I'm a bit scattered today trying to get things done before the school year starts and I'm subbing/teaching after school programs again. Things are in the works and I need to get a huge head start before my alternate life as a music teacher takes over again. Why yes, the new banner IS a tribute to the greatest film about students of all time, The Bad Seed. It's a lovely reminder that no matter how bad it gets in the classroom, at least the students aren't actually the embodiment of pure evil and wrath. That's just the stuff of movies. Real classrooms are fun to run because of the students.
Anyway, I saw this beautiful art installation at The WOW Report and it really spoke to me. It's a well-executed multimedia Grotesque (in the literary/art sense, not the adjective sense) sculpture that by its choice of location is commentary. I'm sharing it after the jump.
"Lucifer (Morning Star)" by Paul Fryer (2008) is a wax work figure (with real feathers) of the angel Lucifer as he's cast down from heaven. He's suspended--trapped, really--by black rubber cords suspended from aluminum poles in an actual church. That's the key to the entire piece, really. It's the juxtaposition of salvation and damnation contained in one space.
Lucifer is a pained, tragic figure in the installation. He's tearing at his restraints, trying to free himself from his eternal punishment administered by the heavens above. No matter how hard he tries, he cannot even delay his fate. He will fall and he will be punished for all eternity.
The context is what really makes this piece work. Above him, in the stained glass windows permanently installed by the church itself, the major figures of Christianity stand above him in judgment. Directly behind him is a painting of the last supper, where Jesus taught his disciples how to lead their followers to salvation with ritual.
Christianity (used here as a literary text, specifically in the Catholic sense) teaches that part of the punishment of hell, where Lucifer and the other fallen angels reign, is the total absence of God. He can see you but you cannot even begin to feel his presence. The punishment is the total removal from the taught rewards of the belief structure.
The placement of "Lucifer (Morning Star)" in an actual church allows you to take a symbolic meaning from Biblical text. I'm assuming from the design of the church that it is a Catholic institution. If so, Fryer's work could arguably become a political text, as well.
The Church (capitalized to differentiate between the faith and the physical location) has to live with the knowledge of their sins. All of the scandals with priests and the long history of encouraging indoctrination through war, violence, and coercion cannot be buried by focusing only on the positive, redemptive aspects of scripture. The physical presence of Lucifer is hung like an albatross on the neck of the church, reminding the Church of the first of many figures destroyed by a refusal to blindly follow its teachings without question.
Paul Fryer created a haunting figure in his "Lucifer (Morning Star)" installation that can be viewed in many contexts. Even if you don't buy those readings, you can still appreciate some beautifully executed art.
Thoughts? Share them below.