LOOK: Allegorical Representation of the Crucifixion with Saints Andrew and Paul by Francesco Traini
Francesco Traini (Italian, active 1321–1363), Allegorical Representation of the Crucifixion with Saints Andrew and Paul, ca. 1350–60. Tempera and gold leaf on panel, 41 1/4 × 16 5/8 in. (104.8 × 42.2 cm). Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones. [object record]
In this panel painting from late medieval Italy, two of Christ’s apostles—Andrew and Paul—embrace the cross where Christ hangs crucified, his blood running down from his hands and side. The Latin inscriptions unfurl as speech from each. Paul, on the right, says, MICHI AUTEM ABSIT GLORIARI NISI IN CRUCE DOMINI NOSTRI JESU CHRISTU PER QUEM MICHI MUNDUS CRUCIXUS EST ET EGO MUNDO (“But God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world” [Gal. 6:14]).
And Andrew exclaims, SALVE CRUS SPETIOSA SUSCIPE DISCIPLULUM EIUS QUI PENEDIT IN TE MAGISTER MEUS CHRISTUS (“Hail lovely cross, receive the disciple of him who hung on you, my master Jesus Christ”). This is one of the antiphons from the Feast of Saint Andrew, spoken by Andrew in response to being presented with the instrument of his martyrdom.
Francesco Traini is one of the few artists of the period to use raised gesso (plaster) and gold leaf texts on the surfaces of his paintings. He also often used punches, as here, to create elaborate borders.
I’m really compelled by the portrayal of the cross as a forked tree. (Note the similarity to Friday’s featured painting!) Granted, that artistic choice was probably dictated mainly by the narrow dimensions of the panel.
LISTEN: “येशूलाई क्रूसमाथि सब हेर” (Yeshulai Krusmaathi Sab Hera) (Down at the Cross) | Original English words by Elisha A. Hoffman, 1878 | Music by John H. Stockton, 1878 | Performed in Nepali by Psalms Unplugged, 2019 [HT: Global Christian Worship]
१. येशूलाई क्रूसमाथि सब हेर, हाम्रो दुःख उनैले बोकेर, डाक्दैछन् सबलाई प्रेम गरेर, येशूलाई हेर ।
VISUAL MEDITATION: “Golgotha, Auschwitz, and the Problem of Evil” by Victoria Emily Jones: Last month for ArtWay I was asked to write about Emma Elliott’s Reconciliation, a sculpted marble arm that bears both a nail wound of Christ from his crucifixion and the number tattoo of Holocaust survivor Eliezer Goldwyn (1922–2017).
Emma Elliott (British, 1983–), Reconciliation, 2016. Carrara marble, 20 × 110 × 25 cm.
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ESSAY: “The church’s reception of Jewish crucifixion imagery after the Holocaust” by Andrew Williams, AGON 48 (Winter 2015): Can Jews create Christian art? “I seek to revisit this question by examining the ways in which Jewish artists have made reference to the central symbol of the Christian faith, the crucifixion, and consider the ethical and theological horizons they open up for the church. . . . Given its place as a symbol of oppression within Judaism, and in particular its integration with the swastika during the years of Nazi power, its widespread adoption within a Jewish artistic vocabulary is remarkable.” Williams discusses “how the resulting christological imagery has been freighted with meaning connected with collective suffering, personal grief and divine abandonment.”
Emmanuel Levy (British, 1900–1986), Crucifixion, 1942. Oil on canvas, 102 × 78 cm. Ben Uri Gallery, London.
Jacob Epstein, Marc Chagall, Emmanuel Levy, RB Kitaj, Mauricio Lassansky, Abraham Rattner, Samuel Bak, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Adi Nes, and Seymour Lipton are among the artists engaged in this illustrated essay. The author provides an extensive bibliography if you’d like to learn more. I also want to remind you of the excellent exhibition catalog essay “Behold the Man: Jesus in Israeli Art” that I shared back in 2017.
Wisnu Sasongko (Indonesian, 1975–), Last Night in Gethsemane, 2005. Acrylic on canvas, 48 × 34 in.
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ESSAY: “The Christian Art Scene in Yogyakarta” by Volker Küster: Published June 27, 2012, by Protestantse Theologische Universiteit (Protestant Theological University) in Kampen, Netherlands, this essay spotlights five Indonesian artists whose work culturally contextualizes the Christian story: Bagong Kussudiardja [previously], Hendarto, Hari Santosa, Dopo Yeihan, and Wisnu Sasongko. Küster provides biographical information on the artists, including their religious backgrounds (most are converts from Islam), and discusses three paintings by each, all of which are reproduced in full color.
ART VIDEO: “Caravaggio’s Taking of Christ” (Great Art Explained): In 2020 art writer and gallerist James Payne launched the YouTube video series Great Art Explained, consisting of fifteen-minute videos that each explore a single historically significant artwork. Here’s one he did on an extraordinary painting of Caravaggio’s from the collection of the National Gallery of Ireland, which shows Judas’s betrayal of Christ in Gethsemane.
Edgar G. Boevé (American, 1929–2019), Phoenix, Death, ca. 1980. Oil and acrylic on tea chest paper. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones, at the Center Art Gallery, Calvin University, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2015.
Fat soil, full spring, sweet olive, grape of bliss, That yields, that streams, that pours, that doth distill; Untilled, undrawn, unstamped, untouched of press, Dear fruit, clear brooks, fair oil, sweet wine at will! Thus Christ prevents, unforced, in shedding blood, The whips, the thorns, the nails, the spear, and rood.
He pelican’s, he phoenix’, fate doth prove, Whom flames consume, whom streams enforce to die: How burneth blood, how bleedeth burning love? Can one in flame and stream both bathe and fry? How could he join a phoenix’ fiery pains, In fainting pelican’s still bleeding veins?
Elias once, to prove God’s sovereign power, By prayer procured a fire of wondrous force That blood and wood and water did devour, Yea stones and dust beyond all nature’s course: Such fire is love, that, fed with gory blood, Doth burn no less than in the driest wood.
O sacred fire! come, show thy force on me, That sacrifice to Christ I may return: If withered wood for fuel fittest be, If stones and dust, if flesh and blood will burn, I withered am, and stony to all good, A sack of dust, a mass of flesh and blood.
Note: I modernized the spellings of this poem for readability, but there is a beauty to the early modern English; see the original here.
Robert Southwell (ca. 1561–1595) was an English Catholic priest and poet living during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Educated at Jesuit colleges in France and Italy, he returned to his native England as a missionary in 1586. But he suffered persecution under the country’s Protestant regime, and had to conduct his ministry in concealment. In his early thirties he was caught celebrating the Mass and was subsequently imprisoned, tortured, and hanged for treason. None of his English poems was published in his lifetime, but many of them circulated as manuscripts. He probably wrote this one sometime during his three years in the Tower of London, awaiting execution.
“Christ’s Bloody Sweat” opens with a reflection on Christ’s agony in the garden of Gethsemane the night before the Crucifixion, when “in his anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground” (Luke 22:44). This bloody sweat may be a figure of speech Luke uses to convey the intensity of the moment, or it may be an actual condition called hematidrosis, in which capillary blood vessels that feed the sweat glands rupture, causing them to exude blood—something that can occur in rare cases when a person is under extreme physical or emotional stress.
In the first stanza of the poem, “Southwell introduces various fluids that represent the creative effusions of Christ’s love, with an extravagant reiteration of images that emphasises the extravagance of that love,” writes Rev. Patrick Comerford in his commentary on the poem.
Fat soil, full spring, sweet olive, grape of bliss, That yields, that streams, that pours, that doth distill; Untilled, undrawn, unstamped, untouched of press, Dear fruit, clear brooks, fair oil, sweet wine at will! Thus Christ prevents, unforced, in shedding blood, The whips, the thorns, the nails, the spear, and rood.
Southwell describes Christ as rich, fertile soil that yields sweet fruit; a spring of living water; an olive from which consecrated oil is distilled (for the anointing of the newly baptized and newly ordained); and a grape that yields fine wine. It may help you to read each phrase vertically down the first four lines: “Fat soil that yields, untilled, dear fruit”; “full spring that streams, undrawn, clear brooks”; “sweet olive that pours, unstamped, fair oil”; “grape of bliss that doth distill, untouched of press, sweet wine at will!”
“Prevent” in this context means to go before. In other words, even before Jesus is captured by the Roman soldiers, tortured, and led to Calvary to be crucified, he sheds his blood in Gethsemane. Without any physical forces acting upon him. “Rood” is an archaic word for the cross.
Stanza 2 references two birds of lore that were popular symbols of Christ: the pelican and the phoenix.
He pelican’s, he phoenix’, fate doth prove, Whom flames consume, whom streams enforce to die: How burneth blood, how bleedeth burning love? Can one in flame and stream both bathe and fry? How could he join a phoenix’ fiery pains, In fainting pelican’s still bleeding veins?
The pelican was said (by Epiphanius, Augustine, and other church fathers) to revive or feed her young with her own blood; she would peck at her breast until she died so that her little ones might have life. The phoenix is a fantastical bird from classical mythology that burns itself to ashes on a funeral pyre ignited by the sun but then rises up out of those ashes, renewed.
Southwell ponders how Christ can be both pelican and phoenix. Did he bleed to death (losing streams of blood), or did he die by burning? The image in line 10 is quite gruesome: Christ simultaneously is “bathe[d]” in blood and fries in flames. The fire is, of course, metaphoric. But it becomes here, along with the blood, an emblem of divine love. A love that bleeds and burns, and that is all-consuming.
The fire and blood imagery continues in stanza 3, where Southwell refers to the famous contest on Mount Carmel between Elijah (a prophet of Yahweh) and the prophets of Baal (see 1 Kings 18).
Elias once, to prove God’s sovereign power, By prayer procured a fire of wondrous force That blood and wood and water did devour, Yea stones and dust beyond all nature’s course: Such fire is love, that, fed with gory blood, Doth burn no less than in the driest wood.
To prove the supremacy of the God of Israel over Baal, Elijah issues a challenge. He and Baal’s prophets would each prepare a bull for sacrifice and lay it on a stone altar but light no fire. They would then pray each to their own god and see which god answers by sending fire from heaven to consume their sacrifice. The prophets of Baal accept the challenge, but no fire comes to light their altar, despite their most fervent entreaties. Elijah, to increase the stakes, even soaks his bull and the wood it lies on in water, three times over—and still fire comes from above, devouring, as Southwell writes, “blood and wood and water . . . [and] stones and dust beyond all nature’s course.”
God’s love is like that fire, Southwell says. The implication, I think, is that on the cross, the love of the Son (who gives himself as a sacrifice) and the love of the Father (who accepts the sacrifice) meet. (I know there are varying interpretations of the nature of the atonement and the role of the Father in the Crucifixion, but I’m simply trying to interpret Southwell here.)
In the poem’s final stanza, Southwell considers how he ought to respond to divine love as expressed in Christ’s passion.
O sacred fire! come, show thy force on me, That sacrifice to Christ I may return: If withered wood for fuel fittest be, If stones and dust, if flesh and blood will burn, I withered am, and stony to all good, A sack of dust, a mass of flesh and blood.
He calls on God to accept, in return, his sacrifice—of praise and thanksgiving and obedience (Heb. 13:15–16; Ps. 50:23) and of his very self (Rom. 12:1–2). He probably had his martyrdom in mind. He acknowledges that he is but a withered, soggy, stony-hearted “sack of dust” but prays that God would make him fit to receive and broadcast the fire of love from on high.
For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water . . .
—Isaiah 35:6b–7a
I will open rivers on the bare heights, and fountains in the midst of the valleys; I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water.
—Isaiah 41:18
I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
LOOK: Paper River Flow in the Desert by Young-Ly Hong Chandra
Young-Ly Hong Chandra (Korean, 1970–), Paper River Flow in the Desert, Joshua Tree National Park, Southern California, 2021. Traditional Korean mulberry paper with acrylic, watercolor, ink, and gel.
Born and raised in Seoul and currently living in Pasadena, Young-Ly Hong Chandra is an artist who works primarily with paper, fabric, and found objects and in a range of sizes, from small collages to large-scale installations. From October 2020 to June 2021 she was an artist in residence at the Brehm Center at Fuller Theological Seminary, and she is now a facilitator in the program. She is also an artist in residence with Inbreak.co.
One of the main materials Hong Chandra uses is hanji, traditional handmade paper from Korea made from the inner bark of the paper mulberry tree. She cuts the paper and paints it on both sides with acrylic, watercolor, and ink, then she applies a thin coat of transparent gel to make it more durable and waterproof. “Paper stained glass” is what she calls these creations.
For her Paper River Flow series, she attaches together numerous pieces of this paper stained glass to form long blue rolls that can be rolled up or folded and packed in a bag so that when she travels nationally or internationally, or when she moves about her home city, she can carry them with her and create installations as the mood strikes her. “I am a small river bearer,” she says, “who’s conveying the big vision of the river flow to give life to many and will reflect the glory of God clear as crystal.”
The river is a symbol of healing and renewal, she says. In our dryness, in our barrenness, God springs up, offering life and nourishment. The image of the river is used many times in the prophetic book of Isaiah—I’ve cited just a few examples above—and also appears in the final book of the New Testament, where it flows down from the throne of God, watering the new creation (Rev. 22:1–2). Hong Chandra says,
The image of river for me is from Revelation 22 . . . the river flowing in the holy city, reflecting the glory of the Lamb of God sitting on the throne. And what I’m doing is still far from reflecting that glory. But I want this piece to be an invitation to others to come and taste the living water that was given so freely.
KOREAN 하나님께서 당신을 통해 메마른 땅에 샘물나게 하시기를 가난한 영혼 목마른 영혼 당신을통해 주 사랑 알기 원하네
[Phonetic] Ha na neem geh suh Dang shin eul tong heh Meh malun ttang eh Sehm mul nag geh ha shi gee lul Ga nan han young hone Mohk mal luhn young hone Dang shin eul tong heh Joo sarang ahl gee wun ha neh
SPANISH Agua viva Fluye del Señor A través de ti A esta tierra seca Al que tiene sed Dale de beber Que el amor de Dios Sea mostrado en ti siempre
ENGLISH May the love of God Spring up in your soul Like a healing stream In the wilderness flowing And may the love of God Quench the thirsty soul Feed the hungry heart May the love of God flow through you
Anthony Falbo (American, 1953–), It Is Finished, 2004. Oil and charcoal on paper, 24 × 18 in.
Exaggerated proportions and a sense of humor and play are characteristic of Anthony Falbo’s paintings, including the ones on religious subjects. In It Is Finished, the title is a pun that refers to one of the seven last words of Christ while also affirming that yes, despite half of the paper being unpainted, this artwork is complete as is.
The contrast of minimalist charcoal sketch marks with richly hued oil paints is the painting’s most striking feature. The boxed outline around the Crucifixion and the concentration of color there create the impression of a picture within a picture. But the scene cannot be contained; it spills out, the cross-tree taking root outside the frame, the blood pooling there too. Here is where the mourners—traditionally John and the three Marys—stand, one of them reaching up into the picture. Angels fly about in the margins; one gestures toward the dying Christ as if to tell the viewer, “This is for you.”
The color helps center our attention on Christ’s face and punctuates other details—namely, the three nails, and the blood at the base of the tree. Christ’s figure is painted in some places but line-drawn in others, evoking a sense of fading—but fading out, or in? That is, are we witnessing life giving way to death, or death giving way to life? Is the picture losing color or gaining it? Surely both.
Two rich color fields meet in the background: purple and blue. In addition to royalty, purple is traditionally associated with penitence and mourning and is the liturgical color for Lent. Blue represents heaven and/or truth.
Falbo cleverly uses trompe l’oeil effects to allude to other elements of the Crucifixion narrative. The peeling back of a paint layer references the tearing of the temple veil, a symbolic grant of access for all people to God through the eternal mediating priesthood of Christ. Across from that, an apparent puncture in the picture references the piercing of Christ’s side by a Roman soldier to confirm his death, which unleashed a discharge of water and blood—the symbolic birthing fluids of the church.
Falbo also draws on the traditional tree of life motif, which pictures the cross as a still-living tree, that of Genesis 3:22 and Revelation 22:2. There is art historical precedent for the fusing of Christ’s body to the wood, seen here especially in the hands, suggesting that he himself is life. Uniquely, though, Falbo’s rendition shows hands dangling from the branches, grasping apples, harking back to the Genesis narrative of Adam and Eve’s disobedience in Eden and thereby reminding us of the sin from which Christ’s death redeems us.
LISTEN: “’Tis finished! The Messiah dies”| Wordsby Charles Wesley, 1751 and 1788, with additions by Austin Pfeiffer, 2016 | Music by Austin Pfeiffer, 2016 | Performed by Salem Presbyterian Church musicians at the PCA General Assembly in Greensboro, North Carolina, June 15, 2017 | CCLI #7192481 [Chord chart]
’Tis finished! The Messiah dies, cut off for sins, but not his own. Accomplished is the sacrifice, the great redeeming work is done. Done, done, done!
The veil is rent; in Christ alone the living way to heav’n is seen; the middle wall is broken down, and all the world may enter in. Enter in!
Refrain: When the Messiah took on flesh and he gave up throne and home to be with us, the vict’ry we could never grasp was captured when they cut and cast his broken body on the altar of the Lord.
’Tis finished!—all my guilt and pain; I want no sacrifice beside. For me, for me the Lamb is slain; ’tis finished! I am justified. Justified! [Refrain]
The reign of sin and death is o’er, and all may live from sin set free. Satan hath lost his mortal power; ’tis swallowed up in victory. Victory! [Refrain]
The Rev. Austin Pfeiffer (ThM, Duke Divinity School) is an associate pastor at Salem Presbyterian Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, one of whose roles is to oversee music and liturgy. In summer 2017 he led a worship session at the annual business meeting of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) that included a retuned version he wrote, with new refrain, of Charles Wesley’s “’Tis finished! The Messiah dies.” The music really draws out the celebratory aspect of the lyrics and the sense of finality and accomplishment, especially with the accented repetition of each stanza’s end word or two. And the refrain expounds on Wesley’s imagery of sacrifice, in addition to connecting the Crucifixion and the Incarnation.
I’ve embedded a video of the performance above, extracted from the General Assembly livestream footage, with Pfeiffer’s permission. He is joined onstage by fellow musicians from Salem Pres: Hannah Proulx and Elizabeth Ottenjohn on vocals, Jared Meyer on vocals and guitar, Margaret Raney on fiddle, and John Daniel Ray on upright bass.
I’ve featured Charles Wesley many times on the blog, as he’s perhaps my favorite hymn-writer. This hymn text of his exists in several iterations, as he returned to it with a revisionary touch throughout his life. The earliest version, consisting of two eight-line stanzas, appears in a manuscript he completed in 1751 and was first published in 1762 in volume 2 of his Short Hymnson Select Passages of the Holy Scriptures:
’Tis finished! The Messias dies, Cut off for sins, but not his own! Accomplished is the sacrifice, The great redeeming work is done; Finished the first transgression is, And purged the guilt of actual sin, And everlasting righteousness Is now to all the world brought in.
’Tis finished, all my guilt and pain, I want no sacrifice beside, For me, for me, the Lamb is slain, And I am more than justified; Sin, death, and hell are now subdued, All grace is now to sinners giv’n, And lo, I plead th’ atoning blood, For pardon, holiness, and heaven.
But the most commonly reproduced version in hymnals today uses lines 1–4 and 9–12 (slightly altered) of the original, plus two of the four additional stanzas Wesley wrote on his deathbed in 1788, which weren’t published until 1830. (See the final eight-stanza version by Wesley.)
The hymn is often paired with William Bradbury’s tune OLIVE BROW, from 1853. It’s an alright tune, but I much prefer Pfeiffer’s.
The next day [John] saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”
—John 1:29
Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.
—1 Corinthians 5:7
You were ransomed . . . with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.
—1 Peter 1:18–19
LOOK: Agnus Dei by Francisco de Zurbarán
Francisco de Zurbarán (Spanish, 1598–1664), Agnus Dei, 1635–40. Oil on canvas, 37.3 × 62 cm. Museo del Prado, Madrid.
LISTEN: “Agnus Dei” by Samuel Barber, 1967 | Performed by Vlaams Radiokoor (Flemish Radio Choir), dir. Marcus Creed, 2015
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis. Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis. Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem.
English translation:
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, grant us peace.
“Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) is a choral composition in one movement by Samuel Barber, his own arrangement of his Adagio for Strings (1936). In 1967, he set the Latin words of the liturgical Agnus Dei, a part of the Mass, for mixed chorus with optional organ or piano accompaniment. The music, in B-flat minor, has a duration of about eight minutes” [source]. It’s slow and expressive and sublime—one of my top ten favorite pieces of classical music.
William Grosvenor Congdon (1912–1998) was a modern American artist, often classified as an abstract expressionist, who spent much of his life in Italy after World War II. He converted to Catholicism in 1959 and for the next two decades painted dozens of Crucifixions, which became more and more abstract as he went on. The one above is one of his earliest, and the subject is still easily recognizable.
Christopher Reardon explains how Congdon achieved the thick surface textures of his paintings:
Typically Congdon applied paint with a palette knife, then incised the encrustations of oil with a jackknife or awl. The technique suited him to the end. “With a brush, it’s a kiss,” he said after painting one of his final landscapes last winter [1997]. “You have to fight with a knife.”
This technique contributes to the agitated feel of many of his Crucifixion paintings.
Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson (1932–2004) was a prodigious American composer whose work spans many genres, including classical, jazz, pop, film, television, and dance. After receiving his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Manhattan School of Music, he cofounded the Symphony of the New World in New York in 1965 and later became its music director. He was also music director of Jerome Robbins’s American Theater Lab and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
Perkinson composed his first string quartet when he was twenty-three, basing it on the melody of the African American spiritual “Calvary.” It’s in three movements, which together capture the light and shade of the Crucifixion event:
I. Allegro II. Quarter note = 54 (video time stamp: 5:40) III. Rondo: Allegro vivace (video time stamp: 10:36)
The performance above is by the Grammy-winning Catalyst Quartet. It was part of the “Uncovered” series they played last year at The Greene Space at WNYC & WQXR, comprising three free concerts of work by five historically important Black composers: Florence B. Price, Jessie Montgomery, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, George Walker, and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (Perkinson’s namesake!). View the full concert series here.
I wanted to show a performance caught on video so that you can better see how the instruments interact with one another, but for an album recording, see Perkinson: A Celebration (2000), where the piece is performed by the New Black Music Repertory Ensemble Quartet. I include two of the movements, in addition to the Calvary Ostinato from Perkinson’s Black Folk Song Suite, on my Holy Week Playlist.
Craigie Aitchison (Scottish, 1926–2009), Sheep in the Moonlight, 1999. Screenprint in colors, edition of 75 in white ink, on black wove paper, 17 7/8 × 15 in. (45.5 × 38 cm) (full sheet, framed).
LISTEN: “There Is a Green Hill Far Away” | Words by Cecil Frances Alexander, 1848
There is a green hill far away, Without a city wall, Where the dear Lord was crucified, Who died to save us all.
We may not know, we cannot tell, What pains he had to bear, But we believe it was for us He hung and suffered there.
There was no other good enough To pay the price of sin. He only could unlock the gate Of heav’n and let us in.
Oh, dearly, dearly has he loved! And we must love him too, And trust in his redeeming blood, And try his works to do.
Christ Nailed to the Cross, mola (reverse appliqué panel) from the San Blas Islands, late 20th century. Bowden Collections.
The Kuna (also spelled Guna or Cuna) Indians live on the San Blas archipelago off the east coast of Panama, a cluster of some 378 islands in the Caribbean Sea. They are politically autonomous, and much of their traditional culture is intact.
Since the late nineteenth century, Kuna women have been making what are called molas, reverse appliqué panels made in pairs for the front and back of women’s blouses. As mola collector Jane Gruver describes, “several layers of cloth are stacked together and the design is made by cutting through the different layers of fabric to expose the desired color. Once the specific shape is achieved, the area is stitched around. Sometimes embroidery and applique are also used to add detail.” This colorful, wearable textile art is an integral part of Kuna culture.
The earliest molas featured geometric designs, which the Kunas translated from their customary body painting designs, but now a vast variety of representational subjects are common, including animals, plants, domestic scenes, political satire, dragons, mermaids, superheroes, spacecraft—and biblical stories!
The first Christian missionary to the San Blas Islands was Annie Coope, a single woman from the United States who arrived in the first decade of the 1900s and established a school on the island of Nirgana in 1913. A significant number of the Kuna embraced Christianity, such that there are now churches on thirty of the islands, as well as eighteen Kuna churches in and around Panama City, according to Wycliffe. A Kuna translation of the New Testament was published in 1995, at the behest of Kuna pastor Lino Smith Arango, and a Kuna Old Testament was completed in 2014.
The mola above shows two men hammering nails into Christ’s palms as two mourning figures—presumably John and Mary—stand behind. This piece is from the collection of Sandra and Bob Bowden in Chatham, Massachusetts, who are among today’s major collectors of modern biblical art. It is one of forty molas in the traveling exhibition Eden to Eternity: Molas from the San Blas Islands, available for rental for a nominal fee.
11. Summer of Soul (. . . or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), dir. Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson. The Harlem Cultural Festival of summer 1969, consisting of six free concerts spread out over six sequential Sundays, is a touchstone of Black music history and culture. Attracting over 300,000 people and known colloquially as “Black Woodstock” (Woodstock took place the same summer), it featured major pop, R&B, blues, jazz, funk, and gospel artists, including Nina Simone, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Mahalia Jackson, B. B. King, Stevie Wonder, the 5th Dimension, Edwin Hawkins, Mavis Staples, and Sly and the Family Stone. But because the festival got so little media attention, both during and in the fifty-plus years since, few people actually know about it.
Questlove combines archival footage of the incredible live concert performances—drawing from the forty-plus hours shot by festival coproducer Hal Tulchin, most of it never before seen—with interviews he conducted with participating musicians, audience members, and cultural commentators, as well as with other historical footage that gives a broader portrait of the times. Thoughtfully constructed, Summer of Soul highlights several movements taking place at the time within Black communities—civil rights, antiwar, Black pride, Black Power—anchoring them in musical expressions of those ideas. One thing that keeps coming up in the film is the therapeutic aspect of music, especially gospel music; several interviewees mention how music is one way they cope with unrest, trauma, and injustice and express their pain as well as their hope.
The concert took place only one year after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and one of the highlights for me was gospel veteran Mahalia Jackson and a young Mavis Staples singing “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” as a tribute to him. (Seconds before King died, he had requested that song from Ben Branch, who was set to perform that night.) At one point Jackson passes the mic to Staples to let her solo, which could be read symbolically as her passing the gospel music baton to the next generation.
The most revelatory sequence for me was the one where the Staples Singers’ performance of “It’s Been a Change” is interwoven with contemporary interviews about the moon landing. As Apollo 11 touched down on July 20, 1969, and the astronauts’ disembarkment was being broadcast live around the world, thousands of Black people were gathered at a park in Harlem watching the festival concert, just as they had been for the past three Sundays, instead of their television screens. A journalist was there asking attendees why they were missing this important historic event, and the responses overwhelmingly boiled down to: it wasn’t relevant to them; this music was. Several expressed frustration that with the rampant poverty, hunger, and urban decay, the pouring of tax dollars into space exploration was not only a serious misuse of funds but also immoral. These sentiments are best encapsulated in the spoken-word poem “Whitey on the Moon,” written and performed by Gil Scott-Heron the following year.
Streaming on Disney+ and Hulu.
12. West Side Story, dir. Steven Spielberg. I was skeptical of this musical being remade, as the original film adaptation from 1961 is so iconic and well loved. But I must say, I actually prefer this version! The choreography, dancing, and cinematography are phenomenal. Filming dance sequences, especially with large ensembles, is a notorious challenge, and the scene of the school dance in the gym nails it. And rather than being confined to an apartment rooftop, as it was in ’61, the “America” number moves through the streets of Manhattan and is even more colorful and dynamic.
You’re probably already familiar with the storyline, which is inspired by Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: two teenage lovers associated with rival New York street gangs, the Sharks (made up of Puerto Ricans) and the Jets (who are white), fall in love, with disastrous consequences. I’ve always thought the love story to be pretty shallow, and for all the narrative and character fixes/updates Tony Kushner makes to the source material in this screenplay, that doesn’t really change here. Tony (Ansel Elgort) and Maria (Rachel Zegler) are given a little more dimension, but I’m still not totally invested in their romance. And Maria’s quick forgiveness of Tony for what he does to her brother (no spoilers) is just baffling to me.
Still, I appreciate the added backstories given to several of the characters, and even to the turf wars. Spielberg makes it clear that the story is unfolding against the backdrop of the real-life slum-clearance projects in San Juan Hill (Lincoln Square), in which, beginning in 1959, the neighborhood’s majority Black and Hispanic tenants were evicted to make way for the building of Lincoln Center.
Anita (Ariana DeBose) leads the boisterous musical number “America” in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story. Charismatic and layered, DeBose’s performance is my favorite in the film. (Her character is given more to do in this version.)
Spielberg also corrects an egregious flaw in the 1961 film, which was the casting of white actors in brownface to play Puerto Rican characters. (Even Rita Moreno, who was a Puerto Rican playing a Puerto Rican, was made to wear skin-darkening makeup as Anita in the original.) Spielberg took care to cast Latinx actors of various skin tones. He also has them speaking occasional Spanish in the film, which is not subtitled (he did not want to “other” the language). So there’s more ethnic and cultural authenticity, and the Puerto Rican characters are more rounded. However, I understand the criticism that the story itself, despite Spielberg’s modifications, still stereotypes Puerto Rican males as violent and ignorant, and Puerto Rican women as either virginal (like Maria) or fiery (like Anita).
For an alternative musical depiction of Puerto Ricans in New York City, set in the 2000s, I commend to you In the Heights, which also released last year. It didn’t crack my top 20, and I was not impressed by the female lead, but it’s a really enjoyable watch—and the concept, music, lyrics, and screenplay are actually by Puerto Ricans (Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes), not by white guys.
Streaming on Disney+ and HBO Max. (But if you can catch it on a big screen, do it!)
13. Together Together, dir. Nikole Beckwith. A type of aspiring parent that I’ve never seen onscreen before, and frankly have never even thought about, is the single man in middle age who, because he has no partner but really wants a child, uses a surrogate. This heartwarming pregnancy dramedy explores the odd relational dynamic between these two people—Matt (Ed Helms), who’s getting ready to be a father, and Anna (Patti Harrison), the young woman, a stranger at first, whom Matt hires to grow his child inside her.
Many Christians have strong opinions about how children should be brought into the world—that is, through the sexual union of a husband and wife. And while that is a beautiful and God-honoring process, not to mention the most practical, there are some for whom marriage never pans out but who still desire to experience the miracle of new life bred from one’s own genes, and the joys of parenthood. What might the bond between an expectant dad and his gestational surrogate look like? They share an incredibly intimate (but nonsexual) connection by virtue of the creative act they’re participating in together, but obviously it’s sticky, because one of the parties will have to cut her attachment to the child after the birth—or will she?
The movie subverts popular rom-com tropes by showing a deep platonic relationship between two nonrelated people of the opposite sex—and I really appreciate that. We’ve been programmed to want to see, and even to expect, these two people to become romantically involved, as that’s the happiest ending we can imagine. Beckwith gives us something different. Watching Matt and Anna’s friendship blossom throughout the film is so beautiful and gratifying, and the ending is perfect.
Streaming on Hulu.
14. The Mitchells vs. The Machines, dir. Michael Rianda and Jeff Rowe: In this animated family flick, the quirky and dysfunctional Mitchell family must band together to save the world from a robot apocalypse. It’s genuinely funny, and I appreciated the foregrounding of the father-daughter relationship, which starts out strained but heals and grows through shared crisis.
Streaming on Netflix.
15. Judas and the Black Messiah, dir. Shaka King. It’s Chicago, 1968. When Bill O’Neal (LaKeith Stanfield) is caught impersonating a federal officer to steal a car, the FBI agrees to drop all charges, plus give him a monthly stipend, if he will infiltrate the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party to gather intelligence on Chairman Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya), whose message of Black liberation and community activism toward that goal have made him a perceived national threat.
This American biopic dramatizes Hampton’s rise to power and his assassination by police. A charismatic leader with strong organizational skills, Hampton was building an alliance among gangs and minority groups in Chicago—an antiracist, anticlass Rainbow Coalition. He taught political education classes, launched a project for community supervision of the police (to hold them accountable for brutality), helped set up a free medical clinic and a free breakfast program on the West Side, and more.
After striking his deal with the FBI, O’Neal was able to gain the trust of Party members through deception. He became Hampton’s driver and, later, his security captain. The information he supplied to agents about Hampton’s apartment layout enabled the infamous police raid on December 4, 1969, in which Hampton was gunned down while sleeping next to his pregnant girlfriend (Dominique Fishback), who survived—and who served, alongside Fred Hampton Jr., as a consultant on the film.
Significant as he is, Fred Hampton is not a person I ever learned about in school, so this film was educative for me.
Streaming on HBO Max.
16. Hive, dir. Blerta Basholli. This Albanian-language drama from Kosovo is based on the real-life story of Fahrije Hoti (played by Yllka Gashi). The film opens seven years after Fahrije’s husband went missing in the Krusha massacre in March 1999, during the Kosovo War.
Fahrije is a beekeeper, but she’s struggling to provide for her two children and her disabled father-in-law with local honey sales alone. So she starts her own business making and selling ajvar (a condiment made from roasted red peppers), first at the grocery store in town and later for export to other European countries. For help in this venture she recruits many of the other widows in Krusha, of varying ages, who form a “hive” of support for one another. But because the culture is very patriarchal, the women meet with hostility from the older men in the village who believe it’s dishonorable for women to be entrepreneurs and who see their economic independence as a threat to traditional values.
Grief and empowerment are interwoven in this inspiring story of a woman who dares to imagine a future for herself and her family apart from her husband, whom she painfully acknowledges (though not out loud) may be dead.
It’s now been twenty-three years since the massacre, and people in Krusha are still holding out hope for husbands and sons to return, putting pressure on the government to redouble its search efforts. More than 240 men from the village have been confirmed dead, while sixty-four remain missing.
Streaming on Kanopy.
17. Licorice Pizza, dir. Paul Thomas Anderson. I don’t know what to say about this one, except that it’s wacky and entertaining. An ode to LA’s San Fernando Valley of the 1970s, where writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson grew up, it centers on the “goofily chaste romance” (Alissa Wilkinson’s words) between fifteen-year-old Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) and twenty-five-year-old Alana Kane (Alana Haim). She’s flattered by the attention he gives her and charmed by his precocity and cheeky drive; he, besides simply crushing on her, relishes her cheerleading and practical support for his upstart business ventures, like selling waterbeds and opening a pinball arcade. Although the age difference between Gary and Alana is a bit uncomfortable, the tone is light and the stakes are low. Their chemistry is not an erotic one, but rather one that’s sparked and sustained by their having fun together on ridiculous adventures.
18. The Tragedy of Macbeth, dir. Joel Cohen. “A tale of murder, madness, ambition, and wrathful cunning,” adapted here with stunning visuals that capture the mood of the play just right. Add to that a stellar cast. Kathryn Hunter as the three witches (aka “the weird sisters”) is especially compelling—sent shivers down my spine!
Streaming on Apple TV+.
19. Our Friend, dir. Gabriela Cowperthwaite. A celebration of faithful, embodied friendship, this drama is adapted from the 2015 Esquire article “The Friend: Love Is Not a Big Enough Word” that Matt Teague wrote after his wife Nicole’s death from ovarian cancer at age thirty-six. When Nicole (Dakota Johnson) is diagnosed and starts getting sick, her and Matt’s (Casey Affleck) friend Dane (Jason Segal) leaves his management job and girlfriend in New Orleans and moves into the Teagues’ house in Fairhope, Alabama, to provide care and support for as long as he’s needed—which ends up being fourteen months! He gets their girls ready for school in the mornings, cooks meals, does the laundry, provides mental and emotional support, and helps Nicole accomplish her bucket list. The film is sweet and sad and joyful all at once.
Our Friend has been criticized for not portraying several of the physical horrors of cancer that Matt describes in the article. But I’d say that even though it’s not particularly graphic, the film still presents cancer as ugly and disruptive and painful and exhausting; rightfully, it does not romanticize terminal illness or death. What is a shame, I’ll mention, is that the central role Christian faith plays in the Teagues’ lives, as Matt has been vocal about in interviews and Nicole shared a lot about on her cancer blog and on YouTube, is entirely absent from the film.
Segal is excellent as Dane. And it’s beautiful to see not just Dane’s sacrificial love but also the Teagues’ dedication to and inclusion of Dane throughout their married life, as we see in the many flashbacks that develop their friendship story. Married couples, especially ones with kids, tend to maintain relationships mostly with other married couples, not with singles, which should not be so—so I love that the film highlights this trio of friends in a meaningful way.
Streaming on Amazon Prime.
20. A Hero, dir. Asghar Farhadi. Rahim (Amir Jadidi) is on leave from debtors’ prison when he finds a bag of gold. He seeks to return it to its owner and becomes a local celebrity—until some people start to question his integrity.
Art & Theology 