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All paintings are oil on panel, 18" x 14", $1,500 each.
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The
Passion of Christ March 9 – April 17, 2004
Mel Gibson's much discussed movie won't be the only controversial Passion opening in New York this spring. Another Passion that opens on March 9th at the Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation's gallery is also likely to stir up controversy, but for very different reasons. The Passion of Christ: A Gay Vision, by Doug Blanchard (b. 1957), presents a modern figurative reimaging of the Passion narrative as you've never seen it before. Painted in oil over a two-year period on 22 wood panels, with two more panels in process, this Passion features a handsome, sexy and approachable Christ bent on challenging the institutions and habits of power. Much as Renaissance and Baroque artists painted murals designed to be seen and enjoyed by thousands of viewers, Blanchard's Passion is intended to serve as public art. His classically inspired compositions and heroic poses drawn from photos and movies of the civil and gay rights movements may remind some viewers of another more recent period of public art, 1930s WPA murals, but with a surprising immediacy that brings the Passion into the here and now. "I didn't have the WPA murals in mind when I did these paintings," says Blanchard, "more the Renaissance and Baroque. But I'm not anti-modern. I was also influenced by 20th century artists, especially German painter Max Beckmann and American painters Leon Golub and Phillip Guston." "My paintings emphasize the reality of flesh - that spirit and flesh go together," says Blanchard, a practicing Episcopalian who teaches art history. "This Jesus is someone who is beautiful and charismatic, who people can and do touch and who stands on the same ground with all of us. He draws crowds of people who wouldn't normally associate with each other, but who come together around Him. "Men and women fall in love with Him and He loves them back, in every sense of the word. He's a magnanimous and magnetic liberator, a great monkey wrench in the machinery of established power, challenging the priests, the businessmen, the law and the military in their modern roles. If someone like that appeared today they'd probably kill him." "How do you paint someone who is fully a man while He's also God incarnate?" asks Blanchard. "There aren't any historical descriptions of what He looked like. For this project, I'm mostly making an image of Christ that's satisfying to me. Everyone who does an image of Christ takes that liberty - He might have been fat and bald for all we know." Fortunately, early 3rd Century Christian artists borrowed freely from the Greco-Roman world around them. "One of the earliest images of Christ, found in a catacomb below St. Peters basilica in Rome, shows Him as a strikingly handsome and athletic young man standing in a chariot with rays of light coming from his head - images clearly adapted from the Greek sun god Apollo," Blanchard explains. Rome and its gods were also deservedly famous for their libertine sexual mores. Although Apollo was generally described as preferring women, the famed Roman writer Ovid reported that the god also loved the handsome and athletic Hyacinthus. After Hyacinthus died in a discus throwing contest, Apollo is said to have transformed his blood into the hyacinth flower as a living tribute to his memory. Scholars have suggested that early images of Christ also closely resemble portraits of Antinous, lover of the famed Roman emperor Hadrian, Blanchard adds. When the handsome Antinous died suddenly under mysterious circumstances, the grief-stricken emperor had the Roman Senate declare him a god and built popular temples featuring his statues throughout the eastern Mediterranean. It is only later that Christ begins to have a beard, thought to be borrowed from the father of the Roman Gods, Jupiter. Gay art lovers in particular will remember that it was Jupiter who in the guise of an eagle kidnaps the beautiful young shepherd Ganymede and takes him to live (and love) on Mount Olympus. The two final panels of Blanchard's 24-panel Passion remain unfinished, giving the viewer an unusual opportunity to see the artist's work in progress. The open-ended quality of Blanchard's Passion also lends his work a sense of urgent immediacy, breathing new life into ritualized tradition while it challenges viewers to rethink the meaning of this most famous account of life, death and redemption. Doug Blanchard can be reached for interviews by phone at 212-674-3417 or by email at douglasblanchard@earthlink.net. * * * * *
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Contact us at: The Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation
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