Christ by St John of the Cross by Salvador Dali

 

This painting took a new perspective on the usual depictions of Christ.  It was informed by the sketch done by the mystic St John of The Cross.  Christ is looking down from the cross rather than hanging on the cross with his totality and face in view.  It is an important example of how a new perspective on a theme used for centuries can be taken. In this way we can really look anew at something that is part of art and tradition. Christ is surrounded by darkness and looking down onto a darkened and cloud filled world but with the beauty of of fluorescent water summing up the terror and beauty of being incarnate. The water projects a glimmer that could be hope. Frail light suggesting dawn will come. These thoughts are my impression. He is moving away from this physical world as he hovers above it. He looks spent and the task is finished. His journey to that point involved humiliation and degradation and pain.  In Dali's depiction we cannot see his face.  Unusually that privacy is restored to him.  Normally the viewer sees a face depicting the terrible ordeal even if downcast so it can hardly be deciphered. Normally, the wound in the side is laboured over by the artist. Here just his feet are shown pierced.

Other artists have taken a new view at Christian tradition.  There is the Black Christ of Esquipulas in a town of the same name in Guatemala.  This is Christ as a darkened wooden image enshrined within the Basilica at Esquipulus.

There is also the Black Madonna or Black virgin image.  Here Our Lady and the infant Jesus are depicted as black.  It is important to have different representations of key religious figures so that others relate to them. As  a Palestinian Jew, it is most likely that Jesus would have been olive skinned.

As landscape architects we try to find developments that reach out to others and make them feel a sense of belonging as the Christian church needs to do. We are also involved in interpreting the human condition and trying to find ways to reawaken the everyday and mundane to incorporate the spiritual dimension.