Art Beat is off-air this week. I'll offer up the silence as a pause for respect on this day that is auspicious for both Christian and Jewish listeners. I wish I could say I was away egg hunting on the White House lawn, or smelling tulips in Victoria. The real reason there is no show today is that while I am present in body and spirited mind, my voice is silenced this week by a vigorous virus. My croaky whisper cannot cut even the calmest airwaves and I see no need to inflict audio torture on unsuspecting ears still tender from winter's quiet.
This week on Art Beat I'd planned to celebrate the fairly rare convergence of Jewish Passover and Christian Holy Week. They overlap this weekend with Passover starting at sundown Friday and Christian's observing Good Friday followed by Easter on Sunday. The convergence happens about once every three or four years.
Today's show was Jesus vs Moses, a survey of Hollywood's iconic Easter/Passover films in a cinematic religious head to head. The Greatest Story Ever Told starring Max von Sydow as Jesus, up against The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston as Moses. Which film is better? Which more popular? Who was better as a biblical character von Sydow or Heston? From an action perspective what was the better miracle; resurrection or the Red Sea parting? Sure Heston's Moses was full of romance, intrigue, and exciting plagues but perhaps von Sydow as Jesus gave the intellectual film goer more tranquil monologues and soulful wisdom.
As a kid growing up in Catholic elementary school it was an annual Easter treat to get to watch The Greatest Story Ever Told. This film was shown on then new VCR technology and was rolled out (literally) on a giant box TV bolted to a clunky metal trolly. The hard cover novel size video cassette was fed into the suitcase sized player where our holy young faces awaited baptism by electric blue light there on the pine green library carpet. I think the film was actually shown at Christmas AND Easter. There havent been that many Christian movies, and only a few new additions recently. Getting to skip class to watch the marathon long Greatest Story Ever Told twice a year brought us Catholic kids to a state of euphoric frenzy not even bags of chocolate bunnies and jelly eggs could replicate.
In those now forgotten childhood days when new media was obsolete, few of us had home video players, and there was no internet and no Netflix. The only way to see any movie was to line up outside a movie theatre for hours or hope a Charlie Brown or Bugs Bunny special would come on between Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom and Disney, on one of the local 13 channels of the rotary dial set.
My childhood was bereft of the internet Movie Database or other prolific online sources to learn about the movies I watched. In the absence of media and internet crosschecking every TV show and film I experienced as a kid lives in a kind of untouchable bubble. That is until a few years ago when I caved into my Gen X (Catholic specific) birthright for all things retro and rewatched The Greatest Story Ever Told. I had a mini Crying Game realization when I learned for the first time that Jesus in the film was played by actor Max von Sydow. Of course I knew the actor wasnt really Jesus, but somehow I imagined that the actor, akin to Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, was someone who had faded into relative obscurity. The character could be preserved for my selfish sake, untainted by the actor's subsequent roles on screen.
When I rewatched my Catholic comfort film and realized I didnt even know who played Jesus. I thought, 'I should know who the actor playing Jesus is. How do I not know this?' Now securely placed in the present media buffet I typed in the film name online, and BAM! Max von Sydow! That's Jesus? Max von Sydow is Jesus?! It was shock. I'll never look at that film the same way again. As an adult I'd come to know Max von Sydow separately in such serious foreign films as Heidi (2005), The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) or as a the bad guy in the Tom Cruise mainsteam movie Minority Report (2002). I think as a kid watching The Greatest Story Ever Told and not knowing any of the actors, I imagined it was kind of a documentary. In my kid head, it was some relic like a papryus manuscript that had been handed down on giant plastic VHS for us kids to be enlightened with, in that blue TV glow. The thing with The Ten Commandments is that it was always so Hollywood that it was hard not to think of the film without the tag line "Charlton Heston AS Moses, in The Ten Commandments." The actor was synonymous with the role. Anyway, maybe we all have a soft spot for films that link to our spiritual past.
Sadly since this week's Art Beat is not to be, I will leave you with the topic to debate with family and friends over gefilte fish or hot cross buns.
Today is Good Friday for some, Passover for others and perhaps just another Friday for many. No matter what your spiritual beliefs, the Spring season in popular culture and in religious observation has common visual symbols. In this season of new life and renewal, eggs take a prominent visual role. Decorated, chocolate, Faberge, construction paper, plastic, mini, or even balancing one on Vernal Equinox (that's an urban myth by the way); eggs are living seeds that bring new life, or nourishment. They are white and their chalk like surface even texturally resembles a slate; not a black slate dark and ominous but rather a clean, fresh, bright, new and perfect blank slate.
Eggs have been dubbed nature's complete food and include nearly all of the essential nutrients and are complete in all amino acids. Everything we need is present inside an egg's tiny fragile yet robust little shell. We humans also begin life as eggs, a slightly distasteful thought yet a hopeful one. Perhaps we too have everything we need contained within us, fragile and robust.
This week, in lieu of the Art Beat radio show, I offer you these thoughts and leave you with a story about an ordinary man who spent 40 years making art with eggs. In doing so this man brought joy to himself, his family, his neighbours, and, if you agree, you.
In his childhood (around 1945) Volker Kraft saw a beautiful paschal decorated tree in his German town. These trees are called "Eierbaum", "Osterbaum" or "Ostereierbaum" in German, meaning a tree that is decorated with eggs at Easter. Volker Kraft wanted a tree like this. Beginning in 1965 Kraft adorned a small apple tree with 18 decorated eggs. Over the years the tree, and the decorations grew. In 2014 the tree had reached 10 000 eggs, all hand decorated.
Whatever your beliefs are this weekend, I hope you will take a look at these links and gain inspiration from the colours, the exquisite detail and collective effort that has united one family through love and mission.
The Ashante in Ghana have a proverb that says power is like an egg. If it is not held carefully it can easily fall from one's grasp, and if held too tightly it will be crushed. In a time when media is filled with images of power struggle, violence, threat, disease, death, climate concerns and financial worries, it is hopeful to focus on Volker Kraft's tens of thousands of eggs, each a tiny piece of beauty. Every egg is like a person. Volker Kraft's fragile yet poignant visual display is a reminder that beauty is powerful in numbers. Each of us at our best, like a decorated egg, is a source of hope and beauty. Alongside 10 000 others in our communities we form a mass radiance that can shine like Volker's eggs. Beauty is a powerful force.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apb8gztVUi4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxMGQnS4Ao4
From my little Art Heart,
I wish you a weekend of beauty, and smiles
Colleen Sharpe
#ArtBeat #Easter #Passover #TenCommandments #Hope #Joy
Next week, April 10th join me for an exclusive interview with Tomas Borsa
Creative Director of the documentary film Line In The Sand http://www.lineinthesand.ca/
#lineinthesand