The Yellow Christ by Paul Gauguin (1889)
Matthew 27: 45-50 (NRSV)
From
noon on, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And about three o'clock
Jesus cried with a loud voice, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" that is,
"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" When some of the
bystanders heard it, they said, "This man is calling for Elijah." At once one of them ran
and got a sponge, filled it with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to
him to drink. But the others said, "Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to
save him." Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last.
Paul Gauguin was a French artist
who worked during the Post-Impressionism period.
He was living in Breton,
France in 1889
when he painted "The Yellow Christ".
Here, he has juxtaposed the Breton landscape and contemporary
peasant women, in their native dress, with the depiction of Christ on the
cross.
Gauguin admired what he saw as the simple faith of the
Breton people and he imagined that they were granted privileged access to God -
unmediated and unencumbered by complexity. Some scholars say that he has
depicted the women here as praying so devoutly that they are enabled to see the
crucifixion as vividly as if it were actually before them.
If that was Gauguin's intent, then that explains how the man
on the road in the background can be going about his business, seemingly
ignorant of the horrific scene he has just passed.
Reflection
And now it is 3pm. Finally, it is over. What have we done?
What have I done?
What can God possibly do with such a horrible, final ending?
Nancy Langham
No comments:
Post a Comment