Death of Christ / Death of the Artist. Slippage of Meaning in Contemporary Performance Art and Photography

Abstract

The heroic modernist image of the artist as a messianic figure was invalidated in the 1960s and 1970s by leftist and feminist critics. The image of Christ-Messiah had been central to the creation of this male artistic myth in the 19th century. The image of Christ re-appeared in the work of artists in the 1980s and 1990s, but in an abject form as Christ-Crucified, or as Christ lying dead in the tomb. These images expressed the dejected condition of painting and of the role of the male artist after the antagonistic critiques of radical theorists. However, the same icon of the Dead Christ also appeared in a revolutionary leftist context, but with a different connotation, as in the films of Pasolini, for example, as well as in the press photograph of the dead Che Guevara taking the form of Mantegna’s Christ. The same image has also re-emerged, only half consciously, in the performance work and photography of Polish artist Krzysztof Gliszczyński, where it has triggered an important discourse concerning the generation of meaning in art and the inter-relation of artist and audience.