Renunciation

Lets kick off the new year with piety! Why? Am I feeling guilty about too much indulgence over the silly season? Of course not! Don't be silly in even starting to think so. It is simply because it all gets more depraved from here on in...

Postcard c.1920's?

Philip Hermogenes Calderon, St Elizabeth of Hungary's Great Act of Renunciation, 1891, Oil on canvas, Tate, London

An interesting comparison between the gravures interpretation against the subtlety of the original painting. If you don't know the story here is the Tate's description: 

"Elizabeth of Hungary (1207-1231) was the wife of Lewis, Landgrave of Thuringia. After his death in 1227 during one of the Crusades, she entered a convent and devoted herself to good works. Before becoming a nun, she passed through a spiritual crisis, torn by the need to renounce the world, and therefore her children, in order to fulfill her desire to serve God. Pressed by a domineering monk, Conrad, whose natural affections had been starved by celibacy, Elizabeth finally vowed that 'naked and barefoot' she would follow her 'naked Lord'. Calderon's picture shows this moment of self-abasement.  

Calderon took his subject from a play by Charles Kingsley, 'The Saint's Tragedy', first published in 1848. It was based on fact."

Poor Elizabeth...dead at 24, sanctified sure, but ending up the salacious subject matter of late 19th Century 'Salon Art', where the plethora of nude women in subservient poses is as much of a crime as her very brief life. More details about Elizabeth from Wikipedia...

...and on that note I am off to listen to the latest emptywhale release 'That Grey Place We Go'. Happy New Year...

Immaculate Deception

Fra Angelico, The Annunciation, c.1430-32, Tempera on wood, Prado Museum, Madrid

Regular readers might be a little surprised to find Fra Angelico adorning the pages of this blog, but don't worry folks...I am not about to change my wicked ways and find God! I suppose technically I should have posted it around 8 months and 3 weeks ago on the basis that despite divine conception the little bastard would have gestated full term before landing in the manger. 

I used this image in a talk I gave a few years back at the local regional gallery on 'Eroticism in Art'. I began the talk with it not because it is in anyway erotic, but it is very revealing. Why? Because I believe that without religion (or at least Christianity) eroticism would not exist, or at least in the form it does today. Call it simplistic if you like, but the churches effort to suppress human desire has created the 'forbidden' nature of eroticism that makes it so interesting.

Above, we see the Archangel Gabriel do the 'Ave Maria' bit while in the top left hand corner Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden of Eden. Take home message: Mary good, Eve bad, and it is this 'evilness' of Eve as temptress that led to Christ and his disciples adopting chastity as a desirable quality. And what a wonderful little chain of events and attitudes that has left us with for the past 2000 odd years.

So, while I will certainly be enjoying the company of family and friends this Christmas I won't be celebrating the birth of Christ. I will be thinking about an increasingly fragmented world that sadly appears on a collision course with itself, and on that cheery note I am shutting down the system for a couple of weeks and going fishing...

The Doors of Perversion

Bob Georgeson, The Doors of Perversion, 2012, Photomontage

Just to get into the festive spirit...time to hang out the stockings!