Modern Religious Art

Le Christ et Le Peintre (L’artiste et son Modèle)
Christ and the Painter (the artist and his model)
Marc Chagall
1951

Due to my inability to master simple stick-figure drawings, I have a huge respect for artists. Especially this one. I first encountered this painting in the Vatican Museum in the “Religious Modern Art” section. It's a little blurry, but the painting is a depiction of the crucifixion, and the man on the right is the a painter, holding a pallet and a paint brush, looking at Jesus. I think it is a beautiful social commentary about the nature of creating art, implying that we project ourselves, our expectations, our bias, our experiences into artwork (and many other things, for that matter). This insight was particularly refreshing after the previous 2 hours I had spent in the Vatican Museum.

Walking through the Vatican Museum, which contained literally miles of art from Ancient Rome to the Renaissance, it was interesting to think about what type of situations and people were missing. In particular, there was a notable lack of people of color. Almost every figure depicted reflected the stereotypical Italian form - fairly light skin, brown hair, (and, if you are looking at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, a particularly muscular body).

Perhaps, in some sense, this is to be expected. Italian artists used friends and family members around them as inspiration - a fairly ethnically homogenous set of models. In many ways, it reminds me of the blue eyed, nicely combed wavy brown haired and paled skinned Jesus of my childhood. This, however, is far from a historically accurate physical representation of any first century Palestinian nomad, who would have had much darker skin, dark eyes, and most definitely less styled hair.

So clearly art reflects a particular social context in which is created, but I think that also has implications for shaping our worldview and expectations today. It concerns me that this homogenous representation of religious artwork in so many ways seems to reaffirm social hierarchies of class, race, and gender. For some, the artwork in the Vatican contains absolutely no significance. But for others, such as myself, the Vatican Museum represented some of the same problematic depictions of religious artwork throughout childhood and in popular culture.

While I was in the Sistine Chapel, my audio guided tour talked about Michelangelo's theology, how he viewed the body as a source of hope in creation despite great brokenness (as seen in the tortured bodies of The Last Judgment). This reflects a larger trend in Christianity, to see parts of humanity as redeemable -- this is present in everything from the importance of the humanity of Jesus to the common themes of transformation and renewal. But I think it does violence to these ideas when the images that are used to convey this sense of hope and renewal don't actually reflect the diversity of human life.

After all, to represent excerpts of the life of Jesus and parts of the New Testament in a way that actually reaffirms social inequality in their physical forms seems highly inconsistent with the narrative of a God that breaks through social expectations, gender norms, religious barriers, and constantly challenges systems of domination. I'm not advocating a return to a "historically accurate" portrayal of Jesus. Scholars greatly disagree on the physical depiction of Jesus, which is probably a good thing. I'm advocating that we should embrace diverse depiction of religious figures. What better way to affirm the radical inclusiveness of the gospels?

This is why I fundamentally think modern religious art is so important.

Modern religious art provides a space to break away from expected, and at times outdated, forms of religious imagery - to allow viewers to encounter divinity in their lives and their own communities as they have the chance to see their own reflection in the artwork.

Yet there needs to be more. Chagall merely brings attention to the process of creating religious art. For more boundary-pushing artists, I highly recommend:

Janet McKenzie’s Jesus of the People, winner of the National Catholic Reporter’s competition
Crucifixion by Sandra Yagi
Kittredge Cherry’s book “Art that Dares,” a Lambda Literary Award finalist

Of course, some will consider these images blasphemous. But I think its important to remember that, historically, we have taken plenty of liberty in our traditional religious imagery, which is unquestionably reproduced because it preserves dominant power structures. If Jesus can be blue eyed and white, Jesus can certainly be depicted as black, arab, female etc. And after centuries of exclusion and violence perpetuated by the church through racism, sexism, and homophobia (just to name a few), such art certainly captures the essence of the gospel by affirming the inclusion of those who have been marginalized.

While modern religious art might present new representations of old stories, such representations that break down social expectations, inequality and social injustice should certainly be celebrated, not shunned and condemned, by our religious communities.

These were my musings as I walked through the Vatican. I’d love to hear your thoughts! And below I’ve included some of my additional favorites from the modern art collection in the Vatican Museum.