Humanizing the Inexplicable: Art As Gospel, Then and Now
59 Gloucester St, Christchurch
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Join us for this 2 part art history course with Linda Hart.
Revolution, feminism, criticism of art as commodity, myths of folk heroes, interpretations of Christianity: all of these themes can be seen as gospels of one sort or another. These two sessions will explore the works of some quite different artists whose work spans both continents and centuries.
Session one: Christo and Jeanne-Claude were visionaries and idealists.
Both originated in war-torn Europe, only to make their home together in America. Best known for wrapping up whole beaches and buildings, the pair created public works which were ephemeral, could not be owned and were soon dismantled. The idea was that their art belonged to the public and that there was never an entry fee.
They subsidized their work by mortgaging their house and selling preliminary sketches for their major works. This undermined the idea that art was a commodity in a land where commodities were prized as status symbols.
Session Two: Narratives of Jesus. In today's terms, given our current understanding of physics, flesh and blood representations of a spiritual entity seem underwhelming if the task is to convey the ideal of redemption, forgiveness and resurrection. Yet the idea of Jesus Christ was always to personify these ideas in human terms.
It is therefore interesting to look at the symbology behind Byzantine Christian Art, Medieval Christian art, Pre-Raphaelite art and Surrealist art and then to hypothesize what imagery is required to revitalize the concept in terms that might be acceptable to an age confused by an overload of mostly unverified information.
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