As part of MIF there was an exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery called '11 Rooms'. Each room contained a different piece of contemporary art in one room was John Baldessari's piece called 'Unrealised Proposal for Cadavre Piece, 1970'. Baldessaari's proposal is to recreate a painting by Andrea Mantegna called 'The Lamentation Over the Dead Christ' - and to recreate it he needs a corpse. Baldessari's proposal is unrealised as, as yet, he still needs to find a body of a person who has consented to being part of the work. So the room in the '11 Rooms' exhibition documented all his correspondence over the last few decades to make this piece of art work happen.
Apparently there is still a possibility that the work will happen if a body is obtained, and for many it raises lots of ethical questions. But I want to look at it from a faith perspective - Does it matter that the person laid on he slab is a representation of Christ? Does this add a level of religious controversy to the proposal or not? I actually find the proposal rather provocative, provocative in a positive way. I think that it encourages us to reflect on our mortality and within that framework the mortality of the person of Christ. Christ a man who lived and died. The proposal seems to draw us closer to the reality of that death by physically recreating it, and I find that reassuringly uncomfortable.
There is nothing greater than death to connect us with our finitude. I've done a few funerals and in some of the funerals that I've been at the coffin has been open. People have looked at the body, held it and kissed it. Now, these funerals have been from the West Indian community and there is something quite liberating with them. The death of a person is more tangible when we see their body. Death has been so sanitized in White Britain that a dead body is not something many people see regularly - and so I wonder with this proposal if the fear/controversy is more about there being a corpse in the gallery? Is death somehow cheapened through this proposal. Does it sensationalized something which should simply be a time to grieve.
Yet at the same time the body is simply a carrier of our spirit, once my spirit has gone my body will cease to be me. It's an empty vessel, empty of the life that it once carried. So part of me warms to the proposal - because it raises major questions regarding the afterlife and future hope. I'll be interested to see if it does happen, if it does there will not doubt be complaints, but I wonder where these complaints will come from. After all we've had artist depictions of a dead Christ for many centuries so really it should not be that controversial to Christians...No doubt, I'm going to be wrong on that...
Will it happen? We'll see...
Great, though provoking post Ben, but I would dispute one aspect:
"Yet at the same time the body is simply a carrier of our spirit, once my spirit has gone my body will cease to be me." Hmm. Not sure about this. Sounds like a kind of dualism more associated with Gnosticism? Is my body just a carrier for my spirit, "the real me"? Am I not my body in that all I experience through means of having a body shapes who I am, and is the only means by which I can be real to and in the world? I'm just pondering but that statement didn't sit easily with me. What about bodily resurrection - how does that fit in?
Posted by: Mark H | October 15, 2011 at 09:29 AM
Cheers Mark - Good point! I think that there is a danger that we separate the body and the spirit and neglect the earthly body. Body is more than a carrier of the spirit. Bodily resurrection yes, but what does that look like? Is it this body - or a perfectified version of it? Is it a new body? Christ's resurrected body was similar yet different from his earthly body, both recognised and unrecognised. Maybe ours will be similar yet different, and within that there is a newness about them to. Which I'm pleased about as this ingrowing toenail has been hurting for about six months now...
Posted by: benedson | October 15, 2011 at 05:58 PM
Cut a v in the centre of the nail, down to the skin.
Soak cotton wool in tea tree oil or blob with savlon and plug small amounts under the nail at both corners.
Change daily.
After a few days it should have grown out again, provided it wasn't that deep in the first place.
Cut your nails straight and not round.
Clippers are better than scissors.
As for the dead, there are many things greater than death for reminding us of our infinitude. Those who have 'lost' somebody very close to them and seen God through that pain knows how difficult a subject this really is, and not one to be trivialised. By art or anything else.
As for the body, we've been made perfect. The rest just needs seeing past.
Posted by: Alan Smithee | October 16, 2011 at 05:04 PM
Great tips :)
I'm pondering last point, though and Ben's musings about resurrection bodies. I've just this minute finished an article on evil, suffering and disability. What do we "do" with the fact of people with severe physical and learning disabilities - are they already made perfect? What constitutes perfection or normality? Will a person with Down's syndrome receive a new body in the next life and, if so, can they still be though of as the same person given that Down's syndrome affects every cell in such a person's body?
What is the "real me" and can it ever be conceived of apart from a body? And with these ponderings I bid you goodnight...
Posted by: Mark H | October 17, 2011 at 12:03 AM
Welcome.
As one who works with those with disabilities, particularly young and in hospices, the thought we can consider anyone less than created in the image of perfection is bordering on eugenics.
What makes someone with Down's less than perfect?
What makes someone without Down's better than one with Down's?
Why should they receive a new body? What's wrong with the one they have?
Why should a child that dies early in term not become the fully grown person God created them to be?
God made us to live forever. It is the world that disrupts that process but then, God has overcome the world.
Therefore we are made perfect now, as we were always intended, and so our bodies shall live in their perfection following the return.
I hope you don't mind me saying but not so much ponderings as fairly straightforward to me...
Posted by: Alan Smithee | October 21, 2011 at 08:29 PM