Christ 1925

John B. Flannagan’s sculpture, Christ, is made of wood, and you can really see the marks of the carving process. The grain and texture of the wood add a rawness, a kind of honest vulnerability. When you look at this piece, you can see the marks left by the artist's tools, and it gives the work a feeling of authenticity. It’s kind of like when you see the brushstrokes in a painting and you know that somebody was really there, present and working. Look at the way the wood seems to be draped around him, and the way that he has represented the hands and feet. The feet are so roughly hewn, as though he is still part of the earth. Gaston Lachaise also had a knack for rendering the human form in ways that honored both mass and vulnerability. Art is about embracing ambiguity, and it’s definitely not about fixed meanings.