Been There, Done That

Being the first on the block has its perks, though most of them come along after the fact, once the rest of the world has caught up with you (or me). Now, I certainly cannot claim to be the the first one to take an interest in the unexpected visual manifestations of religious and secular icons, but I'm certainly the first one to write a book about the subject, and attach to these stories ideas ranging from Plato and Marshall McLuhan to changing the U.S. Constitution.

For you long-time readers, you'll of course remember how the New York Times ran an article right around when Madonna of the Toast was released. For a couple of days I received emails and phone calls asking, Why no mention of your book? Good question, especially since the Times claimed they could not contact Diana Duyser, someone I had been in regular contact with for the book.

Well, today, to just further prove that these sorts of stories remain culturally relevant, The Huffington Post has posted a slideshow of famous faces showing up in foodstuffs and foliage. Many of the examples appear in the book, and those that don't either surfaced after publication or could not be used for print (like the image above of Liverpudlian Keith Andrews and his John Lennon face); there are only a few I've never seen before. The images are fun to look at, but there's no real context for them and that's what I find so intriguing about this subject. Thing is, I think most people are more than happy to just gape and move on.

Maybe I'm just over thinking this stuff - is that so wrong?

Holy Mamma!

What does the image above look like to you? Pretty womanly, right? Estimated to be approximately 35,000 years old, the discovery of this ivory female figure was made public a few weeks ago in the journal Nature, according to this New York Times article (which is also a few weeks old).

Found in a cave in southwestern Germany, the explicit form stands apart from other extant examples of Paleolithic art. The emphasis on the breasts and vulva makes it clear that the person who carved this object was celebrating the role of women in reproduction.

There have been several similar discoveries in the same region over the past 70 years. Archaeologist Paul Mellars, as quoted by The Times, said of the region and the artifacts it has yielded, it is “a veritable art gallery of early ‘modern’ human art . . . [which] must be seen as the birthplace of true sculpture in the European — maybe global — artistic tradition.”

This dovetails with my review of Miri Rubin's Mother of God, which you can read over at The Rumpus. Rubin’s fascinating book elucidates how images of Mary were used to spread Christianity, very much based on her unique status as a human vessel for the divine. I approached the book from the Madonna of the Toast perspective. The tropes and trends Rubin identifies as the major factors in establishing Mary’s allure fit with the stories I relay here. How? Because no matter what you believe, these are human stories, all of which can be distilled to archetypes, like this curvy carving.

What is the Why?

From Springfield, Massachusetts, a Virgin Mary on a window of a Catholic hospital. Reported by the Boston Herald, this faint iconic shape on the second-floor window of an empty office has attracted hundreds of people, prompting the hospital to up security, according to a spokesperson for Mercy Medical Center.

Mark Dupont of the Springfield Diocese had this to say: “The way the colors cascade would give the outline of a very common artistic impression of the Blessed Virgin . . . It’s understandable how people would see an image in it.” As always when it comes to church officials addressing these events, Dupont was careful not to claim divine intervention, rather choosing to revel in the crowds’ supplications marked by tears, prayers, rosaries and candles.

So, another example of a Virgin Mary appearance garnering the attention of the faithful, and the media. What to make of it?

Recently on the New York Times blog By the Numbers, Charles M. Blow posed the question “Why is America so religious?” His question is rooted in “a study entitled ‘Unfavorable views of Jews and Muslims on the Increase in Europe’ (which is quite disturbing). The report is part of the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project.” Part of the report reveals, statistically, that poorer countries tend to contain more religious populations, with one major exception: the United States. From the study:

Despite its wealth, the United States is in the middle of the global pack when it comes to the importance of religion. Indeed, on this question, the U.S. is closer to considerably less developed nations such as India, Brazil and Lebanon than to other western nations.



See, there's the United States, there "in the middle of the global pack."

By virtue of how religion plays into politics and culture, we know this already. The frequency of these Madonna of the Toast-type sightings also backs up what these statistics suggest. But what does it really mean? What is the why?

I haven’t seen it yet (though I blogged about it last year), but I bet Bill Maher’s new movie, Religulous, touches on this question. I’m aiming to see it this weekend and will report back. In the meantime, the Times has published a review.

Lots of folks don’t like Maher, and I can understand where his detractors are coming from. I like him though because he’s not afraid to ask tough, sometimes unanswerable, questions, knowing they will irritate people. Doubtless he would have plenty to say about the Virgin Mary window and the Pew report.

Bill, feel free to drop me a line. We should talk.

Henry Poole is Here, and So is Hollywood

Back on January 23, I had a meeting with photographer Martha Cooper. While it was the first time I had met her, we had been emailing a bit and she knew about Madonna of the Toast. First thing she does when we meet is hand me that day’s New York Times Arts section, pointing me to the front-page article about the Sundance Film Festival. She told me that one of the mentioned movies involves a question of faith, instigated by the appearance of what may or may not be Jesus on a stucco wall. I thanked her and shuffled the paper into a pile of other papers, having read and written about films that dwell on these visual manifestations.

The other day I finally gave the article a look, and I have since learned more about Henry Poole is Here. Yes, the title has pulled me in, since it is not everyday that I share my surname with a fictional character, played by Luke Wilson no less. Even better, however, is that newbie distributor Overture Films picked up the flick for $3.5 million! This seems to drive home the fact that these stories have truly become part of our cultural fabric. I’ve been advocating that idea for the past year, with evidence the runs the cultural gamut, from eBay to Johnny Carson, and from The Simpsons to the US Constitution. Now, no one has paid me millions of dollars yet: indie book publishing and indie filmmaking are two different realms from what I can tell. But Sundance is famous as a clearinghouse for Hollywood to convert independent films to blockbusters, so I take this as a sign of things to come.



You can watch this video to find out more about the plot, though it sounds like much of what I write here. Henry Poole is terminally ill and hopes to spend his final days as a recluse, until his neighbor discovers what some see as the face of Jesus, which of course changes Poole’s outlook on life. Also interesting is that this movie also stars George Lopez, who was also in the less hyped Tortilla Heaven.

It seems like this movie will indeed be in theaters near you, but in the meantime, wouldn’t you rather read the book?

Of a Cube and a Watercolor

Rainy here today, throughout much of the northeast so it seems, an inside day to be sure. I’ll give myself credit for picking up a copy of the Times last night on my way home. It’s been a while since I devoted a healthy portion of a Sunday to the newspaper.



The article “A Cube, Like Mecca’s, Becomes a Pilgrim” got me thinking about Madonna of the Toast and the associative power of the visual, when what we see, what is before us, is so clearly not what we perceive it to be, or hope it to be, though it creates all sorts of reactions.

German artist Gregor Schneider had been commissioned to build a 46-foot tall cube of aluminum scaffolding draped in black muslin for the 2005 Venice Biennale. Organizers of the exhibition refused to show the work, however, concerned that it would anger Muslims because of its resemblance to the Kaaba, the most sacred place in Islam.



According to News Channel 5 KRGV, after a five-year-old girl painted on this bathroom wall in Edinburg, Texas, the adults espied the Virgin Mary. The parents had let their kids use watercolors on the wall because the bathroom was about to be remodeled. But now, the painting will remain, the bathroom’s new interior will work around the image. Unlike most of the stories I relay to you, this one is unique in that the girl was painting. She hadn’t just lopped a branch off a tree or fried up a pierogi. The report on this visual manifestation is brief, so there is no indication as to the family’s religious beliefs, though judging by their reaction, and by the fact that they recognized Mary in the first place, I’d bet they are religious in some way. It’s no great stretch to imagine that the girl has been exposed to Christian iconography. So, unlike many instances of pareidolia, this one has a source of inspiration, even if it is totally subconscious. The girl was not trying to render an image of the Virgin.



While Gregor Schneider’s cube clearly echoes the Kaaba, he was not trying to craft a replica. He first started sketching the Kaaba because of “his interest in shadowy and isolated spaces.” Several institutions refused to host the cube, but is has now found a home in front of the Hamburger Kunsthalle, as part of a show honoring Russian artist Kasimir Malevich. The Kunsthalle’s director justifies his decision to show the piece, in part, because he views “the black square as the quintessentially radical modern form.” The other reason the museum agreed to install the cube is because after they consulted with representatives of several Muslim groups, everyone agreed that it will foster open dialogues about religion and culture.

After all, this is not the Kaaba on display in Germany; it is not as large as the holy structure, it is made from completely different materials and there is no Arabic calligraphy on the muslin. Be that as it may, one of the world’s premiere contemporary art exhibitions balked at this work in order to avoid controversy! This blows me away, as the feared controversy was going to be roiled up, supposedly, by an object that would remind certain people of a holy place in Saudi Arabia.

This watercolor reminded the parents of Mary, not a specific painting of her and not her face, but her iconic form. Granted, very few people will consider the cultural ramifications of this visual form, but it was powerful enough for remodeling plans to be altered. And it got some media attention because this painting conjures feelings related to a visual icon cherished by many. The same is true for Schneider’s cube.

I am baffled by many people's reluctance to engage in real conversations, the ones that can make you uncomfortable, angry, sad and confused. The essence of both these stories resides in how iconic visual cues inform our actions. More than ever we need to pay attention to what whips people into action because these are the events we should examine and discuss, even if they don't make sense.

"Faces, Faces Everywhere"

Up late last night, I checked email around 2:00 a.m. and found a note from my friend Robert Anasi, a man that knows about boxing and the real Indiana Jones. He was the first of many people to direct me to an article in today’s New York Times called “Faces, Faces Everywhere.” Printed in the Science Times section, the writer opens the piece by evoking Diana Duyser and her Virgin Mary Grilled Cheese Sandwich, which eventually sold on eBay for $28,000. After mentioning a few other high-profile examples of recognizable faces showing up in unexpected places (most of which are included in Madonna of the Toast) the article takes a very cursory look at the scientific process that hopes to identify how and why humans tend to recognize human form in burns, rock outcroppings and anywhere else you can imagine.

While my examination of these phenomena leans towards the cultural ramifications of such discoveries, the piece in the Times bowled me over for a few reasons. First off, I’m psyched that the powers-that-be at the Times deemed this subject worthy of inclusion in the paper. While science has yet to provide any concrete neurological reasons for why we see iconic faces in all sorts of surprising places, the more tangible indicators of human action (like media exposure and money spending) prove what I try to bring out with all the examples in the book, namely that it’s not so much about why we see the faces, but how what we see drives people to action: the media converges, large sums of money are spent, people make pilgrimages.



It amazed me that the “paper of record” was unable to locate Duyser for comment. I speak with her frequently. I would have happily arranged for Duyser to comment on the piece, as this half-a-sandwich has made an indelible impact on her life.

Lastly, nowhere in the article is the psychological phenomenon of pareidolia mentioned. It seems like a gross omission, considering that the piece uses science as its point of entry. I’ve already mentioned pareidolia in very unscientific terms on here over the last couple of days, so I’ll spare you more on that subject.

Overall, this strikes me as a very positive development for the book. Maybe one of these days the Times will come to me and ask me what I think about all of this. If they don’t, at least you can come here and get a sense, and if you’re really keen to read what I think, you can always buy the book!