Last year I drew on classical music to illustrate some of the themes of Easter. This year I use visual art, primarily paintings, to capture some aspects of the season that are not always as easy to convey in words. The arts are valuable aids to worship, reflection, and meditation, and Christians who expose themselves to great works of art can reap tremendous spiritual rewards.
The prophet describes a new world, one in which a wolf and a lamb can eat together, and a lion will eat straw like an ox. Such a world seems impossible from our vantage point, but from God's point of view, anything is possible. When we look at the problems in the world around us, it's easy to be discouraged. Sometimes it is helpful to take a step back and try to imagine the world from an entirely new perspective. The four paintings below offer alternative views of the world. Leonardo Da Vinci imagined a world with machines capable of powered flight (impossible? many of his contemporaries thought so). Vincent Van Gogh looked at a wheat field and saw the beauty that was below the surface. Georges Seurat, a pointillist, understood that reality could be portrayed as an array of tiny dots of varying color. And Jackson Pollack began to view art itself from an entirely new perspective.
Though the psalmist speaks of great suffering he has had to endure, he knows that he has more to look forward to. It's easy to focus on today's struggles, when we should concentrate on tomorrow's rewards. The four paintings below deal with the theme of perseverance. The first, by James E. Buttersworth, depicts a three-masted schooner persevering through stormy seas. Dali's famous painting of melted watches, The Persistence of Memory, suggests the value of memory, even though it may be distorted over time. The ancient Roman statue of the discus thrower illustrates the discipline required to compete in athletic competitions. Finally, the modern art piece by Bassez is entitled Perseverance, for obvious reasons.
Easter is a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus, but what does that event mean for us? According to Paul, just as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. The resurrection gives us hope for the future, for both this world and the next. The four paintings below all illustrate some facet of hope. Degas' dancer gives us hope that we can transcend what seem to be our bodily limits and achieve grace and beauty in life. Picasso's drawing of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza is a humorous reminder of the importance of the hope that is inherent in seemingly "quixotic" undertakings. Frida Kahlo's Tree of Hope illustrates the power of the artist's hope that she could overcome the physical limitations of her body. And Renoir's painting of a small child reminds us that some of our greatest hopes for the future lie in our children, so we should nurture them and thank God for them constantly.
When Mary Magdalene went to the tomb, she found it empty and wondered where Jesus' body had been taken. After her encounter with a man she at first assumed to be the gardener, Mary returned excitedly to the other disciples with this message, "I have seen the Lord!" The final four paintings in this edition of the Saturday Night Theologian are portraits of Jesus from different, interesting perspectives. Can we see the Lord in the same way that the artists did? The first painting is a traditional Eastern Orthodox portrayal of Christ as the all-powerful ruler of the universe. Rouault's expressionist portrayal of the head of Jesus captures the pain and suffering of the cross, but the yellow lines and white background also suggest the imminence of the resurrection. Next, Jesus is portrayed with a Rastafarian hairstyle and with Jamaican features; people of European descent too often forget that Jesus really didn't look like we do, despite the paintings that gave him European features. Finally, in a poster designed to attract Christians to church on Easter Sunday, 1999, Jesus is portrayed as a revolutionary modeled on Che Guevara; is the message of the Jesus we proclaim mundane or revolutionary?
