I like this sculpture a lot. I love it, even. I grew up with it. When I imagine Christ, I imagine this sculpture, and I keep discovering more and more to like about it.
I showed it to a good friend on new years day and he pointed out a weld mark at the lower torso, just about where the spear might’ve pierced.
I don’t think it was intentional, but it might’ve been. Does intention matter for things like this?
Likely not.
The story goes that my father traded a logo design for this sculpture before I was born. His parents, my grandparents, were deeply religious people. Protestants, but we won’t hold that against them.
I showed it to a good friend on new years day and he pointed out a weld mark at the lower torso, just about where the spear might’ve pierced.
I don’t think it was intentional, but it might’ve been. Does intention matter for things like this?
Likely not.
The story goes that my father traded a logo design for this sculpture before I was born. His parents, my grandparents, were deeply religious people. Protestants, but we won’t hold that against them.
I suppose that’s where his, I won’t call it an obsession, but perhaps, preoccupation, with Christ stems.
I’d suggest anyone who grows up in the west has a preoccupation with Christ. If you don’t, that’d be strange, I think.
In one of Soetsu Yanagi’s books he talks about heroes. He suggests that a hero is only as interesting as they are different. If everybody were capable of forgiveness and sinlessness and kindness and true, transcendant love, well, Christ wouldn’t be as interesting or as heroic as he is.
But we aren’t, and so he is.
I’d suggest anyone who grows up in the west has a preoccupation with Christ. If you don’t, that’d be strange, I think.
In one of Soetsu Yanagi’s books he talks about heroes. He suggests that a hero is only as interesting as they are different. If everybody were capable of forgiveness and sinlessness and kindness and true, transcendant love, well, Christ wouldn’t be as interesting or as heroic as he is.
But we aren’t, and so he is.
This sculpture always felt heroic. First for it’s size, almost twelve foot high, twice as high as a man, then for it’s place in the tradition of outsider and folk art, of which it is a sterling example. Few faces are as kind as his, when I thought of kindness and when I think of kindness and when I dwell on love, I see an axe head, and barbed wire, and I feel very lucky indeed.
Bozo.