Christ of the Incas, Rouault (1930s)

Audio by Alice Matthews

Maker: Georges Rouault (1871 – 1958)

Culture: French

Title: Christ of the Incas

Date Made: c. 1930s

Type: Painting

Materials: Oil on canvas

Place Made: France

Measurements: 26 x 20 in.

 

Transcript:
When I look at this image of Jesus, he seems both calm but also frustrated. His eyes are closed, his mouth is un-smiling. But the way that the lines are thick and dark and the muddied colors in the background suggest that he’s maybe taking a deep breath. As if somebody said something that he needs to respond to and wants to be gentle while also direct. I think a lot about this painting when I drive on the highway between Texas and Minnesota, where I spend a lot of my time, kind of in the middle of nowhere where there are these big billboards advertising the end of the world. And they want you to call their hotline number so that you can be saved by Jesus. And I think a lot about the way that Jesus is presented in Western art as this white, blonde haired, blue-eyed guy, when the reality is that he’s this brown-skinned, middle eastern refugee. And so then in thinking about the irony of advertising a love of a certain kind of Jesus on a landscape of the United States that was once inhabited by indigenous people, but now has been whitewashed in the same way that the image of Jesus has been whitewashed, is really interesting to me.