EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

Artist Crucified in his Studio

No-one you know thinks of themself as Christ which may be why most people find it so impossible to believe that artists do. My continual harping on this theme can sound like madness. One new reader, clearly dedicated to her Church, complained vociferously last week. Yet it is true because Christ's historical life is of lesser importance than his myth. A myth, paradoxically perhaps, has more truth than the facts. Christ, as he is passed down to us in the Gospels, is a Perfect Man, an Archetypal Man, a model for all of us. So is Buddha, Mohammed and others like them. And they all believed that what really matters is inside you.

I've been thinking of this because a friend phoned from New York yesterday. She had just exited the new Chagall show at the Jewish Museum and was excited. On the wall, enlarged, was a quote by the artist so like something you might read on EPPH that she was amazed. The Jewish Chagall, trying to explain how difficult it is to start work on a blank canvas, said:

“I run up to my dry brushes, and I'm crucified like Jesus, with nails pounded in the easel.”