INSPIRE ME! Artist, Caravaggio

"I am still alive."

~ CARAVAGGIO

"Behold the Man" (1606)

By TAHLIB

If we'd lived near one another, I would hope to have befriended Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, the dark, dangerous and mysterious artist whose dramatic painting style changed not only the world of art, but also how Christians experience their faith.  Since we weren't neighbors, I had to count on other methods to introduce you to my dear but excitable friend---a true master of religious art, Caravaggio the A&O November 2012 INSPIRE ME! Artist of Month.

Chalk portrait of Caravaggio (1621) by Octavio Leoni

(1) Authors such as Andrew Graham-Dixon, Peter Robb and Christopher Peachment, to name only a few describe your life as one filled with desperate moments, mystery and opportunism. Do you think of yourself in the same way? If I tell you my story crudely, you must forgive me. You cannot trust a murderer to have a fancy prose style [link].

"Saint Thomas putting his finger in Christ's wound" (1603)

(2) As Christian, who do you most identify with as part of the story you seek to tell in your works? There are certainly moments in your life of great doubt, would it be St. Thomas?  Wariness is like a disfiguring disease. I even love Judas more than St Thomas. I have painted both of them but Judas is my favoured one. Wary, doubting Thomas I showed shoving his finger into Christ's wound like an impotent dotard fingering a whore's gulley. But Judas I gloried in. I used an old man as a model for Judas, a man with a face mottled from too much drink. I always got into trouble for that; for using common people as models. They, the priests and my patrons, told me it was profane. Hah. Of course it was profane. That's the point [link].

"Kiss of Judas" (1598)

(3) How do you defend the shocking, unyeilding earthiness of your approach to religious themes? Wouldn't it be far better to idealize the spiritual experience for viewers? All works, no matter what or by whom painted, are nothing but bagatelles and childish trifles... unless they are made and painted from life, and there can be nothing... better than to follow nature [link].

"Conversion of St. Paul" (1601)

(4) You have been criticized for a number of questionable relationships, with boys, with other men and with women who worked as prostitutes. How do you justify a man of faith having such friendships? Perhaps this is the basis of friendships, I do not know. Each man seeks in another that part of himself which is missing. Thus do people make themselves more whole [link].

"David with the head of Goliath" (1610)

(5) In your first portrait of "David with the head of Goliath" in 1607,  the head does not resemble your own. When you repainted the story three years later, David now looks onto what resembles "your" face as the face of Goliath. What happened in those three years that caused such a change in your view of the story? And David and Goliath I have done before, but this time there is a difference. David holds the head at arm's length and looks disgusted. And onto Goliath's severed head, I put my own features. The head hangs in darkness so that the black hair and beard framing the face blend off into the shadows, and there are four thin ropes of dark blood trailing down into space from the neck. And in one eye of the freshly severed head, there is still the faint glimmer of life. That's me and that's the last painting I ever did. Spectator, viewer, audience, however you care to call yourself; I address you here, with this, my final picture. Cast a cold eye on it all, and on my work. I am still alive.  [link]

"Matthew" by Leivur Reinert Djurhuus

IN CLOSING, I can't help but make a final comparison between the fierce, vulnerable and sexually tense works of Caravaggio and one of his contemporary disciples Leivur Reinert Djurhuus. In Djurhuus' "Matthew," inspired by gay-right martyr Matthew Shepard but using the iconography of the Christian crucifixion, this young photographer uses live actors (fellow students) in a contemporary setting with dramatic lighting to speak to us in a powerfully new way. While I may not have actually met Caravaggio, except in his biographies (books, films, and exhibits), I feel he is still alive through artists such as Djurhuus. I am certainly inspired Caravaggio and his disciples. I hope you  are inspired too, and I'll be back in January 2013 for another historical journey to INSPIRE ME!