Category: {religion}

Religion

Giant Skeleton and the Chocolate Jesus

No, not a post about a new psychedelic band but two body-oriented artworks in the news.

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The giant skeleton by Gino De Dominicis is on display in the Palazzo Reale in Milan. More pictures at the Wooster Collective and also here. Via Towleroad.

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Cosimo Cavallaro‘s My Sweet Lord is due to go on display at Manhattan’s Lab Gallery in New York City on Monday but complaints from the usual suspects are giving the gallery second thoughts. More on that here. It’s okay to make any number of Messiahs from wood, stone, metal or plastic, just don’t dare make a Jesus out of anything edible.

Update: the Lab Gallery showing of the edible Jesus has been cancelled.

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, said the work was a direct assault on Christians. “All those involved are lucky that angry Christians don’t react the way extremist Muslims do when they’re offended.”

Don’t be shy Bill, you know you’re itching to bring back the Inquisition. So Christians are angry are they? Isn’t that one of the Seven Deadly Sins? Another complaint was that Jesus is shown naked, something that we see in plenty of paintings depicting him as a child. Oh well, the artist and gallery owners can feel relieved they weren’t stabbed or shot for their pains and the forces of Righteous Wrath can file into church at the weekend to eat the body of Christ. You know, like they do every Sunday.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Very Hungry God
• Gay for God
• History of the skull as symbol

The art of Félicien Rops, 1833–1898

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Pornokrates (1878).

After Mr Peacay’s comments regarding Félicien Rops I thought it time to devote a post to this impious artist.

Rops, a Belgian working in Paris, is curious even by the standards of the disparate group who comprised the Symbolists and with whom he had some connections. Whereas many artists of the time might hint at a fashionable blasphemy or Satanism, Rops’ dealings with these subjects were unequivocal, as was the outright pornographic tone of many of his drawings. This can make much of his work seem modern in a way few artists of that period achieve today, and it’s a good bet that many Christians (especially those of the puritan American variety) would still find his pictures offensive. These weren’t the only works that Rops produced, there were plenty of landscapes and society portraits, but it’s these that he’s remembered for. Once again, posterity favours the forthright and the unique over uniformity and compromise.

• The Félicien Rops Museum
• Les Diaboliques by Barbey d’Aurevilly (1874): 8 illustrations
• Gallery of pornographic drawings at Arterotismo

Continue reading “The art of Félicien Rops, 1833–1898”

Another blow for the god squad

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A mob on the march from Frankenstein (1931).

That’s blow as in bludgeon, not, er, smoking drugs or oral sex… From the BBC:

New rules outlawing businesses from discriminating against homosexuals have been upheld in the House of Lords.

A challenge led by Lord Morrow of the Democratic Unionist Party failed by a majority of three to one.

He had argued that the rules forced people to choose between obedience to God and obedience to the state.

But Northern Ireland Minister Lord Rooker said it would be “quite wrong” to elevate the rights of one group above those of another.

In the time-honoured tradition of angry mobs everywhere, “Christian and Muslim groups … stage(d) a torchlit protest outside the House of Lords tonight against a proposed new gay rights law that they say would force them to “actively condone and promote” homosexuality.” The law would do nothing of the sort but these aren’t the kind of people to worry themselves with inconvenient facts. No reports as to whether they were carrying nooses and pitchforks along with their flaming brands but their chilly vigil was in vain, the challenge was defeated by 199 votes to 68. As Warren Ellis so aptly put it: “House Of Lords To Homophobes & Intolerant Christians: Shut The Fuck Up”. Amen to that. Polly Toynbee had a great piece of polemic in The Guardian eviscerating the litany of nonsense being used to support the challenge. All this and the iPhone too; that’s what I call a good day.