(Above) Lorna May Wadsworth with her painting of a black Jesus
Artist Lorna May Wadsworth's image of a black Christ would be a perfect discussion topic for an RE lesson. Read on for Culture24 Ben Miller's write-up about the controversy surrounding the work as well as a production of the Passion of Jesus.
A war of words broke out last week when the Wintershall Charitable Company|www.wintershall-estate.com/?menuId=31&pageId=49}, a theatre group staging The Passion of Jesus in Trafalgar Square on Good Friday April 2 2010, ran an advert specifying that the lead character should be a "white male actor".
Playwright Bonnie Greer proclaimed the nation should have "got over the idea" of an Aryan-looking Christ, pointing out his probable Palestinian ancestry and calling the development "symptomatic of what I see as a general return to conservatism in this country."
The thorny topic of Jesus's appearance has frequently been pondered in art and imagery - Middle Eastern works usually depict a figure with olive skin and brown eyes in line with his possible status as a Galilean Jew, repeated by 2004 film The Passion of the Christ, and the argument for Jesus being of black or African race is regularly surmised by certain Bible commentators.
In an exhibition at St Martin in the Fields Church adjoining Trafalgar Square, portrait painter Lorna May Wadsworth will be presenting her vision of a Rastafarian Jesus called Tafari in A Last Supper - March 1 until April 4 2010.
Tafari was commissioned as part of a bequest left to a church
"I knew I wanted him to be my Jesus from the start," she says, describing her "conviction" that she should tackle the theme.
"I didn't really know why, it was just as though something was telling me he was the one for the painting."
The commission has been funded with a bequest left for St George's Church Nailsworth to make a painting of the Last Supper, going on temporary display in London.
Wadsworth's starting point for her response wasn't enamoured with what she describes as the "received wisdom" of biblical scenes.
"In the canon of Western Art, the acknowledged image of Jesus is Caucasian with brown hair and brown eyes," she concedes, admitting that the use of this style, adopted by the likes of Velazquez and Rubens, has produced the paintings "which speak to me most profoundly as images."
"My point isn’t to propose a thesis of the definitive face of Christ," she adds. "If I were to logically follow all the artists who have painted Christ in their own image I would paint a woman. I just didn't want to paint the cliché."
She says painting a black Christ is "as meaningful or meaningless" as making him white, remaining more invigorated by the reaction previous displays of her creation have inspired.
"People were drawn to something in his face and the expression in his eyes," she suggests, having won holy praise for the work from Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.
"I was surprised by their reactions and seemed to have caught something of which I wasn't even aware. I knew this quality was more important than skin colour or politics or anything else. I knew he could move people."
