Through another prism

One of the great pleasures of being an art critic is seeing an exhibit through the eyes of friends and strangers alike. As I was wandering through the Neuberger Museum of Art’s “British Subjects: Identity and Self-Fashioning 1967-2009,” I met Jean Eisenstein, who was there for a
lecture in the new Latin-American art series. (It was a million-dollar bequest from the estate of Eisenstein’s brother, Alex Gordon, that led to the appointment of Patrice Giasson as an associate curator of Art of the Americas there and thus, to the lecture series.)

Eisenstein chuckled when she saw Sam Taylor-Wood’s delicious, dizzying, delightful C-prints “Self-Portrait Suspended I” (2004) and (at right) “Escape Artist, Pink and Green” (2008), in which the artist seems to be floating magically in space.

She was, however, perplexed by Angus Fairhurst’s “Pietà”, a 1996 C-print in which the artist casts himself as Jesus and someone in a gorilla suit as his mother, Mary. Eisenstein said she wished a docent were on hand to explain the work. No doubt a guide would’ve explained that Fairhurst often used gorillas in his work. A docent might’ve also speculated on the connection between the dead Christ and the suicidal Fairhurst, who hanged himself last year.

Then again, a guide might not have pointed out something Eisenstein picked up on immediately: The Jesus figure holds a wire in his hand, perhaps a comment on our pull-the-plug society? I might not have thought of this at all had I not run into Eisenstein, although she modestly observed that everyone sees something different in art.

As Fairhurst’s work suggests, this has not been a good moment for representations of the Virgin Mary. Apparently, Luc Bondy’s new production of “Tosca” at The Metropolitan Opera — which will be simulcast into New Rochelle and White Plains theaters Oct. 10 — features the lecherous Scarpia caressing a statue of the Virgin.

As an art critic who happens to be a Roman Catholic, I like my artistic treatments of all religions to be serious and respectful, which is not the same as being blandly reverential. Indeed, one of the more moving “Pietàs” I’ve ever seen is a short, slow-motion video by Sam Taylor-Wood, in which she casts herself as Michelangelo’s stoical Madonna and Robert Downey Jr. — one of her muses — as the Christ figure. (More about their aesthetic relationship in an upcoming post.
In the meantime, you can see this 2001 video on YouTube.)

The excrutiating movement of the actors captures all the agony of death.

And all the struggle of life.

Photo courtesy of the Neuberger Museum of Art.