Written by Nafeesa AllenFunctional support
Getty ImagesSpanish conservatives call recent depictions of Jesus “sexualized.” Art experts don’t understand what all the fuss is about.
spanish artist Salustiano Garcia Cruz A Handsome and Youthful Portrait of Jesus – For Whom his own son served as a model – Something on the Seville poster is causing controversy. The painting depicts a muscular, youthful-looking Jesus in a loincloth, but critics (mostly conservatives on social media) have criticized the statue.attack“,”evil“, and Too “sexual”“For Holy Week.
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gallerist in barcelona Artur Ramon He told BBC Culture that the reason this version of Jesus is so controversial is that in southern Spanish tradition, Christ is usually depicted as suffering and covered in blood. “This,” Ramon says, “is an idealized Neo-Platonist Christ, closer to the Italian Renaissance tradition.”
But opinions are divided, and the protests on social media are certainly not representative of Seville as a whole. Many, including Seville’s mayor José Luis Sanz, feel that the controversy itself is “artificial”. Sanz told The Associated Press.: “I like posters…some are more dangerous, some are more classic, some are more daring.”
“In a sense, it’s an effeminate or androgynous Christ,” Ramon continues. “Spain is such a country” Still pretty homophobic.And people don’t like to see him represented in this way at a festival that commemorates the last moments of Christ’s life. ” legalize same-sex marriage Adoption by same-sex couples in 2005 and the latest rankings for both. Gay Times UK and Global Citizen Solutions Spain ranks among the top five most LGBTQ+-friendly countries in the world.
There was also a backlash against drawing conclusions about sexuality based solely on appearance.Garcia himself responded to such comments In an interview with El Mundo, he said, “He’s a gay Christ because he looks nice and he’s handsome, come on! We’re in the 21st century.”
Ramon says Seville’s strong Catholic tradition makes it ripe for this kind of discussion. The Catholic Archdiocese of Seville dates back to the Apolis period. Age, approximately the number of years between the death of Christ and the first century. The city lies within the Autonomous Region of Andalusia, which was ruled by the Muslim Moors from the 8th century until his 15th century.of The Spanish Reconquista brought back Catholicism to the region.However, it continues to be an important sacred place, judaism and islam, too. Ramon said García’s debate over the unsuffering Jesus has not yet spread to Madrid or Barcelona, and is unlikely to spread, as people in those big cities are more accepting of different opinions. he says.
Getty ImagesPedro Alarcón, an Andalusian curator and teacher at Casa Sostoa, disagrees. “I think people in general are very perplexed by expressions of beauty that they thought were ‘very modern,'” Alarcón told BBC Culture. “The image of Christ corresponds precisely to some canons of idealization and archetypes of classical beauty, which throughout the history of art have always been followed to represent the iconography of the Risen One. A kind of Apollo Like…I wonder what’s so disconcerting about it, that he looks like a young boy posing for some brand’s collection. ”
“Actually, I don’t think a lot of people care,” Alarcón continued. “And there is a sector that is very religious… They think of it as something different and perhaps intolerable. And they don’t know how to express it. , certainly no references either. In the end, they easily fall into saying something that’s blasphemous or profane. ”
García himself also told the Atlas News Agency: “There is nothing innovative in this painting. There is contemporaneity, but all the elements I used have been used in the last seven centuries in sacred art. It’s an element.”art historian morgan hay Echoing the sentiment that nothing shocking is happening here, he said the controversy “seems to me… like a huge overreaction to the image of Christ, which is unusual in modern times, but in history. Biblical figures and saints have often been depicted as attractive or “sexy” throughout art history, he added.Whether it’s the image of a scantily clad young St. Sebastian pierced with arrows, the naked body of Mary Magdalene covered only by her hair, or the muscular body of Christ, michelangelo Haig says Garcia’s painting is closer to the real Christ than any other. Raphael, leonardo Like Titian.
And in the grand scheme of church art, This is not the first time representations of Christ have been collected. negative attention.compared to Andres Serrano’s deliberately vulgar 1989 Piss ChristFor example, Garcia’s image looks very tame.
The debate over what Christ looked like has been going on for years in both religious and artistic circles. Alicia Batten, Professor of Religious Studies and Theology, University of Waterloo, Canadatold BBC Culture that images of Christ in the Christian tradition are constantly changing and usually reflect the values of the artists and societies that create them. “Given the predominance of certain notions of masculinity in many ‘Western’ cultures, it is no wonder that some people are offended by this image of Spain. seems to challenge some people’s ideals of what it should be like to be a man, and indeed their concept of what it means to be a man. ”
It is important to remember why Garcia’s painting was painted in the first place: to attract people to church for Easter. Haig said he would imagine that “the Baroque popes would be overjoyed if the paintings reminded people of what Jesus looked like, or what he didn’t look like.” There is. Garcia’s latest work actually accomplished its goal of getting more people to attend Easter Mass.
“What is clear,” Alarcón added, is that the potentially controversial “is not the issue of nudity, on the contrary; it is precisely the purity that the artist literally took from the procession of Christ in Seville. “This Christ is naked, just like the other Christs who go out during Holy Week.”
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