famous crucifixion of St Peter. And there's a Christ too -- in fact, I think maybe it was censored at some point for too much penis, or something like that, but maybe that was a non-dying Christ.
> ``...(a bunch of desk junk).. All of these are in there different ways
> "mass culture", but what do precisely do they represent officially? ''
>
> Mass culture in the sense of mass produced or reproduced things that
> are called art, sold as such, and enjoyed as if.
The texta or the lego parrot or the chair are sold as or enjoyed as art? I know tons of people who would dispute the filing tray as well.
> My problem with it is
> related to the appropriation of it by means of production completely
> beyond any active (as in making) engagement of it by any one outside
> the sites of production---while at the same time, calling it mass
> culture.
How can any of those items ever be "completely beyond any active (as in making) engagement of it"? Now I'm never going to be heard saying that pop culture is made meaningful solely by individual consumers. That's ridiculous. But that assertion is just as ridiculous.
> ``Adorno might say that even this lego parrot is exemplary mass
> culture... no child spontaneously desires a red&yellow miniature
> parrot, rather the uses of the parrot are circumscribed, predicted and
> demanded by its sale and packaging (I think it's part of a pirate
> set)..''
>
> Missed the pirate set. My kid was into the car and gas station
> sets. But the problem with legos is just as good, maybe better than
> the crucifix.
>
> But what legos need is contrast. The one I am thinking of is from
> Mexico (fifty years ago). Day of the Dead. Children's toys or adult
> curios and icons which were clay models of skeletons on coffins,
> dancing in sombreros, skirts, paper machete masks---all of it hand
> made out of materials easily available on standard themes with huge
> variation. My choice (as a kid) was a rubber skeleton so I could play
> with it along with several small clay things and a mask. You couldn't
> do much with baked clay except set up little scenes. So the
> contrasting asethetic experience between clay and plastic and their
> production, and then their social dimensions leading off into
> different directions. The contrast goes back into pre-columbian mass
> produced arts, versus industrial mass produced arts. In way it
> encapsulates the dialectic of Mexico and the struggle to be Mexico.
Are you saying that you could make other stories and scenes with clay than with plastic figures *because* they are clay rather than plastic? I don't agree at all. I had homemade and store-bought toys, and they were different things, but not in either of these ways. And, I kind of think your rubber skeleton belies the point. Interestingly, we bought Day of the Dead wooden figurines in Mexico - - tres touristico (utterly commodified version of history and culture and otherness -- and my son put them in his lego farm. I was always amused that the mourning woman-skeleton with baby in her arms somehow became the sheep farmer.
Catherine
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