Epiphany - Not just for Kings and Wise Men

Today is Epiphany, an important feast day in both the Eastern and Western Christian churches.
In general, the Feast of the Epiphany celebrates the revelation to man, by God, of the incarnation of his son, Jesus Christ, but there are also some stories and rituals that vary between the East and West.  In the Western Church we usually think of the Epiphany as the event where the three Magi, after following the star of Bethlehem, make their way to the manger to offer gifts to the Christ child.  In the Eastern Church the celebration is a conflation of the Western story with a commemoration of Christ’s baptism and the end of the twelve days of Christmas festivities.  Last year, I was lucky enough to be in Greece visiting the island of Hydra on January 6.  This tiny island (no cars!) celebrates Epiphany with a ceremony where the priest throws a silver cross into the ocean.  Teenage boys dive in to retrieve it.  The ritual also functions as a “Blessing of the Waters” for this fishing village as well as a promise of a year of prosperity, good fortune, and good health for one lucky young diver.

The visit of the Magi is one of the enduring stories of the Nativity.  The story is found in the gospel of St. Matthew who wrote that these “wise men” came “from the east”.  Biblical scholars now think that Matthew meant that they were some sort of dignitaries, but since the Middle Ages they have been popularly referred to as kings.  Tradition dictates that there were three of them, as they gave three gifts, gold, frankincense and myrhh.  Mathew never stated a number.

By the way, here’s my favorite image of an inspired Matthew writing his Gospel:

St.Matthew, Gospel Book of Archbiship Ebbo of Reims, 816-35
illuminated manuscript
http://legacy.earlham.edu

Sculptures and paintings of the Adoration of the Magi were quite popular from about the 13^th century.  In fact, the Nativity scenes we see today on church lawns and in Christian homes are a typical Adoration of the Magi scene in three dimensional form.  (St. Francis of Assisi had something to do with this – but that’s for another blog post.)  Most Nativity scenes featured the three Magi juxtaposed with the lowly shepherds and their sheep, a not so subtle message that Christianity was a religion for the masses, not just the elites.
One of my all time favorite artists is Giotto di Bondone (Florence, 1266/7 – January 8, 1337), whose paintings are considered a real bridge between Medieval and Renaissance image and thought.  A small panel painting of the Adoration is a good example of Giotto’s genius and his humanistic approach.

The Epiphany, possibly ca. 1320
Giotto di Bondone (Italian, Florentine, 1266/76–1337)
Tempera on wood, gold ground (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
17 3/4 x 17 1/4 in.

While the painting follows the prescribed format for panel paintings of their time – lack of a descriptive landscape, gilded background, hierarchical scale and haloes galore, there is something quite modern and touching here as well.  All eyes look at the Magi in the foreground holding the infant Jesus.  He has knelt down, removed his crown, and placed it on the ground.  Joseph, at the right, leans forward, as though to catch the baby in case the King falters, a typical new father’s response.  Mary, too, seems to be reaching for the baby.  The king has humbled himself before the incarnation of God in this little baby – but the fact that he is still just a baby is emphasized by the parents’ reactions and in the gesture of the King, who seems to be admiring the Christ child as just that, a child.  There is quite a bit of theological emphasis here as well, however.  Notice how the crown’s shape is echoed in the shape of the manger's roof and the mountain behind it.  Giotto seems to be reminding us that the fancy trappings of wealth and status are not important compared to what has happened under this simple roof. Again, with the simple removal and placement of the crown, we are reminded that Christianity is not a religion just for the elites.

Gislebertus (active 1100-1150), Dream of the Magi

1120-30, Stone
Cathedral of Saint-Lazare, Autun

Another one of my favorite “Magi” images is from an“historiated capital” at Autun Cathedral in France. 

Autun Cathedral was a pilgrimage church.  Gislebertus (one of the few medieval sculptors whose name is known to us) had also sculpted a Last Judgement in the tympanum above the entrance to the Cathedral.  The horrors and rewards that await the saints and sinners were graphically illustrated there, as images of pilgrims lined up to be plucked into the heavens for the weighing of their souls span the lintel above the doorway. 

Gislebertus, Last Judgement
1120-1130, Stone
Cathedral of Saint-Lazare, Autun

As pilgrims walked through the Cathedral they would look up at the massive columns lining the nave – the top of each one would feature carved reliefs of biblical stories (historiated capitals).  Dream of the Magi clearly and poignantly illustrates an aspect of the story rarely found in art.   Here are the Magi in bed together with a wonderfully patterned blanket wrapped protectively around them . They all sleep with their crowns on!   While two are asleep, one awakens as the angel very gently pokes at his hand while gesturing to the star.

The general consensus in art history is that medieval art tended to rely on formulaic imagery and that we don’t see as much attention paid to real human responses and experience until at least the time of Giotto, almost 200 years later.  Yet, this work is clearly intended to speak to the experiences of the people who came to view it.   Think about the message conveyed here. Gislebertus (or more likely his patron) has chosen to illustrate an event that shows us how the kings came to follow the star.  They were traveling and sleeping in cramped quarters when they were called by God.  The pilgrims who visited Autun were also on a journey that often required hardship - long days on foot, bad food, and uncomfortable sleeping quarters - as they hoped their sacrifices would be acknowledged and blessed by God.  This message is similar to Giotto’s reminder that Christianity is a religion for everyone.  And even today, the “Blessing of the Waters” that I witnessed in Greece seamlessly combines the stories of Christianity with the traditions of a culture that calls upon God’s blessing to ensure the continuation of a way of life and beliefs that have endured for centuries.  

Honoring Saint Nicholas

San Nicola in Carcere, Rome

December 6 was the Feast of Saint Nicholas which is celebrated around the world and honors the legend of the generous saint who is better known to many, of course, as Santa Claus.  This sneaky saint was a secret gift giver and was known to leave coins in shoes left out for him.  So if you participate in “secret Santa” activities, you are following a grand tradition.  San Nicola (as he is called in Italian) lived in the fourth century and was a Bishop in a part of what is now Turkey.  His many miracles have also led to him being called “Nicholas the Wonderworker.” 

One of the oldest churches in Rome is dedicated to Saint Nicholas.  It’s called San Nicola in Carcere (St. Nicholas in Prison) as this was the site of a jail during the Roman empire.  

The church was likely constructed in the 6^th century and rebuilt a number of times thereafter.  It is built using the “Spolia” from three different temples that stood here when the area was part of the Forum Holitorium in the early years of Ancient Rome.   Spolia means architecture and architectural fragments repurposed for new buildings.  Many of the buildings in Rome, both pagan and Christian, contain spolia of earlier structures. One can clearly see the columns and entablature of the temples which make up part of the exterior walls of the San Nicola.

When Paul and I visited this church we were amazed at the variety of columns, both their designs and materials, that were incorporated into the interior walls of the church as well.  We paid a Euro to an attendant and he gave us a tour of the church's lower level.  We were able to seehow the columns of two different temples were an integral part of the church walls and foundation.

San Nicola in Carcere is on a rather busy street in Rome.  It is very close to the Bocca della Verita (the mouth of truth) best known through the film “Roman Holiday.”  Almost every day a line of tourists wait to put a hand in the “Bocca.”  If you don’t lose your hand, you can prove that you tell the truth.

 

We never took the time to test our honesty.  But we had fun watching the tourists try their luck.

Contemplation

Mark Rothko (1903-1970)

Untitled, 1968

Acrylic on paper on hardboard, 23-3/16 x 18-3/4 inches

Gift of the Mark Rothko Foundation, (ARS New York)

Phillips Collection, Washington, DC

Sometimes art needs no explanation.  I am heading to yoga and will think of this when I am doing "shevasana."

Art, Commemoration and Controversy in San Francisco

Robert Arneson (1930-1992)

Portrait of George (Moscone), 1981 

(7′-10″ x 29″) Image via cometogether.com

Today is the anniversary of the assassination of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk.  That event is one of those “do you remember what you were doing when you heard” moments for me.   I lived in San Francisco at the time and had seen Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Milk just a few weeks before  at a Preservation Hall Jazz Band concert in Golden Gate Park.  Mayor Moscone was quite a favorite of us young liberal folks in the city at the time, and Milk had recently made history as the first openly gay person to be elected to a public office.  The future seemed quite rosy in San Francisco in 1978.  That night I walked down to City Hall plaza and held a candle along with thousands of other people.  The killer was a former City Supervisor, Dan White, who was trying to get his job back (he had resigned).  Moscone,  reportedly at the urging of Milk, refused.  White snuck into a basement window of City Hall and gunned the two men down in their offices.  Less than a year later, on the eve of Harvey Milk’s birthday, White was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter (a surprisingly light conviction)  based on what has come to be known as the  “Twinkie defense.”  He claimed that he was so depressed as the result of a junk food diet he was not competent at the time of the shootings.  Rioting ensued at City Hall Plaza when the verdict was announced.  San Francisco’s acting mayor at the time,who would go on to serve two more terms, was Dianne Feinstein, now senior U.S. Senator from California.  

Milk has been wonderfully memorialized and immortalized in the film starring Sean Penn. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1013753/)  In the early years of the AIDS crisis, one of Harvey Milk’s aides, Cleve Jones, used the annual memorial march that took place every November 27 to call attention to the lack of government acknowledgement of the disease that was killing so many gay men.  From this activism emerged another memorial – the NAMES project, popularly known as the AIDS quilt.  So Milk’s legacy and his memorialization has given rise to an enormous and inventive memorial tradition.  Squares from the quilt travel around the country.  In fact there are some in New Hampshire this month to commemorate World AIDS Day on December 1. (http://www.aidsquilt.org/)

 The Aids Quilt, 1986, Washington, DC

George Moscone’s legacy will always be attached to Harvey Milk.  But there was also an interesting controversy surrounding a sculpture that was commissioned to honor the Mayor’s memory.   In 1981 the George R. Moscone Convention Center was ready to open.  The city’s Art Commission chose ceramic artist Robert Arneson to create a memorial bust of Moscone. Arneson was a longtime art professor at UC Davis and was a leading proponent of “Funk Art” which basically took the function out of ceramics and incorporated everyday objects into the work.  It was socially conscious, yet often irreverent, humorous and sometimes confrontational. 

 

Arneson’s bust depicted a caricature-like portrait of the mayor, as the Commission expected.  But its five foot ceramic pedestal was festooned with bullet holes, the words “Bang Bang Bang,” “and Harvey Milk too,” an image of a Twinkie and other graffiti-like images and text that refered to Moscone’s death and the resulting controversy surrounding the near-exoneration of his killer. The Art Commission asked Arneson to make some changes.  He refused and the sculpture was returned to him.  Today a much more conventional bronze sculpture in the Moscone Center honors the slain Mayor. 

Happy Anniversary to Alice in Wonderland

                

Lewis Carroll  (1832-1898)
Alice Liddell as "The Beggar Maid"   ca.1859

Albumen Silver Print
16.3 x 10.9 cm (6 7/16 x 4 5/16
 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Gilman Collection, Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation,
  

On November 26, 1862, a shy mathematician and published poet sent young Alice Liddell a manuscript of a story he had written to amuse her and her sisters.   Alice was ten years old. Charles Lutwidge Dodson was 30.  The manuscript was published a few years later as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland under the author’s pen name – Lewis Carroll.

Dodgson was a close friend of Alice’s parents.  Her father was dean at Christ Church College where Dodgson lectured in mathematics.  A socially awkward man with an embarrassing stutter, Dodgson developed strong ties with the Liddell’s children.   He would often take Alice and her two sisters on boating trips and entertain them with stories that would serve as the basis for his Alice narrative.

One of Dodgson’s hobbies was photography.  This was a common pastime for educated people of means during the Victorian era, and Dodgson was considered quite talented at this new invention that combined scientific as well as aesthetic knowledge.  Like many photographers of his day, one of his favorite subjects was children.  A number of his photographs were of young girls in various states of undress posed in artistic “tableaux.”  At his death, the artist left 3000 negatives which included portraits of the cultural elite in his social circle as well as their children, a number of whom were posed in artistic settings.  There is ample evidence to suggest that the young subjects always had parents or a guardian present during these photography sessions.  Nevertheless, Charles Dodgson has been under suspicion, especially in these past few decades, of having an unnatural sexual interest in young girls and in Alice in particular.   These photographs, plus Dodgson’s known attachment to the Liddell family and reports of a sudden, unexplained break in their friendship, have given rise to a number of treatises (both non-fiction and fiction) that Dodgson’s interest was not purely artistic. 

 

In truth, the bodies of children, girls in particular, were quite common in art of Victorian England.  The photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, another upperclass “hobbyist” was part of Dodgson’s and the Liddell’s  circle.  Cameron, who received a large measure of acclaim for her work, would frequently pose young unclothed children in narrative tableaux.  Dodgson was also friendly with a group of writers and artists who called themselves the “Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.”  This group wanted to return to art that they perceived as simple and pure -- the Medieval and early Renaissance art before Raphael.  They portrayed women as innocent, simple, virtuous creatures in constant danger of falling from grace, or as seductive femme fatales.  Not surprisingly, the innocent young girl became a standard figure in many Pre-Raphaelite works.  In fact, John Ruskin, one of the leading critics of the day, is rumored to have never consummated his marriage to his wife Effie (who ran off with the painter John Millais) because he was so horrified to discover that she had pubic hair. 

 

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879)

Venus Chiding Cupid and Removing His Wings, 1872 

                                          Albumen Silver Print, National Media Museum, The Royal Photographic Society

It is evident that during this period childhood innocence and virtue was celebrated and often expressed through the innocent youthful naked body. The truth is, we really don’t know whether Charles Dodgson had an unnatural interest in young girls.   However, based on the taste and standards of art of the time, we cannot condemn him based on the photographic evidence alone.

Turning the Stake

Thomas Eakins (1844-1916)

The Biglin Brothers Turning the Stake, 1873
oil on canvas, 101.3cm x 151.4cm 

Cleveland Museum of Art

Today I met my friend Megan at the YMCA for a post-Thanksgiving workout.  We have decided to join Concept 2’s “Holiday Challenge” and erg at least 100,000 meters between November 24 and December 24.  The company will donate two cents for each kilometer once we reach our goal. I’ve chosen my donation be directed to Vermont Disaster Relief Fund.  The state is still struggling to recover from the devastating floods in late August and I have many friends whose homes and livelihoods were affected.    I made a small dent in my 100K – I have 97.5 to go!

One of my favorite American artists is Thomas Eakins.  Since I started rowing two years ago I’ve looked more closely at his paintings of scullers on the Schuylkill River.  A Philadephia native, Eakins was an amateur rower, a sport enjoyed by the students at University of Pennsylvania as well as the social elite of Philadelphia. At the time rowing was fairly new, but also the most popular spectator sport in America .  Thousands of dollars were often wagered on race outcomes.  Eakins’ favorite subjects were the most famous professional rowers of their time, the Biglin brothers.  Today perhaps not the best, but the most notorious rowers are the Winklevoss twins, Harvard rowers and Mark Zuckerberg foes, who have been immortalized in this scene from The Social Network (with the gorgeous Army Hammer playing both roles).  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwIPDpRuyNk&feature=related

Eakins had a nearly scientific approach to painting.  After art school and the requisite “grand tour” of Europe, he took anatomy and physiology classes at Jefferson Medical College to help him more accurately depict the human form.  In addition, he was an early adopter of the camera as a tool to aid his painting and he experimented with techniques to help capture humans and animals in motion.  It was Eakins who brought the photographer Eadweard Muybridge to the University of Pennsylvania  to make thousands of photographs recording people and animals in “locomotion.”  To read more about Muybridge and these groundbreaking studies at Penn go here:  http://www.archives.upenn.edu/histy/features/muybridge/muybridge.html.  

Thomas Eakins,  

Motion Study: George Reynolds nude, pole-vaulting to left, 1885, 

Dry-plate negative, 3 7/8 x 4 5/8"

Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art

It makes sense that Eakins would be fascinated with trying to capture the movement of both the athlete and his boat as it moves so swiftly across the water.  Scullers are ever conscious of the position and relationship of each part of their body as they repeat and perfect the stroke cycle, of where their oar enters and leaves the water and of the pattern of “puddles” they leave.  Eakins was clearly aware of all of this as a rower himself, and one can see his attention to these details in the eleven paintings he made of the brothers.  In this painting, we see the midpoint of the first American pairs race, a five mile ordeal against rowers from Pittsburgh (we can see them in the background struggling to reach their turn).  The brothers won by more than a minute and were declared World Champions.  Megan and I plan on rowing doubles next summer (we’ll each have two oars instead of the single oars of a pair).  We’ll be thinking about the Biglin brothers and Thomas Eakins as we work on our technique.