 "Amended
Iconographies" is a series of paintings, drawings, etchings, silkscreens,
woodcuts, and assemblages which was begun in 1996 and continues today. It
sprang from my search for personal faith and a subsequent exploration and
questioning of the visual images that humanity has created in its attempt
to express faith. Some of those images, such as the fish used by early
Christians, were created as clandestine symbols to be used by persecuted
members of a cult to recognize each other. Other images were created as pure
acts of adoration, such as the image of the Immaculate Conception of the
Virgin Mary, the Santa Muerte of the Maya Indians, the representations of
their Gods by the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Assyro-Babylonians,
the Celts, the Norse, the Finno-Ugrians, the Africans, and all peoples of
the Earth from Paleolithic times to the present. There is no race, no tribe,
no group of humans that has not produced art as an act of adoration, and
as an expression of faith.
 The thread that both unites
and distinguishes these images is the coloration produced by culture. Ancient
writings from different societies and civilizations reveal Gods and Goddesses
that existed across many cultures, identifiable as the same by shared
characteristics, shared powers for intervention in human affairs, and shared
taboos. Yet these obviously identical Gods and Goddesses appear very different
in images made of them in different cultures, because of the influence of
cultural perceptions of beauty and power. Nonetheless, even in these varied
manifestations of the same deity, the same divine symbols appear and reappear,
and continue today in modern images in churches and temples of the twentieth
century.
Ancient crosscultural
variations and repetitions of symbology are clearly visible in the icons
and orthodoxy of contemporary world religions. Just as ancient peoples did,
we interpret our Gods and Saints to conform to our own cultural standards;
and although we thusly alter them, we continue to use the symbols that have
survived for millennia. Nonetheless, if this is pointed out, cries of blasphemy
and profanity arise, and connections and common threads are denied, thus
denying the continuity which, if accepted, could be an abundant source of
self knowledge and understanding. We accept crosscultural fusions of iconographic
imagery and symbols in societies other than our own; yet when it is pointed
out that our own religious icons have the same fusions and symbols, we rail
against the heresy.
 My work focuses on these
iconographic fusions and on the unbroken continuum of symbolic representations
that have existed throughout our history. Of course, my own beliefs and
questionings color the work, and so I become a part of the very phenomenon
that so fascinates me. For example, I have painted several depictions of
"Santa Muerte," or "Saint Death," a ubiquitous icon among contemporary Maya
in southern Mexico, available on estampas, small paper "holy cards," in front
of churches, cathedrals, or in village squares, complete with a prayer to
Saint Death on the reverse side. I believe this image to be the blending
of the ancient Mayan God of Death, Quetzalcoatl, with the Catholic notion
of Sainthood brought by early missionaries. When the missionaries would not
allow the Maya to keep their traditional Gods, the Maya simply converted
Quetzalcoatl into a Saint. The Church today silently overlooks this conversion,
as did the missionaries, and the Maya kneel at Mass and pray to Santa Muerte
to give them a peaceful and holy death.
 While we accept such an
"exotic" conversion, we have difficulty viewing our own icons as having undergone
similar cultural overlays of piety. In traditional Catholic iconography,
the image of the Virgin Mary in Immaculate Conception is based on a painting
by the 16th century Spanish artist Murillo. Mary is shown standing on a crescent
moon, over the Earth, with her halo of twelve stars, the serpent at her feet,
poised to crush its head, and rays of grace coming out of her hands. Although
it is commonly agreed that the twelve stars are taken from St. John's vision
in the Apocalypse, it is also agreed among theologians that there is no source
for the crescent moon upon which Mary stands other than ancient concepts
equating the moon with many Goddesses through the millennia, including the
Virgin Goddess Diana, and the great Goddess Isis, whose golden horns are
synonomous with the crescent moon, and whose temples portrayed her riding
in her moon-boat. Isis was worshiped throughout the ancient Greco-Roman-Egyptian
world, from Alexandria to Britain, through the Asturian mountains and the
valleys of the Danube, to the ends of the Sahara. Her worship flourished
in Rome until it was syncretically absorbed by Christian veneration of Mary,
which incorporated extensive identifications with Isis, including the journey
with her child into Egypt. Our familiar depictions of Madonna and Child have
their foundation in similar iconographic traditions of Isis and her son
Horus.
Mary's victory over
the serpent seemingly has its origin in the curse of Yahweh, described in
Genesis, as punishment for the snake for enticing the woman to eat from the
forbidden tree. Notwithstanding the original Hebrew writings which say, "He
will bruise your head," most modern Biblical translations come from Latin
translations which say, "She will crush your head." Nonetheless, Genesis
was the last book of the Pentateuch to be written, and was not formalized
until about the 6th century B.C., during the Babylonian exile. Even slight
delving into ancient religions reveals the serpent to be the most venerated
and worshiped of animals. It was worshipped among the Hebrew tribes long
before Yahweh arose as the one God; the Hebrew priestly clan, the Levites,
were sons of Leviathan, the great serpent, the wriggly one. The Hebrew word
for the divine serpent was Seraph, which is now colored to mean, "Angel."
Babylonian icons depicted the serpent attending the Goddess and offering
the food of immortality to her people. For the writers of Genesis, the serpent
epitomized all their rival religions. It was only natural that they would
attempt to strike it from its lofty place and make it culpable for all of
the woes and tribulations of their people.
In my painting,
"Immaculate Conception," my questioning of the traditional icon resulted
in the serpent appearing as friend and protector to Mary. I did not portray
Mary as the fragile, blonde, blue-or green-eyed slip of a girl seen in churches
the world over. Could Mary really have looked so much like a contemporary,
Western Catholic school girl? I painted her as the Semitic woman she was,
swarthy, with dark, kinky hair, robust and sturdy, capable of making the
three-day trek on foot and donkey from Nazareth to Bethlehem during the final
days of her pregnancy. The moon reflects the Horns of Isis. Mary is painted
nude, as Genesis reveals that those who are without sin are not conscious
of nakedness.....Adam and Eve clothed themselves only after the fruit of
the Tree of Knowledge allowed them to see that they were uncovered. It follows
that true depictions of Mary as Immaculata must, according to the Bible,
and if we are not to color them with our own cultural perceptions, show her
unclothed. Far from profane, my intention was to make this my highest possible
tribute to her.
Inconsistencies abound
in our most profound and intimate sacred beliefs. Cultural stereotypes permeate
those beliefs. My work is a search for personal faith, and an expression
of faith in our ability to overcome these inconsistencies and stereotypes
to reach a fuller understanding of the consistency we do have with our own
ancient history and belief systems, thus better to understand ourselves,
and to achieve the calm and peace that understanding always
brings.
© Copyright
1998 Patricia Jane St. John Danko
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