Christmas arts
These past weeks Christmas songs have begun to fill the air. It’s playing on the radio, in the shopping malls, and at most homes. Some business offices have it too, although at a subdued volume, understandably.
It’s getting quite hard to ignore the Christmas vibe. Christmas lights twinkle at night, and the cool night breeze is a reminder of that night more than 2,000 years ago when the Messiah was born in a manger. Christmas is here!
One thing about Christmas: Artists are primarily responsible for adapting it to the times. For example, many of the Christmas songs being played these days would strike as odd to those belonging to the past generation. Alvin and the Chipmunks are singing Christmas carols, and many Christmas songs are now rendered in the rock genre.
In the area of visual arts, change is also taking place. In the days of the Renaissance, when Christmas was all the rage among painters like Botticelli and Leonardo, who painted elaborate, glorious nativity scenes, the emphasis of Christmas has shifted a little. Nowadays, for many people, the day is just as much – or more – about Santa Claus and Christmas dinners with loved ones as it is about commemorating the birth of the Redeemer.
Right, everyone interprets Christmas in their own way. And, for sure, interpretations worth looking at are that of visual artists, given that “interpretation” has traditionally been their very job. The website https://bluethumb.com.au picks up five famous Christmas pieces from the world of modern art:
Christmas Eve, Henri Matisse
The piece was originally a design for a stained-glass window that was never realized. The work aligned with the art sacré movement – an attempt to get the best art by the best, not necessarily religious, artists into the church. Matisse himself was known as a humanist before anything else, saying “I would like to accomplish that people who are tired, strained, broken may find rest and peace in my paintings.” It seems like he accomplished his goal with this piece – its explosion of colors and stars offers something for everyone.
Christmas Cards, Salvador Dali
Salvador Dali is known for his dripping clocks or his pet anteater, but he was also the man behind a series of 19 Christmas cards for a Barcelona card company. The imagery he used in these cards did away with the traditional Mediterranean Catholic Christmas imagery, and instead made use of American and Central European elements, such as the Christmas Tree, which was very much a Spanish tradition at the time. Back in 1960, most people turned up their noses at the surrealist cards, but unfortunately now there are only a handful left in the world.
Christmas Cards, Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol had a similar, albeit little less successful, venture into Christmas card design. Before moving onto soup, he needed some bread and butter, and spent a large part of the 1950s creating blotted line Christmas cards.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Paddle, Jeff
Koons
Jeff Koons is well known for his pop art that references cultural iconography, and what better icon for the modern day Christmas than Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer? These paddle boards were created in a series of 900. According to Jeff, “Art is really just communication of something and the more archetypal it is, the more communicative it is.”
Joseph and Mary Can’t Make It to Bethlehem,
Banksy
World famous street artist Banksy isn’t exactly one to let a chance for political commentary pass him by, and he packs a punch with this Christmas card. The work shows Mary and Joseph’s passage to Bethlehem being blocked by the infamous apartheid wall that separates Israel from Palestine and the West Bank, creating unsettling parallels between Mary and Joseph’s refugee status and today’s refugee crisis in the middle east.
Interestingly, Christmas has come to be observed as a secular holiday, not anymore as an exclusive Christian religious festival. People belonging to other religions take a long break from their usual grinds during the Christmas holidays. And they hum Christmas tunes, as well, which musical artists have created.