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