Wednesday, February 25, 2004

Miserere mei (Or the Once Weekly, Now Sporadic, Medpundit Art History Lesson): All eyes are on The Passion today, but let us pause among the hype and consider the true meaning of Ash Wednesday. A day which marks the beginning of forty days of sacrifice, scrutiny, and repentance. These are our days in the wilderness; days of hunger and thirst and denial, a sort of religion-induced depression that forces us to focus on our hearts and our faults and to remember our mortality. Much like this man:



Christ in the Desert by Ivan Kramskoy, 1872
(Click here for larger detail)

The depressed Christ. Those forty days and forty nights in the desert weren't just a self-inflicted religious exile. They were forty days and forty nights of clinical depression. All of the symptoms are there - the social isolation, the flat affect, the careworn stooped posture, the dishevelment, the loss of appetite (fasting), and the wrestling with inner demons. When you think about it, he had good reason to be depressed. Consider what must have been on his mind. He had just been baptized, and at his baptism, it became clear to him exactly who he was, perhaps for the first time in his life. (Do you ever wonder how he came to know he was God? Did he know it from birth, or did the realization come slowly as he matured into a man, culminating in a certainty on the day of his baptism?)

It must have been a disturbing realization, to say the least. Did he wonder if he was crazy? Most expected the Messiah to be a conventional savior, a hero with a sword. Did he consider taking that road? One thing the Scriptures make clear, a lot of that time in the desert was spent wrestling with the temptation to abuse his newly realized power. Did he know what lay ahead for him if he chose the unconventional road? From this painting, it certainly appears that he knew all that lay ahead. From his fellow Nazarenes threatening to throw him from a cliff to his humiliating execution. It would be enough to depress anyone, even God.

And who better to paint the epitomy of depression than a nineteenth century Russian? Ivan Kramskoy was born into the bourgeoisie, the son of a provincial clerk. He began his artistic career as an apprentice to an icon painter, then as a retoucher of photographs. When he was 20, he entered the Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg, where he quickly became a star pupil. He chafed under the conventions of the Academy, however. In 1863, he and thirteen other students were dismissed for refusing to paint the requisite mythological scene (something about Odin and Valhalla) for their diplomas. Led by Kramskoy, the fourteen formed The Society for Traveling Art Exhibitions and called themselves the Wanderers. Their goal was art of the people, for the people. They focused on the Russian common man, in Russian settings, painted realistically. And they took their art on tour, exhibiting it in cities throughout the country, not just in the metropolises of St. Petersburg and Moscow.

Kamskoy's speciality was portraiture, not surprising for a man whose early training was in icons and photography. Christ in the Desert is the culmination of his experience. The icon is made real; the God is made man. It's no wonder that Leo Tolstoy called it the "best Christ I ever saw."

 

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