LOOK: Empty Tomb (detail) by Claire Curneen
I encountered this striking image on the cover of Image no. 97 (Summer 2018). I’ve not been able to find a photograph of the full piece, but Curneen created a variation on it last year.
In the article “Beauty in Brokenness: The Sculpture of Claire Curneen,” Richard Davey writes that in Curneen’s body of work,
indications of internal states of transformation or transfiguration are not confined to gold. . . . Recently Curneen has begun to use a deep blue to create a similar effect. Like ultramarine, which was reserved for only the most significant parts of medieval paintings, this blue glaze is used only sparingly, painted onto faces, hands, and other areas where it will have the maximum impact. The effect is dramatic, with faces dissolving into an incorporeal void. For unlike gold, which reflects light, this deep blue holds light, absorbing our gaze into its pellucid depths. Curneen exploited this difference in one of her most recent works, Empty Tomb (2018), where blue and gold ooze from a series of gaping wounds, like the unmingled blood and water that flowed from the side of the dead Christ. With the tip of one finger, this elegiac figure gently points out one of these openings, echoing Saint Thomas, who needed to touch Jesus’s wounded side before he could believe. This gesture is the only moment of animation in a work that is otherwise still, but it is not the focus. That is to be found in the wounds themselves, which stand out starkly against the limpid porcelain. These are the empty tomb of the title, apertures exuding blue and gold, dark and light. They draw us in so that we find our attention focused entirely on these small rings. For a moment, as we teeter on this visual precipice, with solidity melting around us and the figure dissolving into the background, time stands still.
LISTEN: “Empty” by The Sowing Season, on The Fox & the Sparrow (2017)
Oh Mary, why have you come?
Come drop your oils and run
You’ll find no one
Find no oneOh Thomas, can’t you see?
Where bone and sinew meet
You’ll find a hole
Find a wholeOh Saul, look down at your hands
All red and dripping in the sand
It’s the wrong blood
The wrong bloodCome find the blood of the Son
Jesus meets people where they’re at: Mary Magdalene in her grief (John 20:11–18), Thomas in his doubt (John 20:24–29), Saul in his murderous zealotry (Acts 9:1–19). And he transforms them. After their encounters with the risen Christ, Mary’s tears give way to joy; Thomas’s doubt transposes into belief; and Saul goes from persecutor of Christians to key apostle, with a ministry of preaching the gospel, planting churches, and writing letters of teaching and encouragement that have become sacred scripture.
The song “Empty” by The Sowing Season reflects Christ’s gentle invitation to behold his transfigured wounds and to move, with him, from death into life.
This song is on the Art & Theology Eastertide Playlist.
Art & Theology 