Closing the Circle

Innovation in visual arts has always caused controversy. Anything new, incomprehensible or requiring some thinking tends to cause rejection or even strong opposition from society, especially as regards religious subjects in art. Even in the context of secular art, any new vision or interpretation of a religious theme may be perceived by religious followers as offensive.

Caspar David Friedrich's painting The Cross in the Mountains challenged the academic manner and was regarded as offensive by contemporaries. The traditional subject of the crucifixion was interpreted by the artist as a landscape, which at the beginning of the XIXth century was considered a low genre. Nowadays, the rejection of this painting looks rather strange and archaic.

In 2014, the Liepāja City Museum hosted the God. Love. Cuba exhibition by Cuban artist Ítalo René Expósito. It provoked an intense debate and even a demand that the exhibition be removed from the museum. My opinion is that one shouldn’t take a stand on such issues before analysing the art piece and understanding the artist’s idea and the essence of the work.

I first came across Ítalo's work in 2013 at an exhibition opening at the Pegazs Gallery in Riga. The paintings were certainly difficult to understand. But, to tell the truth, I was so attracted by the painting Angels that I couldn't stop looking at it and literally fell in love with the image. The painting deeply affected me and urged me to try to understand the artist's message as well as any hidden meanings.

There are three angels in front of us, male, female, and child full-length figures with wings behind their backs. The colour of the wings is different, red for the male figure, blue for the female, and the little angel has white wings. According to Christian symbolism, red is the colour of Easter and the Resurrection of Christ. Easter is the kingly victory of Christ over death. The red colour of Easter sacred vestments combines two meanings ‒ martyr's blood and the colour of victory, of imperial triumph. The Holy Scripture narrates that the soldiers put a purple-coloured mantle on the Saviour who had been sentenced to execution. They mocked Him and his alleged desire to become an earthly king, failing to realise that the Lord spoke of the Kingdom of Heaven.

The blue colour in church symbolism signifies the highest purity and immaculacy. Blue vestments are used for the feasts of the Most Holy Mother of God; the colour indicates the heavenly purity and spiritual highness of the Virgin Mary. The white is a universal symbol of the presence of God. It is adopted for the feasts of the Nativity, Epiphany, Transfiguration and Ascension of the Lord and represents the Uncreated Light of God. 

The shape of the wings of the angels, both male and female, is unusual enough to immediately attract attention. The wings are depicted as two huge hearts and refer to the iconography of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The Heart of the Son of God is the highly venerated ecclesiastical symbol of the power of Love that God has for humanity, the power that gave Him strength to accept humiliation, torture and death. The veneration of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is based on pristine Love for God the Father, maternal Love for the son Jesus, and compassionate Love for all mankind.

People intuitively perceive the heart as the centre of human passions, the place where emotions arise. The heart has always been seen as the vital part of a person, the intimate merging point of body and spirit, of deep and sincere feelings and thoughts. The Sacred Heart, as an iconographic element, is a perfect example of visualising that is common in Christianity, and, in this case, it is a visualisation of the desire for the spiritual transformation of the body. It is accepted that Christianity is a religion that sanctifies the human body by identifying it with the body of Christ the Son of God. And here we come to what I believe was the stumbling block that prevented the audience from accepting the artist's message, the nakedness of the figures in the painting.

The first article about the God. Love. Cuba exhibition was written by the renowned Latvian art critic Sarmite Sile. When analysing the artist's work, she drew a parallel with the ancient Greek art. Statues of ancient gods, perfect in their naked beauty, are a customary part of our cultural space. Ancient gods in our understanding were not rid of human bodily passions. Christian images, on the other hand, always imparted only spiritual beauty. Why would Ítalo reveal images of Mary and Jesus through nakedness? Ítalo chose a direct and straightforward way of portrayal and deliberately emphasised the human, fleshly nature of the God-man and His Mother. By doing so he pointed up that the heavenly virtues inherent in Them are also available to us. I agree with Sarmite, who believes that the “childlike naivety in presenting the deeper content” intends to make the Divine “closer to the earth”, to humans. Note that the exhibition title is very symbolic in this sense.

Looking further into the issue of spiritual beauty and nakedness, let us turn to the third image of the painting. The angel is painted in a different, mannerist tradition, the figure is unnaturally S-shaped, with arms exaltedly raised above the head. Pretentiousness, brokenness and unnaturalness notably distinguish the image from the rest. The word angel (ἄγγελος) is Greek and translates as harbinger or messenger. Angels are “ministering spirits” and therefore incorporeal. By employing a different artistic manner in depicting the angel, the artist seeks to distinguish between corporeality and incorporeality, to separate the flesh and disembodiment.

The hands of the little angel are clasped together and form a circle. The circle is a very important symbol in iconography. Having neither beginning nor end, it symbolises Eternity. Eternity in the truest sense of the word, eternity as the transcendence of time. The space outlined by the angel's arms appears to me a symbol of convergence of the heavenly power, the Divine breath, and the Divine message. This gesture can also be interpreted as putting a ring on Mary's hand, the ring being a symbol of vow and alliance. It is both the vow of virginity given by Mary to God and her consent to the Divine plan for the future birth of Jesus Christ from her womb. “Behold the servant of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38). These words are very significant; without the Virgin Mary's submission, without her Faith, the Divine plan would not have been realised.

According to the teachings of St Irenaeus of Lyon on the Christian doctrine of Redemption, the Annunciation is interpreted as the high point in salvation history, whereas the Virgin Mary's obedience counterbalances and heals Eve's disobedience. Mary becomes New Eve. The text of the famous Catholic hymn AVE MARIS STELLA that dates back to the IXth century says that the name Eve (Eva in Latin) is an anagram of the word Ave (“Hail”) with which the Archangel Gabriel salutes New Eve. Here we return to the understanding of the angel's nakedness. The angel with blue wings is a symbolic parallel between Eve and Mary.

The Scripture says of Adam and Eve, “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed” (Genesis 2:25). The original Old Testament text uses the Hebrew word arom in this phrase, which means “unashamed nakedness”. Babies are born this way, knowing no shame, as they have nothing to hide, especially before their mother. Likewise, Adam and Eve appeared before God, and they had nothing to hide from each other either. The state of “unashamed nakedness” in real life is only possible between people who love and trust each other endlessly. In Angels, Ítalo René Expósito combined a variety of biblical subjects and symbols. Of course, from the canonical point of view, the artist broke many rules, crossed the line, so to say, but his idea and goal was making a painting about Love, about the Love of God for Man and the Love of Man for God. As the Gospel of John has it, “Love is God”.

A Catholic by faith and his spiritual affinity, Ítalo grew up in a family that observed Christian traditions. His family always talked a lot about Christ and about art as well. Anybody who wants to get a better feel for Ítalo's work would be well advised to read his account of himself included in this Catalogue and Guidebook. Ítalo would be hard-pressed to reflect on Love outside the context of God. God is Love, that is the artist’s canon. That was his stance when he began working on the cherished subject, What is Love?

To understand art is to understand the artist, to understand the artist is to understand art. There is no doubt that Ítalo's work deserves serious study, a separate monograph, perhaps. This article by no means claims to be a sufficient analysis, even for a single painting in a series of ten. I have only outlined an approach to research such a deep and infinitely complex topic. As far as I am concerned, I am encouraged and inspired by Ítalo’s hard work and his sincere willingness to share his feelings and thoughts with us.

I don't know if Ítalo was listening to music while he was working on the painting. If he were, it might have been the song We Are the World by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie performed by a group of top celebrity musicians. Speaking for myself, when I was looking at the white angel in the picture with his arms closed above his head, I couldn’t help hearing a refrain from the resembling song Closing the Circle, written by Chris Kelmi and Margarita Pushkina and performed by a group of well-known Russian singers. It was argued that Closing the Circle was inspired by and echoed the already famous We Are the World. It’s not important if this is true or not, each composition has its own place, and I would like to finish up with the well-suited line from We Are the World:

We're all a part of God's great big family

And the truth, you know, love is all we need.