ARTISTS
JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR
JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR Brady Robinson: Scenes From Jesusland Heineman Myers Contemporary Art Bethesda, Maryland November 11-December 6, 2008 Despite
Jody B. PhD Cutler / Afterimage
01 Jan, 2009
JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR
Brady Robinson: Scenes From Jesusland
Heineman Myers Contemporary Art
Bethesda, Maryland
November 11-December 6, 2008
Despite the separation of church and state in the Constitution, religion and Christianity specifically remain a powerful force in public discourse in America, as recent presidential campaigns have cast in sharp light. Major polls indicate a prominent position for religion in the lives of about 60% of Americans; while 80% to 90% identify themselves as Christian (even if not religious). Although atheism and agnosticism have picked up some steam with increased airtime for scholarly skeptics like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, not more than 10% of Americans have identified themselves as "non-believers" in recent years. There have also been some indications of resurgence in Christian fervor, abetted by the demonization of an expanding Islam.
Beyond indicators like box office records for Mel Gibson's heavyhanded The Passion of the Christ (2004) and celebrity-status televangelists is a rise in the development of Christian-themed family attractions, most recendy the $27 million Creation Museum (which opened in 2007) in Petersburg, Kentucky, a simulacrum of ancient life according to biblical chronology. A somewhat more low-rent Christian adventure, the "Holy Land Experience" in Orlando, Florida, is on an upswing after the Trinity Broadcasting Network took over operations from its messianic founder last year. The site is a replica of ancient Jerusalem, replete with Halloween-costumed inhabitants, airbrushed "sculpty" topography, and doe-eyed plaster fauna, highlighted by a daily Crucifixion. A few exhibits such as a "scriptorium," along with the requisite (real) "marketplace" and pita stands are among the diversions. But the main attraction is the interaction of the Christian actors (prospective employees must "demonstrate Christian characteristics") with the mainly Christian visitors.
The snapshot aesthetic employed by Robinson in her photographs of the Holy Land Experience convey the mundane, unintentional kitsch permeating the venue. Bill Maher's recent film, Religulous (2008), includes footage of the park, extending some emergent structural distinctions between modes and mediums in visual culture that Robinson's photographs imply. Like Maher but more unobtrusively, Robinson's stance is documentary - an outsider's shifting focus from attraction to visitors from distanced perspectives. She composes in the viewfinder casual glimpses of the idiosyncratic proceedings, leaving viewers to draw their own conclusions.
Several horizontal images lay out the amalgamated backlot setting. One features a young man photographing a companion posed beside a Roman soldier-and-horse statue. A mannequin-Christ walking on water silhouettes the photographer-subject, compressing their respective real space and mirroring a similar visual confusion in his photographic subject. This constellation of simulation, representation, and reality is more interesting qua photograph then at the site, where material dissonances are too blunt to be conceptually provocative. A yellowish light across the series, subt矛y enhanced by the choice of rich ink-jet printing, evokes the muggy climate endured by roving "pilgrims."
The tourist-photographer appears in several works as a trope of modern ritual behavior. Another image shows a youth dressed as Samson posed on a related prop for a companion's camera. Incongruous butterflyshaped furniture seen here and throughout the series is perhaps a watered-down reference to the Resurrection.
Disney-derived amusements have a uniquely American cast as fantasylands where anything is possible - into which Christianity has also been subsumed, according to over half the population. An image of a woman obscured by a fluttering flag with the Serta-sheep-dotted Mount of Olives in the backdrop encapsulates this phenomenon. The established Eurocentric Christian majority has invoked such ideology to homogenize ethnic difference in "other" immigrants, highlighted by Robinson in a shot of diverse visitors, including several children holding flags at their sides, watching "the capture of Christ."
The reenactment of the Via Crucis at "Jesusland" (as Robinson titles the series) as it winds through strategically marked terrain recalls Renaissance sites such as the Sacro Monte in Varallo, Italy. The clerics who conceived this ascending Biblical narrative of trompel'oeil sculpture and murals intended it not to "fool" but to "properly" trigger the religious imagination. '
This seems the point in Orlando as well, given the awkward choreography and soapy theatrical details captured by Robinson. The draw is ultimately the declared Christianity of the enterprise itself - to be among Christians. Steep entry fees limit those motivated by mere curiosity or satire.
The same "Jesus" stars in the projects of Maher and Robinson, or some combination of the received (art historical, Hollywood) character and the Christian actor who portrays him. As interviewed by Maher, the degree of his self-consciousness in his role remains elusive. Robinson's image Via Dolorosa doubles as a cinematic close-up of the ketchupsplattered, hunky Christ, with visitors at the periphery, similarly clicking away. A cropped upward view of the Crucifixion scene, in which the polyester, red garb of the Romans pops out against the tropical verdure of this Golgotha, reads as a postcard, evoking a long tradition of souvenir images at secular and religious tourist destinations as well as public executions.
In the first round of the culture wars the hypocritical elements of Christianity were taken up by photographers like Andres Serrano and Joel-Peter Witkin in shocking, "artsy" imagery. Robinson, in a more mild-mannered account, suggests rather its reified absurdities.
FOOTNOTE
NOTE 1. See Metchell B. Merback, The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel: Pain and Spectacle of Punishment in Medieval and Renaissance Europe (London: Reaktion Books, 1999), 41-44.
AUTHOR AFFILIATION
JODY B. CUTLER, PhD, is an associate professor of Visual Arts at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.
COPYRIGHT: Copyright Visual Studies Workshop, Inc. Jan/Feb 2009. Provided by Proquest- CSA, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Only fair use as provided by the United States copyright law is permitted.
PROQUEST-CSA, LLC- MAKES NO WARRANTY REGARDING THE ACCURACY, COMPLETENESS, OR TIMELINESS OF THE LICENSED MATERIALS OR ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED.
Brady Robinson: Scenes From Jesusland
Heineman Myers Contemporary Art
Bethesda, Maryland
November 11-December 6, 2008
Despite the separation of church and state in the Constitution, religion and Christianity specifically remain a powerful force in public discourse in America, as recent presidential campaigns have cast in sharp light. Major polls indicate a prominent position for religion in the lives of about 60% of Americans; while 80% to 90% identify themselves as Christian (even if not religious). Although atheism and agnosticism have picked up some steam with increased airtime for scholarly skeptics like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, not more than 10% of Americans have identified themselves as "non-believers" in recent years. There have also been some indications of resurgence in Christian fervor, abetted by the demonization of an expanding Islam.
Beyond indicators like box office records for Mel Gibson's heavyhanded The Passion of the Christ (2004) and celebrity-status televangelists is a rise in the development of Christian-themed family attractions, most recendy the $27 million Creation Museum (which opened in 2007) in Petersburg, Kentucky, a simulacrum of ancient life according to biblical chronology. A somewhat more low-rent Christian adventure, the "Holy Land Experience" in Orlando, Florida, is on an upswing after the Trinity Broadcasting Network took over operations from its messianic founder last year. The site is a replica of ancient Jerusalem, replete with Halloween-costumed inhabitants, airbrushed "sculpty" topography, and doe-eyed plaster fauna, highlighted by a daily Crucifixion. A few exhibits such as a "scriptorium," along with the requisite (real) "marketplace" and pita stands are among the diversions. But the main attraction is the interaction of the Christian actors (prospective employees must "demonstrate Christian characteristics") with the mainly Christian visitors.
The snapshot aesthetic employed by Robinson in her photographs of the Holy Land Experience convey the mundane, unintentional kitsch permeating the venue. Bill Maher's recent film, Religulous (2008), includes footage of the park, extending some emergent structural distinctions between modes and mediums in visual culture that Robinson's photographs imply. Like Maher but more unobtrusively, Robinson's stance is documentary - an outsider's shifting focus from attraction to visitors from distanced perspectives. She composes in the viewfinder casual glimpses of the idiosyncratic proceedings, leaving viewers to draw their own conclusions.
Several horizontal images lay out the amalgamated backlot setting. One features a young man photographing a companion posed beside a Roman soldier-and-horse statue. A mannequin-Christ walking on water silhouettes the photographer-subject, compressing their respective real space and mirroring a similar visual confusion in his photographic subject. This constellation of simulation, representation, and reality is more interesting qua photograph then at the site, where material dissonances are too blunt to be conceptually provocative. A yellowish light across the series, subt矛y enhanced by the choice of rich ink-jet printing, evokes the muggy climate endured by roving "pilgrims."
The tourist-photographer appears in several works as a trope of modern ritual behavior. Another image shows a youth dressed as Samson posed on a related prop for a companion's camera. Incongruous butterflyshaped furniture seen here and throughout the series is perhaps a watered-down reference to the Resurrection.
Disney-derived amusements have a uniquely American cast as fantasylands where anything is possible - into which Christianity has also been subsumed, according to over half the population. An image of a woman obscured by a fluttering flag with the Serta-sheep-dotted Mount of Olives in the backdrop encapsulates this phenomenon. The established Eurocentric Christian majority has invoked such ideology to homogenize ethnic difference in "other" immigrants, highlighted by Robinson in a shot of diverse visitors, including several children holding flags at their sides, watching "the capture of Christ."
The reenactment of the Via Crucis at "Jesusland" (as Robinson titles the series) as it winds through strategically marked terrain recalls Renaissance sites such as the Sacro Monte in Varallo, Italy. The clerics who conceived this ascending Biblical narrative of trompel'oeil sculpture and murals intended it not to "fool" but to "properly" trigger the religious imagination. '
This seems the point in Orlando as well, given the awkward choreography and soapy theatrical details captured by Robinson. The draw is ultimately the declared Christianity of the enterprise itself - to be among Christians. Steep entry fees limit those motivated by mere curiosity or satire.
The same "Jesus" stars in the projects of Maher and Robinson, or some combination of the received (art historical, Hollywood) character and the Christian actor who portrays him. As interviewed by Maher, the degree of his self-consciousness in his role remains elusive. Robinson's image Via Dolorosa doubles as a cinematic close-up of the ketchupsplattered, hunky Christ, with visitors at the periphery, similarly clicking away. A cropped upward view of the Crucifixion scene, in which the polyester, red garb of the Romans pops out against the tropical verdure of this Golgotha, reads as a postcard, evoking a long tradition of souvenir images at secular and religious tourist destinations as well as public executions.
In the first round of the culture wars the hypocritical elements of Christianity were taken up by photographers like Andres Serrano and Joel-Peter Witkin in shocking, "artsy" imagery. Robinson, in a more mild-mannered account, suggests rather its reified absurdities.
FOOTNOTE
NOTE 1. See Metchell B. Merback, The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel: Pain and Spectacle of Punishment in Medieval and Renaissance Europe (London: Reaktion Books, 1999), 41-44.
AUTHOR AFFILIATION
JODY B. CUTLER, PhD, is an associate professor of Visual Arts at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.
COPYRIGHT: Copyright Visual Studies Workshop, Inc. Jan/Feb 2009. Provided by Proquest- CSA, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Only fair use as provided by the United States copyright law is permitted.
PROQUEST-CSA, LLC- MAKES NO WARRANTY REGARDING THE ACCURACY, COMPLETENESS, OR TIMELINESS OF THE LICENSED MATERIALS OR ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED.