Beyond the sheer size of these murals, their image content struck me as well. The largest mural, placed in the center of the stairwell, is a picture of Jesus coming out of a pool of water and headed towards what appears to be the Chicago skyline. The name of the mural is Cristo Migrante.
Initially, I was surprised by the schools decision to put up a picture of Jesus in school, much less one that was nearly 8 feet tall. I was confused, yet appreciative of the schools initiative to bring in a potentially controversial piece of art. In my opinion, a good education challenges you and forces you to question society and yourself.
That night, as I aimlessly scrolled down my Facebook news feed, I stumbled across an interesting status post. It read –
There’s a big Jesus painting over 30ft high in our school. Every heard of separation of church and state?
What ensued for the rest of the night was a cyber-battle consisting of nearly 200 comments from different people’s interpretations on the true meaning of Duarte’s painting. Some argued that Duarte’s painting infringed on personal religious taste, while others reasoned that Huarte’s painting was hardly about religion and rather about the immigrant struggle. For the next few hours phrases like "separation of church and state” and "religious majority" showed up a lot, but soon the comments fizzled out.
However, by the end of it I was still left wondering, what cultural implications does the “separation of church and state” argument have? It seems that the first amendment and the clause of religion is brought up repeatedly in politics and in schools, but at what point does practicing one’s own religion begin to feel like religious intrusion to someone else? Should Duarte's painting be taken as art or does it preach religion?
Readers, I leave it up to you to answer this question.
Well I believe that just having a mural of Jesus doesn't infringe on anyone's rights. By looking at a picture of him, no one suddenly feels pressured to accept a certain religion. Everyone can agree that Jesus was an important man in history, and he is a big part of the lives of immigrants, so I think it's fine. It should be taken as art then.
ReplyDeleteThe one thing I find interesting is the cross in the water. It seems to be reflected from the glowing city. What could this mean?
- Imran
I feel pretty strongly that this has absolutely nothing to do with the "separation of church and state" that these people are referencing. The reason that was put into our constitution was to prevent a religious majority oppressing a minority or having anyone forced to practice a religion they do not practice. How does this force you to do anything but think? And to me, that is the most important value of art: art can make you step back and reevaluate something that you previously hadn't.
ReplyDeleteSo kudos to GBS for taking the initiative to hang a controversial mural, and I'm glad that there's some intelligent discussion on facebook instead of the usual "LMS" statuses.