Pieta by Paul Fryer

The most common artwork of the death of Jesus we normally see would be Jesus dying on the cross. But this piece of sculpture – Pieta by Paul Fryer, a British artist, shows Jesus posing on an electric chair, dead. It didn’t shock me much as I have seen a few debatable pieces during our class. But I did have a lot of questions when I first saw the picture. I wasn’t exactly sure whether this was just another art piece that trying to create controversy to gain fame or if there was a deeper meaning behind it. I also wasn’t sure whether Jesus died on the electric chair or he still died on the cross but was taken down and moved to the chair afterward. If there is a deeper meaning, is the artist trying to raise the topic of anti death penalty? Or is he trying to say that we have become so corrupt that Jesus must die again for us?

Pietà in Latin language means pity, in Italian it originally is a subject in Christian art depicting the Virgin Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus and it is often found in sculpture. Pietà is a form of the lamentation of Christ, a scene from the Passion of Christ found in cycles of the Life of Christ. When Christ and the Virgin are surrounded by other figures from the New Testament. Pieta is one of the three common artistic representations of a sorrowful Virgin Mary.

Paul Fryer was born in Leeds, England in 1963 and moved to London in 1996. It states in his biography on his own website that studied art in Leeds College of Arts but never received any degree. He was once an electro pop singer, transvestite DJ and poet and musical director. Fryer was commented as an artist who is “throwback to the enlightenment of the 18^th century as he is prescient of the new.” Paul Fryer claims himself as a going-church Christian. After going through some of his work, it seems he hardly had any religious related art pieces until the display of Pietà in 2006.

Paul Fryer’s Pietà is made of wax, wood and human hair. Unlike traditional Pietàs, Jesus is not cradled by the Virgin Mary but an electric chair. The sculpture portrays Jesus in a “quasi-crucifix” pose, except he is not on the cross but in an electric chair looking unconscious. Pietà was displayed with his new two-part exhibition “Let There Be More Light” held in the Holy trinity Church, Marylebone, Oc. 14-21 2008, and Simon Dickinson Gallery, London, Oct. 15-31 2008.[1] In April 2009, Pietà was installed in different cathedrals in the French town of Gap, which were supported by the Cathedral’s Bishop Jean Micheldi Falco. This time the art caused big controversy, even several protests in France as well as England.

As I previously mentioned this piece has caused some great debate and discussion. British press and some Christian organizations criticized Fryer for trying to start a controversy with the use of a religious symbol to create fame for himself. They also questioned that the intention behind the defend by the Bishop as he said to the interviewed he was overjoyed to see “a large number of people who normal don’t step foot in a church line up at the cathedral.”

After days of debating and questioning Fryer did step out and explained his position: “The scandal is not where one believes it to be. I wanted the provoked shock to make us once again conscious of the scandal of someone being nailed to a cross. “Usually, one does not feel any real emotions in front of something really scandalous: the Crucifixion. If Jesus had been sentenced today, he would have to reckon with the electric chair or other barbaric methods of execution. Scandalous is therefore not Jesus in the electric chair, but the indifference to his crucifixion.”

His words make sense to me, it seems he wanted to challenge us to see modern punishment is still as bizarre and cruel as ancient Roman methods. Paul Fryer’s Pietà is asking us if we are so offended seeing Jesus in the electric chair, shouldn’t we feel the same for a convicted person? And how many people are executed today for reasons that we are certain and are valid, but future opinion will consider barbaric. Another thought I got from this work is if Jesus were to be executed today, he would be strapped to a chair instead of on the cross.

Mr Fryer said: “The meaning is open to interpretation. But the original meaning of the Latin word Pieta is pity. To take pity is a crucial part of living, human beings taken pity others.” Today people might be electrocuted or given the lethal injection, but it is all the same thing, someone ending another person’s life.

Lately, Paul Fryer raised even more eyebrows when he replaced the Jesus was a starving, exhausting black Jesus. He said to the interviewer that, he wants to tell the world that hundreds more black people have been executed in the chair than white people. More black people are suffering from hunger than white people. The piece is also trying to make a point that after 2000 years of Christ’s death, people still execute people.

Overall, I don’t think Paul Fryer was simply trying to throw something that would cause controversy in order to throw his name out there. As he said, people usually focus on the less important point of the story, such as the scandalous of Jesus being in the electric chair, but not showing any emotion to his crucifixion. Paul Fryer was also trying to challenge people to face the darker side of the modern punishment of the society we are living in. It really got me thinking, how would we react if Jesus were sentenced with death penalty today? Would him be put in the electric chair? I think a lot of us have the same answer.

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Reference:

http://kevers.net/blog/?p=2301

http://www.dazeddigital.com/ArtsAndCulture/article/5408/1/Paul_Fryer__Age_Of_The_Marvellous

http://www.sustainablepractice.org/page/57/

http://blogs.mirror.co.uk/the-ticket/2009/04/art-paul-fryers-pieta-at-the-c.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piet%C3%A0