c. 2000 Religion News Service
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. _ A new Harvard University art exhibit has self-consciously defied museum trends by drawing attention to the religious feelings motivating a great artist of the Reformation era.
“Durer’s Passions,” which opened Sept. 9 at the Busch-Reisinger Museum, brings together for the first time images from six of Albrecht Durer’s (1471-1528) versions of Jesus’ passion. Stand-alone images of a pained Jesus supplement four multiframe series based on the Bible’s account of the arrest, trial, crucifixion and resurrection.
The intended effect, according to Curator of Prints Marjorie B. Cohn, is to expose the viewer to Durer’s personal identification with a Jesus who suffered.
“We make no apologies for wanting people to see directly the intensity of religious feeling in these works,” Cohn said in an interview. “It’s supposed to be a spiritual show.”
Museums commonly present artists’ works without exploring their motivations, Cohn said. “Durer’s Passions,” she added, breaks that so-called rule by inviting viewers to understand his artistic development in terms of his own tormented soul.
Durer is well-known as a titan of German art during the tumultuous days of the early 16th century. Prints made from his woodcuts were mass-produced and circulated among the illiterate masses in book form even before the Bible was made available.
The new exhibit consists of woodcut prints as well as prints from copper engravings and rare drawings on loan from Frankfurt, Berlin and Bremen, Germany. Although the media vary, the intensity of the images is consistently high.
“It was more in-your-face than you normally see,” said Jo Brecknock, a 31-year-old English tourist. As a non-practicing Catholic who grew up in the church, she said Durer’s art was even more graphic and explicit than the crucifixes and other imagery she had seen in church settings.
Anachronism reigns in Durer’s pictorials of armor-clad knights wielding swords against an unarmed and nonresistant Jesus. Peasants in tattered garments stand by their Lord through the end, rejoicing when he rises from the grave with the sun and steps over fallen warriors on his way to heaven.
The striking drama and attention to Jesus’ bodily suffering subsides in Durer’s work, however, after the dawn of the Reformation in 1517. The Reformers’ criticism of superstition and “graven images” influenced Durer to depict a more heavenly and spiritual Jesus, according to Cohn.
“He was deeply affected by (Martin) Luther,” Cohn said. “There’s no doubt he cut back to the essentials” in his art.
That shift is evident only in the sixth and final passion series in the show, which altogether spans seven walls in one airy room at the Busch-Reisinger. Before that, the chronological exhibit includes highlights from Durer’s earlier career, including drawings so priceless they had never before been loaned to another museum.
Those drawings, Cohn said, came to Harvard this time because organizers were able to convince owners the works were essential to the show’s goals. Without the drawings that closely portray Jesus’ grief-stricken face, she said, Durer’s deep personal identification with Jesus would have been impossible to illustrate thoroughly.
“We said, `We’ve got to get a few perfect drawings,”’ Cohn said. “So we chose those that most clearly showed Christ’s anguish.”
The show’s intensity and personal quality were not lost on some of the first visitors.
“I’m surprised by my reaction to it,” said Anne Brown, 54, a former Catholic and now a Protestant in Boston. “They’re very intense. It makes me wonder, what do you make of it all? How do I fit myself into that theology and make it real for me?”
“Durer’s Passions” will be on display until Dec. 3 and will have no other venues.
Eds: For more information, visit http://www.artmuseums.harvard.edu)
DEA END MACDONALD
