"PIECONS:" Art that Hits You in the Face!

The following Artwork, PIECONS, was originally featured as part of a 2021, online exhibit inspired by the Stations of the Cross at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. PIECONS responded to Station 6: "Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus." In this Biblical story, Veronica watches Jesus--dirtied, bloody, and covered in sweat--as he is paraded with his cross. Seized by compassion, she wipes the grime from Jesus's head with a veil. When she pulls it back, Jesus's face magically appears on the fabric.

This story provides a legendary origin for the first Jesus icon. Filtering this miracle story through the kaleidescope of 1970s and 1980s American myth-media, PIECONS explores the contested nature of being made "iconic": is this representation a form of commodification, a consecration of material objects, a way to more democratically redistribute access to the divine? Does representation of the divine or heroic freeze the depicted into an object or continue their living presence?

PIECONS interrogates not, primarily, the oral and written story of Veronica, but her represention in art history. In my upcoming book, Art Anchorites, about my own artistic experiments with representations of the crucifixion narrative, I compare the images of Veronica and the veil with three other popular, head-bearing subjects of art: Judith with the head of Holofernes, Salome and with the head of John the Baptist, and Perseus with the head of Medusa (sometimes, her head in his hand, sometimes her head is pinned to a shield: a face against another object).

Clockwise from top left: 1) Michael Wolgemut and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff, Judith with the Head of Holofernes, from the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493, block print. 2) Artemisia Gentileschi, Salome with the Head of John the Baptist, 1610-1615, oil on canvas. 3) Benvenuto Cellini, Perseus with the Head of Medusa, 1545-1554, bronze sculpture. Hans Memling, Saint Veronica, 1470-1475, oil on panel.

Representations of Veronica's miracle in the art historical canon, alongside these other head-bearers (particularly in the context of female decapitators), invites creative misprision, particularly of Veronica as hero wielding the head as a trophy. Viewing mythically resonant but distinct figures together, links the intimacy of holding a loved one's head in hand, or say, in lap or against shoulder as well, to the transcendent immanence of a mortal touching divine flesh, to the morbid closeness of holding onto someone you violently slew.

On one hand, the image of compassionate, Christ-following Veronica holding Jesus's head is a visual subversion of a more traditional (violent) heroism in light of the Jewish female Judith and Pagan male Perseus. On the other hand, that the same model could pose for a (heroic, seductive Jewish female) Judith, a (wicked, seductive Jewish female) Salome, and a (heroic, chaste Christian/Jewish Veronica) elucidates the fluidity between such categories of heroic and violent, terrifying and beautiful, sexuality and chastity, comforting and disturbing. Invoking (heroic, male, Pagan) Perseus with Medusa's head further pushes the interpretive lens to see these female head-bearers as both an inversion of the masculine conqueror with monstrous female conquest (critiquing the cultural values they represent) and crossgendered perpetuation of that same brand of hero (upholding the cultural values it represents). Also, a perpetuation of the hero cult.

Lastly, I want to add that I am publishing this post a little less than a month after the death of Anita Bryant, American singer, activist, and Christian spokesperson against gay rights. I have been fascinated by Bryant for many years: pairing of this glamorous, smiling, and traditionally attractive celebrity with her hateful speech and regressive lobbying, a once successful businesswoman and entertainer who filed for bankruptcy in the 1990s, who final years were marked by poverty, infamy, and the very public irony of her gran-daughter coming out as gay in 2021. I've written about her in a few essays and school papers, included a thinly veiled version of her in my play Pelagius, and once again engaged her image in the current project.

I live just a few miles south of where Thomas Higgins is buried. (June 17, 1950 – November 10, 1994). Higgins lived in Minnesota wherehe was a a writer and gay rights activist. His biggest claim to fame happened in 1977 when, in response to her hateful rhetoric, he pied Bryant during a live broadcast in De Moines, Iowa. Pictures of Bryant post-pieing have become "iconic" in their own right. An underdog activist used humor to undermine a highly funded and prominent bully. At the same time, it's hard for me not also to see the ways in which the American public also loves to see a humiliated woman. The glee (I share) with numerous lgbtq and allies at Bryant's expense in the 1977 is not separate the same patriarchal biases that informed Bryants virulent homophobia. The humor and humiliation, intimacy and violence of the pieing is a form of nonlethal beheading, recalling the slayer/slain, hero/trophy paradigm and the ambivalences of that symbolic in the art historical references. How else did and do these dynamics play out in our world?

PIECONS is a visual mythography using photography, pie pans, cream, paint, and text to reflect and transform these meaning-fecund cultural images.

PIECONS

Artist Statement

They've got a line around the corner. Guys are buying two, three pies apiece -Revenge of the Nerds, directed by Jeff Kanew, (1984; Los Angeles, CA: Interscope Communications, 20th Century Fox, 2007), DVD. 

I've cut off Heather Chandler's head and Heather Duke's head has sprouted in its place like some mythological thing my eighth grade boyfriend would know about - Heathers, directed by Michael Lehmann, (1989; Atlanta, GA: New World Pictures, Image Entertainment, 2011), DVD. 

Medusa Crucified Perseus forced my chin, split me from body, sampled an unsimple thing, sapped me with tricks… Give head to heroes, huh, become a trophy. . .                       Unless I am a talisman, A guard from gorgon, not only used but useful, shield for cocksure boys as serpents in the sea and all her grottos (birthing, dark antitheses) are strangled in their thighs.                       Am I talisman or trophy, O Suns, o Heroes, o Sires of Kingdom Come? Veronica Emboldened  To grasp a man in woman’s fabric… powerless and empowering, bodiless but bleeding. Love him. Diminish him. Scrunch the face, wet it, wring it, quench headaches from beggar to emperor. Rome, will yield the greatest profit.