Holy Week in Seville has got off to a rainy start today, Palm Sunday. But the presentation of its controversial poster, work of the Sevillian artist Salustiano García, was much more of a storm.
Salustiano’s hyper realistic Renaissance style painting, chosen by the cofradías — the confraternities that are custodians of the figures and in charge of organising the Holy Week processions — seems to have left no one indifferent. For some, the youthful and tranquil figure — whose face is based, Salustiano says, on his own son Horacio — is “an attack on Catholics”, a step too far and a slap in the face for the centuries-old religious conventions that ignite the passions of old and young alike in Seville. By way of illustration, Eusebio Pérez, the communications director of far right wing party Vox in Sevilla, proclaimed in no uncertain terms: “In my opinion, this represents anything but Holy Week, and even less, Seville”.
For others, it is a magnificent piece of art that speaks powerfully of the risen Jesus. Gone are the notions of suffering and death that are associated with most aspects of Seville’s Holy Week. In its place we find a glorified Christ, with the marks of crucifixion barely visible, and crowned with the traditional “powers” that symbolise his divinity.
Just how can innovation be balanced with tradition? The answer appears to be that it cannot, not at least where Holy Week in Seville is concerned. Faced with the weight of negative and homophobic comment on social media, and even some vandalistic responses, the guild of cofradías came to regret its choice and have removed the offending poster from all printed media to be used over Holy Week.
How far is art allowed to go? The answer, I think, lies in recognising that it is art that has shaped the current representations of Christ that characterise Holy Week and condition the cultural thinking that controls people’s perceptions of the events they portray, their significance, and appropriate responses. Seville’s religious art conveys much and has created an understanding of what is “okay” when thinking about Christ’s suffering and death. But there’s nothing “absolute” about any of this, it’s all the product of human thought and artistic expression.
It is clear that Salustiano is not attempting to depict a first century Jewish male, nor present us with a historically accurate or even a “biblical” Jesus. Rather, he is using art to convey emotion and conviction, drawing both on existing convention and the surprise and uncomfortable elements that make art unique in its ability to upset and challenge existing thinking. As the artist himself said at the presentation of the poster, “a work of art does not need explanation, it must speak for itself”.
Salustiano’s poster invites us to enter into the mystery of the resurrection, how Jesus’s battered and bloodied body now appears new — or almost new, with only the faintest marks of the nails and spear remaining. The transcendent gaze confirms the truth displayed in his body that death is not the end. It was not the end for him, nor need it be for us.
It’s not just artists, however, who create their own representations of Jesus. We all do it. Whether pale-skinned or dark, your best buddy or the apocalyptic rider on a white horse ready to wreak vengeance across the planet, capitalist or socialist, anarchist or the face of law and order…
Inevitably, our understanding of what Jesus “must have been like” emerge not solely from “Bible study” but from the interaction of our individual history and prejudices, our cultural and social background, the context in which we come to or grow in faith, and our willingness to allow what we see in Jesus to mould our own behaviour and attitudes. No wonder Paul speaks of a “different Jesus” to the one he brought to the Corinthians (2 Co.11:4).
The real Jesus confronted the reigning political, economic and religious establishment head on, leading inevitably to his own torture and murder. The challenge for us is to enter into his world and understand how his actions and words riled the “powers that be” whilst endearing him to the excluded and stigmatised in Israel. How did the God and Father he offered differ from that of the Judaism of his day? What does his behaviour tell us about God? Where did his closest disciples fail to understand him and his message? For it is in those same blind-spots that we are most likely to cling to inaccurate misrepresentations that we have mistaken for the real Jesus.
If nothing else, Salustiano’s Christ warns us not to be overconfident in the accuracy of the image of Christ that we have created and maintain. Sometimes, we need the “shock” of something different to nudge us out of our comfort zone and discover where, like so many Pharisees and rabbis of old, we may have missed something important.
His painting reminds us to think carefully about the Jesus we create in our mind’s eye and project into our words, attitudes and actions. For art is not just what makes it onto the paper, canvas or page. Art is also what we create in our heads and comes to rule our hearts.
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