Tablas de una Novena, 2000

graphite and charcoal on wood panel, 8 x 36 feet



: : Artist Statement : :

Hugo Crosthwaite’s Tablas de una Novena is monumental drawing consisting of 22 wood panels divided into nine sections representing a novena’s nine successive days in belief of obtaining special intercessory graces. Crosthwaite has created the work in traditional altarpiece format, a centerpiece is flanked by individual panels to the left and right. This mural-sized religious piece is Crosthwaite’s visual interpretation of purgatory and the trials and tribulations that take place within, as well as the challenges and demands of contemporary urban life.

Tablas de una Novena begins with an image of expulsion and ends with an image of the same theme, creating bookends to the mural’s linear narrative. Panel #1 is the opening scene of expulsion; two figures are being thrust down into an urban world, full of contamination, pressures, violence and the stresses of life. The angel in the top left corner uses a pulley system to manage the scene, manipulating the falling figures.

Panel #2 continues with expulsion, here, a tumbling angel at the bottom of the panel has lost its divinity. The angel is scarred on the back and losing feathers, which float in space above. She releases a fetus, the incarnation of humanity, suggesting the weaknesses of the flesh. On the top half, Crosthwaite presents an image of redemption counterbalancing the tragic scene below. The figure on the cross relates to a disciple figure, Saint Peter, while another angel hovers above, promising the crucified figure redemption, a return to Heaven, a state of the ideal. The angel as a hermaphrodite with the face of a woman and the body of a man manifesting the idea that angels are thought to either have no sex or both sexes, distinguishing themselves from mortal men and women. At the very bottom of the panel, in the right corner is an old man, poor and emaciated, referencing the poverty of hunger and the suffering of humanity.

In panel #3, Crosthwaite has continued relating to the destitute, gaunt man in the bottom of the previous panel. This time, a woman with a ribbon bow tie is in one corner and a young woman with her heart exposed is in the opposite corner. With these distinct characters Crosthwaite is commenting on how suffering extends beyond all social classes, and is a reality among all people. The woman wearing the ribbon bow tie represents wealthy people and the young girl's exposed heart refers to the suffering of those in love and the psychological afflictions that accompany intimacy. The central figure has the body of a weathered and scarred man and a baby’s face, referencing the suffering of youth. The artist has placed his characters within a cityscape in order to depict the reality of such suffering in contemporary society.

Crosthwaite created Tablas de una Novena between 1999 and 2000. As is his practice, news radio was on in the background as he worked. Stories of genocide in Rwanda and the United Nations' interest in trying the perpetrators for these crimes were being reported. These news stories were influential on Crosthwaite and his depictions of judgment and suffering within this work.

The fourth panel, a scene of banishment, destierro, is the first of three panels that comprise the centerpiece of Tablas de una Novena. Whereas angels are generally shown engaged in "angelic" activities, this scene shows two angels at work. They are imparting God's will upon an amputee, accompanying the falling and judged character through his pain and suffering. This interaction between the tormentors and the tormented is an allusion to The Divine Comedy in which Dante Alighieri discusses this relationship. The angels (tormentors) are manipulating the human (tormented) physically and emotionally through a complex system of pulleys and scales, raising and lowering the amputee throughout his judgment. Crosthwaite makes visual reference to the figures as angels by using the area of abstraction above them to allude to the idea of an angel's wings.

The adjacent scene on the middle panel of the centerpiece of Tablas de una Novena is a scene of war and violence. Crosthwaite has drawn a complex physical interaction between the judges and a young boy, the protagonist. The judges now appear as both angels and demons as they torture and entwine the youth with rope, pulling him toward the violence below. Throughout history it has been the young men in our society that are so often drawn toward violence. Cruelty has been made attractive to this demographic and here we see a young man being physically coerced by a seemingly benign angel into a situation of fierce brutality. We can only imagine the figures above are the next to be lured by the magnetism of violence. A group of small aggressive characters spans between the final two panels of the centerpiece. The figures carry spears and other weapons, symbols of their violent tendencies.

In the final centerpiece panel, three angels judge and deliberate the fate of the two figures seated in the scales below. Here the artist references Egyptian mythology and the story of Osiris and the Last Judgment, in which scales were used to weigh one’s good and bad deeds in order to determine whether or not souls are worthy of eternal life. According to this myth, if one's heart is full of sin and too heavy, it will be visible on the tilting scales and rather than enjoying eternal life, the sinner will be destroyed. Crosthwaite’s angels are workers for a divine presence, imparting God's will on the subjects below. Again, the angels are shown as hermaphrodites.

To the right of the centerpiece hang the three final panels of Tablas de una Novena. Immediately to the right of the centerpiece is the seventh panel. In this section, Crosthwaite discusses religion and the debasing of religion and faith as a result of the violent tendencies of man. Today, as has been the case

throughout history, most of the wars fought and atrocities committed are in the name of religion. Atop the panel are three figures, again the angelic judges. The face on the figure in the middle is modeled after the marble sculpture of Venus, referencing the divinity that we so often attach to human images and objects. Crosthwaite explores contemporary society's weaknesses for figurative worship through classical imagery, suggesting that we have elevated celebrities and other images to a divine status, something that we have been taught to be in direct conflict with the basis of religion.

The figures at the top of this seventh panel act as puppeteers, manipulating the wolf/pig below. This animal harkens back to the myth of Romulus and Remus. In this image Crosthwaite has distorted the animal figure, showing the beast suckling an adult figure, creating a monster. This animal is a symbol of institutions, guilty of corruption and hypocrisy, again referencing the lie of religion and downfall of the Catholic Church after it inherited Romulus' Roman Empire and Constantine declared Christianity the religion of Rome. It was at this moment that religion became an institution, inevitably corrupt. St. Francis de Assisi taught us that with property comes defense. One must build an army to protect and defend the property of an institution. The army, in turn, becomes the cause of the suffering for others. Although the artist has not taken any imagery directly from Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy, Crosthwaite has been tremendously influenced and inspired by this work. Dante placed popes in Hell, and in this panel Crosthwaite is commenting similarly, being irreverent to the institution of religion.

The eighth panel is a scene of redemption. Stretched across it lays a malnourished African body, again referencing the contemporary trials and tribulations faced daily by the people of Rwanda and throughout Africa. The central suffering figure is the protagonist in this scene. He is traveling through Crosthwaite's vision of purgatory, a hell with a purpose, in order to return to Heaven as divine. The figure's listless body is marked by scars of stigmata on his wrists and feet, communicating to the viewer that this man’s suffering has been part of his journey towards redemption. The figures above the protagonist are innocent beings, their baby faces portraying their naiveté. Again Crosthwaite includes the architecture of the city, symbolizing that reality is the backdrop to this scene.

The final panel concludes the narrative with a figure, referred to as the Titan, plunging downward. All the elements of humanity have been incarnated by this life-sized image as Crosthwaite intended it to represent all of mankind. The Titan is shown heading toward further depths of Purgatory. Text appears for the first and only time in this panel: "Lo que derrumba un Titan" ("What collapses the Titan") and we understand that even though this work has concluded, the path of humanity is never complete. There is more suffering ahead and this is not by chance, pain will test individuals throughout time - referencing The Divine Comedy and Dante's vision of the multiple circles of hell.

In the Catholic religion, una novena is a series of nine events, such as masses or rosaries, that are given to the dead in order to help them on their path in the afterlife such as relief in hell, or salvation. Tablas is a word that references not only the physical drawings on wood panels but also religious imagery such as the tablets on which the Ten Commandments were carved. This work is Crosthwaite's novena for humanity – the artist’s offering on behalf of all people in the hopes of diminishing pain and suffering in this life and beyond.

© 2006 Van Cleve Fine Art