January 2025 – Page 2 – Art & Theology

LOOK: What You Gonna Name That Pretty Little Baby? by Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson

Robinson, Aminah_Mother and Child_reduced — Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson (American, 1940–2015), *What You Gonna Name That Pretty Little Baby?*, 1992. Pen and ink on typewriter paper. © Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson Trust.

Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson (1940–2015) was an artist working in multiple media whose work celebrates Black history and culture. She was a lifelong resident of Columbus, Ohio, and bequeathed her art, writings, home, and personal property to the Columbus Museum of Art, who established the Aminah Robinson Legacy Project in 2020.

The drawing above is one of twenty-six from Robinson’s excellent book The Teachings: Drawn from African-American Spirituals (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992). These drawings, she writes in the introduction, “have grown from the stories and songs that were given to me by my family and my early teachers, and I offer them here to the children of today’s troubled world and the children of tomorrow. They carry a message of dignity, knowledge, and wisdom . . . speak of survival, of freedom and determination, of love and faith, of justice and of hope . . .”

The artist’s estate is represented in the US by Fort Gansevoort in New York, which is currently showing Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson: Character Studies through January 25.

Another exhibition of her work, Aminah Robinson: Journeys Home, a Visual Memoir, will be touring nationally for the next few years: to the Springfield Museum of Art in Ohio (February 1–July 13, 2025), the Newark Museum of Art in New Jersey (October 16, 2025–March 1, 2026), the Mobile Museum of Art in Alabama (March 26, 2026–January 9, 2027), and two remaining venues to be announced. This is a major exhibition that brings together Robinson’s drawings, prints, paintings, textiles, collages, homemade books, dolls, “hogmawg” sculptures (made of a mixture of mud, clay, twigs, leaves, lime, animal grease, and glue), and “RagGonNon” pieces (monumental swaths of fabric encrusted with buttons, beads, and other found objects) to create a portrait of her life.

LISTEN: “Mary, What You Gonna Name That Pretty Little Baby?,” African American spiritual | Arranged by Alex Bradford, 1961 | Performed by Princess Stewart and Marion Williams on Black Nativity: Gospel on Broadway! (Original Broadway Cast), 1962

Mary, Mary, what you gonna name that pretty little baby?
Mmm, mmm, pretty little baby
Mmm, mmm, pretty little baby
Glory be to the newborn King

Some call him one thing, I think I’ll call him Jesus
Mmm, mmm, sweet Jesus
Mmm, mmm, (ain’t he sweet?) sweet Jesus
Glory be to the newborn King

Some call him Jesus, I think I’ll call him Wonderful
Mmm, mmm, wonderful
Mmm, mmm, he’s so wonderful
Glory be to the newborn King

Some call him Wonderful, I think I’ll call him Emmanuel
Mmm, mmm, King Emmanuel
Mmm, mmm, (ain’t he the king?) Emmanuel
Glory be to the newborn King

Some call him Emmanuel, I’m gonna call him the Prince of Peace
Mmm, mmm, Prince of Peace
Mmm, mmm, Prince of Peace
Glory be to the newborn King

Some call him Prince of Peace, I’m gonna call him Jesus
Mmm, mmm, sweet Jesus
Mmm, mmm, (ain’t he sweet?) sweet Jesus
Glory be to the newborn King

Mary, Mary, what you gonna name that pretty little baby?
Mmm, mmm, pretty little baby
Mmm, mmm, pretty little baby
Glory be to the newborn King

This Christmas spiritual, a dialogue between an unnamed visitor and the new mother Mary, has been recorded by many artists. I think I like the original cast recording from the Langston Hughes musical Black Nativity best, featuring soloist Princess Stewart on the first verse and Marion Williams on the remaining six, backed by the Stars of Faith.

But here’s a handful of other versions I like. Because the song was passed down orally, it has taken on different lyrical variations and accrued new verses. Some reference the wise men.

>> “The Virgin Mary Had One Son” by the Staple Singers, arr. Roebuck “Pops” Staples, on The 25th Day of December (1962):

>> “The Virgin Mary Had One Son” by Josh Garrels, on The Light Came Down (2016):

>> “What ’Cha Gonna Call the Pretty Little Baby” by the National Lutheran Choir, dir. David M. Cherwien, arr. Ronald L. Stevens, on Christ Is Born (2016):

>> “Glory to the Newborn King” by Chicago a Cappella, dir. Jonathan Miller, arr. Robert Leigh Morris, on Holidays a Cappella Live (2002):

>> “Virgin Mary Had One Son” by Joan Baez and Bob Gibson, live at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival (see also “Virgin Mary,” a bonus track on the 2001 Vanguard reissue of Baez’s 1966 album Noël):

A praising of God is what laughter is, because it lets a human being be human.

Laughter is a praise of God, because it lets a human being be a loving person.

Laughter is praise of God because it is a gentle echo of God’s laughter, of the laughter that pronounces judgment on all history.

Laughter is praise of God because it foretells the eternal praise of God at the end of time, when those who must weep here on earth shall laugh.

The laughter of unbelief, of despair, and of scorn, and the laughter of believing happiness are here uncannily juxtaposed, so that before the fulfillment of the promise, one hardly knows whether belief or unbelief is laughing.

—a found poem by Kathleen Norris, made up of sayings by Karl Rahner, from Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith (Riverhead, 1999), pp. 257–58

LOOK: You Shall Laugh by Soichi Watanabe

Watanabe, Soichi_You Shall Laugh — Soichi Watanabe (Japanese, 1949–), *You Shall Laugh*, 2011. Oil on canvas, 16 × 12 in. (41 × 31 cm). Kwansei Gakuin University Chapel, Kobe, Japan. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Soichi Watanabe is a Japanese Christian artist who served as the 2008–9 artist in residence at the Overseas Ministries Study Center (OMSC) in New Haven, Connecticut (now at Princeton Theological Seminary). OMSC published a catalog of his work, titled For the Least of These: The Art of Soichi Watanabe, in 2010, featuring forty-three of his paintings.

Watanabe doesn’t supply facial features for his human figures because he wants viewers to be able to see themselves in the characters portrayed. He concentrates on form and color.

I was introduced to this painting of his through the OMSC-sponsored Zoom presentation he gave on February 3, 2021. There he said, “We can laugh as the love of God is being poured out on us . . . the laughter of knowing that the Lord is with us in pain and sorrow.” The wave shape at the bottom, he told me in an email, is a reference to the tsunami of March 11, 2011, which wiped out his home city of Ishinomaki and accelerated his mother’s dementia.

Watanabe also painted a companion piece, With Those Who Weep, which shows the same three figures huddled together in a mass, one comforting the two who are crying. Together, the paintings encourage us to fully feel our griefs and our hurts, and to be present to one another through those experiences, but also to hold on to joy, which transcends circumstance.

The artist pointed out to me that the three figures in You Shall Laugh resemble a flower spreading out its petals. The kanji for “bloom,” he says, originally meant “laugh” and was written as “birds sing, flowers laugh.”

LISTEN: “Jesus soll mein erstes Wort” (Jesus shall be my first word) from Gott, wie dein Name, so ist auch dein Ruhm (God, as your name is, so also your praise is to the ends of the world) (BWV 171) | Words by Picander (Christian Friedrich Henrici), 1728 | Music by Johann Sebastian Bach, 1728 | Performed by Kathleen Battle and Itzhak Perlman on J. S. Bach: Arias for Soprano and Violin, 1991

Jesus soll mein erstes Wort
In dem neuen Jahre heißen.
Fort und fort
Lacht sein Nam in meinem Munde,
Und in meiner letzten Stunde
Ist Jesus auch mein letztes Wort.

Jesus shall be my first word
uttered in the new year. 
Again and again 
his name laughs in my mouth, 
and in my last hour
Jesus will also be my last utterance.

This aria is the fourth movement of a cantata Bach composed for his church in Leipzig for New Year’s Day 1729. January 1 is also the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus, since Jesus was given his name when he was eight days old (Luke 2:21). Read the full libretto of BWV 171 here, and listen to the full cantata here. (It’s only sixteen minutes.)

For the excerpt I’ve chosen a recording by the legendary American operatic soprano Kathleen Battle, who is accompanied by the equally famous Israeli American violinist Itzhak Perlman.

Month: January 2025

Christmas, Day 9: Pretty Little Baby

Christmas, Day 8: “Again and again his name laughs in my mouth”