How Animal Parts and Elephant Dung Changed Religion
by Vivekananda Nemana
For the past nine years, Nate Hill has been creating his own army of composite creatures out of dead animal parts, calling them "new animals." The 31-year-old artist has even fashioned a man and a woman in the same way, naming them "A.D.A.M." and "E.V.E." He says he wants to create his own artistic universe of beings-like God did in the Bible.
Hill isn't just inspired by God in his work. Hill wants to be God. And he attempts that in a bizarre, and even sacrilegious, manner.
"I want to take the most extreme icon of ability and aspire to be that," he says. "It's fun to set an impossible example for yourself."
Hill's God-complex raises an interesting question. Many artists like Hill contradict traditional mores by reworking the ancient liaison between God and art. What does an artist accomplish by being religiously controversial? (Never mind whether God actually exists or not. This is an issue of the representation of some higher power in art).
Of course, this is a broad question for which there are one thousand explanations. Art that is sponsored by religious institutions such as the Catholic Church will obviously represent God positively. Also, the word "art" encompasses so many unique perspectives that there are bound to be countless works depicting religion in a positively, negatively, or not at all.
Still, artists who depict God in such an unorthodox manner share a subversive theme in their work. Photographer Andres Serrano's 1989 Piss Christ, a photograph of a plastic crucifix submerged in his own urine, and Chris Ofili's The Holy Virgin Mary (1996), which incorporates pornographic images and actual elephant dung, both pervert traditional religious icons to make a distinct artistic statement.
This kind of controversial religious artwork isn't just a postmodern convention. Even during the Renaissance and Baroque period artists produced works that challenged the religious attitudes. For example, some modern art critics claim that Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Theresa sculpture (1652) in Rome, depicts St. Theresa in a state of orgasm, which the Catholic Church probably wouldn't have appreciated too much.
These works don't exist only to shock us. They force us to consider how (and why) art serves religion, and more so, to question religion's impact on society.
Art and faith have been intertwined since man developed a concept of God and evolved the wits to paint or sculpt. Religion has been a source of inspiration for art, and art has been used to spread religion. From epic sculptures of Zeus and Athena in Greek temples, to the paintings of Anubis in Egyptian temples, to Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel, art and religion have motivated each other. Artists themselves are often religious too-neither Paul Cezanne nor Andy Warhol missed a single Sunday mass.
Anthropology professor Samuel Wilson, at the University of Texas, writes, "Art was a way of rearranging the mundane to make it seem celestial...Art was a reminder of good, evil, life, and death."
So when an artist reverses that trend and portrays God in a heterodox manner, he or she is subtly redefining the relationship between art and religion. The artist is using his work to pave new ways of approaching religion.
"Art creates a new Ideal, a new Object and a new religion," said the German philosopher Max Stirner. Nate Hill did this by showing Adam and Eve in a way that's never been done before-and asking how creativity affects our image of God, whoever he may be.
Obviously, this process can be offensive. When Indian painter MF Husain depicted nude Hindu deities engaged in sexual acts, Hindus were up in arms. People have a right to be upset. Artists are pissing (sometimes literally) on the very cornerstones of faith.
But by doing so, artists are dispelling blind faith and compelling viewers to reflect on why they are religious in the first place. They are expanding the boundaries of what constitutes "religion," and are consequently helping to evolve the idea of God, too.
But there might be something else that these artists are also saying. Hill said he didn't take his art too seriously. Chris Ofili Africanized Mary, but he did it in a playful and ironic way. It looks like, sometimes, it's just fun to be controversial.
