When I originally spoke to our minister regarding a sermon on Religious Images of Love, my first thoughts were in keeping with my academic training and life experience: Madonna and Child, a common religious image of maternal love and devotion from the Western canon. This won’t surprise those of you who know that I am a stay-at-home mom with 2 year old twins, or those of you who know that my academic background is in European painting. Actually, I had at first tried to conjure up romantic images, with the sermon being near Valentine’s Day. Religious romantic images. Sit and think on that for a moment. Can you see any? The only ones I thought of—the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden or of Holofernes, who literally loses his head for Judith—were more love gone bad. And I certainly couldn’t imagine any images reflecting my romantic reality—pictures of lesbians. From the Bible. Or any religious text. So, in the western canon, anyway, the religious images of love I could think of were Madonnas.
But as I continued my personal inventory of religious images of love, I began to step outside the Western canon and discovered several that would qualify—Ibeji twin figures commemorating a deceased child’s spirit, Navajo wedding baskets used to serve corn to the newly married couple and guests, or the Taj Mahal, an architectural monument to a man’s love for his wife. And of course, the Kama Sutra, the Hindu how-to manual of physical pleasure and romantic relationships. Could I talk about, much less show an image from the Kama Sutra, on a Sunday morning, in church?
Luckily for us UUs, and I say this as I stand next to the rainbow flag in the church where I was married to my partner, both the terms “love” and “religious” can be defined broadly and encompass many works of art. This is not, of course, the case in all religious traditions. While there are human representations throughout the history of Islamic art, it is generally frowned upon by the clerics and prohibited in religious works. Similarly, the rules regarding the painting of icons of the Madonna, for instance, remain in some Eastern Orthodox traditions very specific.
I began to wonder what makes an image religious. Does it need to be commissioned by or hung in a religious institution? What about works of art no longer in their original locations--is a Madonna and Child still religious on the walls of the Met? You (almost) never see anyone praying to those. Is a work of art religious if it embodies a spiritual theme, such as Felix Gonzalez Torres's portrait of his boyfriend in candy? Titian ponders the meaning of love in Sacred and Profane Love, but the allegory is not a biblical one. Does the subject need to be overtly religious, from a specific text? I’ve already mentioned the fate of romantic love in the Bible, such as Judith and Holofernes, but since I have two great slides, I’ll mention it again. This leads us back to Madonnas— Fra Fillippo Lippi, a Carmelite monk, painted two beautiful Madonnas, using as his model his pregnant girlfriend, who was also a nun (depending on the story you read, he kidnapped her from her convent and was also later kidnapped himself by Barbary pirates). If true, would these be religious? As you saw in the opening montage, many of the works of art do not depict biblical or religious subjects, but love—of friends, families, parents, siblings. And so, for today, for me, these are religious or perhaps more appropriately, spiritual images. They address something inherent to the human condition and speak to us about what it means to be human.
Finally, I realized that the pulpit is much different than the academic podium. The art historian's approach to religious images is generally factual, not personal or spiritual, but objective, essentially stripping the work of art of its passion, i.e. not receiving it in the way it was meant to be received. So my homily will restore some of that passion to my project as an art historian, because these "images of love" are images I love--they refresh my spirit, engage my mind, rekindle a passion that has been a focus of my life for 15 years. So let us abandon the pulpit, and the podium, as I take you on a tour of images to see what art and religion can offer up about love for Valentine's Day.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s Untitled (Portrait of Ross) from 1991 was one of my favorite tour stops when I guided students and seniors and hundreds of other visitors through the galleries of the Art Institute of Chicago. Because, it is simply a pile of candy on the floor. The best part? You’re supposed to take a piece. Touch the art. Eat the art. Kids got it right away and would lunge for the candy only warily looking at the guards afterwards. Adults almost never took a piece until I did. And as days passed, the pile of candy would shrink from its original 175 lbs down to nothingness, when the candy company would then refill the pile. It was delightful, delectable, delicious. The sensuous nature of the experience—the sound of unwrapping plastic in a near-silent museum, the taste of the sweet hard candy—always seemed to me to call forth ideas of love and sex. Even holy communion, for this is a minimalist meditation on love and loss. This untitled work is a portrait of the artist’s lover, Ross Bleckner, who, like the artist, was HIV positive and died of AIDS. His ideal weight before he was ill was 175 lbs. And as we eat the candy from the pile—supposedly Ross had quite a sweet tooth—we watch the pile wither away, as Ross did. Even when the pile of candy was disturbingly small, I always grabbed a piece, wanting to participate in this touching memorial to love.
Another stop on my tours of the Art Institute was the small Ancient Greek Galleries, one of my favorite places in the museum. Amid the vitrines of Greek vases, was the Varrese Painter’s Loutrophoros of 365 BCE. On this vase, women prepared a young bride for a wedding—mirrors, jewels, garlands, anointing oils—everything she would need for the ceremony. A small loutrophoros is actually depicted on the vase, as it was used for the ritual bathing of the intended. Of course, this being ancient Greece, romantic love was not the basis for marriages, which like in many other historical periods, was intended to strengthen family position and wealth. But the delicacy and intricacy of the representation of the preparations belie that and recalls many young girl fantasies about weddings. Unfortunately, in this case, there were no weddings. Large loutrophoroi such as this one were not used in weddings but as grave markers for young unmarried girls. Families would place such vases on gravesites and pour libations of wine and oil through the jars, which have holes in the bottom so that the offerings can soak into the ground. It is another beautiful, but sad, monument to love and loss.
As the Greeks declared of love, “tis de bios, ti de terpnon, ater cruses Aphrodites”—what is life? What is love? Without Golden Aphrodite?—Renaissance artists often contemplated the lives and loves of the ancient world. Sandro Botticelli. The Birth of Venus. One of the most famous works of art in the Western canon. Scholars debate the meaning and the inspiration for the painting of the Goddess of Love rising from the sea at her birth and being greeted by the zephyrs and a goddess of spring. Was Botticelli inspired by written descriptions of a famous ancient painting? The woman who modeled for Venus was probably the lover of the Medici prince who commissioned the work at the time of her marriage to someone else. He managed to save the picture when many of Botticelli’s other pagan-themed paintings were being burned by the zealous cleric Savonarola, in a case of religion being very controlling of art. But what I see when I look at this painting is not the nude pagan Goddess that upset Savonarola, nor the woman who posed as the goddess for her lover. I see the work of art in front of which I stood at the Uffizi in Florence and decided I should switch my major from Classical Studies to Art History during my senior year in college. I have seen reproductions of this painting most of my life—it is the favorite work of art of my favorite aunt, after whom DD is named. It was because of her that I took a bus from Rome, not exactly knowing where I was going and speaking no Italian, and finally made it to the museum 15 minutes before closing, running up the stairs to see only this painting. I cannot separate the actuality of Botticelli’s painting from memories of my aunt or the affects this painting had on me. It is the emotion the work creates in me that I remember.
The nude body of Venus is demurely hidden by her hands and hair. Not so the case of women in the Kama Sutra. Yes, I can’t not talk about the Kama Sutra. But I have no personal connection to it—I’ve never been to India, the AIC had no prints, at least not on display. In fact, finding an image to show you has been a challenge. But I wanted to include it because I know next to nothing about its historical origins and wanted to learn. The 36-chapter work compiled by Vatsyayana in the 2nd century CE is not a sex manual nor a sacred text, but a discussion of the aims of ancient Hindu life with the kama, or enjoyment of the senses, placed in context with the dharma or virtuous living and artha, material prosperity. There are sections on making money, finding a wife, making yourself attractive, and, of course, sex. It is this last part, through translations by Sir Richard Burton, known traveler and explorer, in 1883 as well as numerous illustrations that pervade popular culture and the internet. But the most fascinating of the representations of the Kama Sutra, for me, are the temples at Khajuraho, about 400 miles southeast of New Delhi. There, on some of the 22 temples of this World Heritage Site built during the Chandela empire of the 10th and 11th centuries, are erotic representations inspired by the Kama Sutra. These are not depictions of deities making love, but of human beings expressing their physical natures. There are also pictures of other aspects of daily life—women getting dressed, farmers and potters at work. In the most famous of these, the Kandariya Mahadeo, a Jain temple (the temples in the complex are from a variety of sects) dedicated to Lord Shiva, there are erotic images of lovers around the bottom of the exterior of the temple, representing human’s base emotions. Towards the top are deities. There are no erotic images inside, as physical needs have been abandoned for spiritual ones, though the inner sanctum contains a giant lingam, a phallic symbol of the god. Like the Kama Sutra itself, the temple sculptures embrace various aspects of life. It is only our modern culture that privileges the sexual over the daily and so I can show you few images of the temple itself.
Speaking of few images, I will end with lesbians, since that is where I tried to begin. The representation of women by women is rare in the history of western art—as famed art historian Linda Nochlin queries, “Why Are there No Great Women Artists?” But the advent of photography evened the playing field which had been tilted by access to education and the ability to practice a profession in the favor of female photographers. Eva Watson Schutze. Clementina Lady Hawarden. Julia Margaret Cameron. Alice Austen. The last lived on Staten Island, in a 17th century house you can still visit. And throughout the end of the 19th through the early 20th century, she recorded her life there at Clear Comfort. Images of herself in a ballgown, of her trips to the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, of her pugs, but mostly of her friends—riding bicycles, dressing up as men, embracing. These pictures of women’s friendship, of a world not often visualized from the inside, of the love these friends had for one another, these pictures were almost lost when Alice Austen lost her house and belongings after the stock market crash of 1929, but the glass plates were saved and someone recognized their value. Amid these plates are pictures of Gertrude Tate, and while the official National Historic Site doesn’t like to mention Gertrude, she met Alice in 1892, moved in with her in 1917, and was her companion until Alice entered a nursing home in 1945. And so I will end with this image of love, of the love of women, of the love of friends. We’ve come a long way from religion and the bible, but these, for me, are no less spiritual.
And I ask you, what works of art do you love? What works of art represent the love in your life?
