The Secret Language of Bings (Part Six)
Our EFM assignment for this week was to bring in a piece of art that represented our journey to spiritual maturity. Actually, I had only heard the spiritual part of the mission. If I'd heard the maturity part of the assignment, I probably wouldn't have attempted what I did which was to drag the Bobby Kennedy painting all the way to Manhattan for its first viewing.
The truth is that the Kennedys, and white celebrities in general, represent a kind of spiritual and intellectual im-maturity on my part. The older brother's shooting just as school was about to let out on the East Coast on a Friday afternoon ushered in a modern day passion play that took the length of that November weekend to complete. The swift transmorgrification of the White House stage from a high-spirited, family sit-com featuring the bemused leader of the Free World and his glamourous wife into a shameful, brutish display of America's violent and psychotic underbelly was something my twelve year-old, comic book addled, brain could not and did not process properly.
And, much like the ancient Hebrew gnostics who made up the Jesus Movement in the days and years following his Crucifixion, I turned to art and imagination for solace. I don't think more than a few months elapsed before I was making serious attempts at capturing JFK's face on a piece of paper.
By the time of Bobby's murder five years later I had attained a pretty good grasp of the human face and how to make stubborn pastel chalk approximate white skin. I don't remember how long it took to complete that original RFK rendering in the Fall of 1968, but I'll bet there is more than a week of experimentation and false starts buried beneath those layers of chalk (that IIRC had to be sprayed down with some sort of commercially available artists lacquer.)
Its successor would be far more free-wheeling. The pencil lines are there for all to see. And, in some ways it's more of a cartoon than the original was or was meant to be. Bobby's pupils are wide open with a generous dollop of white paint (in the shape of Celtic crosses, in case anyone missed the symbolism) on each one to represent light hitting something liquid.
I'm a much more cunning artist than I was at age 17, but does that represent "maturity"? Not sure.
I was given a succinct lesson in humility when, from the moment I entered the elevator of my building, preparing to go to Manhattan, one by one, each person who got a good look at the painting which when lifted was as tall as I was, would stop and validate it by saying, "Nice painting of Trump!"
The truth is that the Kennedys, and white celebrities in general, represent a kind of spiritual and intellectual im-maturity on my part. The older brother's shooting just as school was about to let out on the East Coast on a Friday afternoon ushered in a modern day passion play that took the length of that November weekend to complete. The swift transmorgrification of the White House stage from a high-spirited, family sit-com featuring the bemused leader of the Free World and his glamourous wife into a shameful, brutish display of America's violent and psychotic underbelly was something my twelve year-old, comic book addled, brain could not and did not process properly.
And, much like the ancient Hebrew gnostics who made up the Jesus Movement in the days and years following his Crucifixion, I turned to art and imagination for solace. I don't think more than a few months elapsed before I was making serious attempts at capturing JFK's face on a piece of paper.
By the time of Bobby's murder five years later I had attained a pretty good grasp of the human face and how to make stubborn pastel chalk approximate white skin. I don't remember how long it took to complete that original RFK rendering in the Fall of 1968, but I'll bet there is more than a week of experimentation and false starts buried beneath those layers of chalk (that IIRC had to be sprayed down with some sort of commercially available artists lacquer.)
Its successor would be far more free-wheeling. The pencil lines are there for all to see. And, in some ways it's more of a cartoon than the original was or was meant to be. Bobby's pupils are wide open with a generous dollop of white paint (in the shape of Celtic crosses, in case anyone missed the symbolism) on each one to represent light hitting something liquid.
I'm a much more cunning artist than I was at age 17, but does that represent "maturity"? Not sure.
I was given a succinct lesson in humility when, from the moment I entered the elevator of my building, preparing to go to Manhattan, one by one, each person who got a good look at the painting which when lifted was as tall as I was, would stop and validate it by saying, "Nice painting of Trump!"