Matthew Alderman. Our Lady of Lourdes, the Immaculate Conception. Ink, with digital additions. January 2008. Private Collection, New York City.
I did this some years ago as a late Christmas gift for a friend with a deep devotion to Our Lady of Lourdes. I later discovered, weeks after I had given the gift, I had given Our Lady thirteen stars rather than her traditional twelve. When I was approached by a client asking to use this image in advertisements for masses on Our Lady of Lourdes' feast day, I cleaned it up a little using Photoshop and corrected the offending detail. Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond both our control, another, older image was used instead, but it provided a good opportunity to revise this image, one of my favorites--the Immaculate Conception surrounded by the votive tapers of her grotto shrine.
Our Lady of Lourdes is, along with the Sacred Heart, an image well-known to Catholics, and often due to its sheer repeatability comes dangerously close to a cliché, aided by the crude quality of many of her statues and holy cards. (It is interesting to note that other older images like Our Lady of Perpetual Help, however many times copied, seem immune to this iconography fatigue, for a number of reasons. That being said, the standard 19th century image of Our Lady of Lourdes is usually much better than the simpering Sacred Hearts that came out of the period.) It is interesting to note St. Bernadette never particularly liked the official images that came out of Lourdes. I am by no means saying this image is more accurate, but it does show that some range is possible within the framework of the traditional imagery surrounding the apparition. Later today or tomorrow I hope to post an image by the great Irish illustrator Harry Clarke, which partially inspired this drawing, to give another take on Our Lady of Lourdes different in style but not content from the conventional depictions of the event.
Patroness of the USA or not, thirteen stars does seem a bit excessive, if patriotic.
ReplyDeleteVery nice touch to use patois, which is what ND de L spoke here.
ReplyDeleteMathew, I like you but I have to say I really feel "icky" when I see most of your "religious" drawings. I mentioned this to someone I know. Not a good friend. He reads this blog too. He described your drawings as "immodest", "cartoon like", "irreverent" and "mocking"
ReplyDeleteThank you for your honesty. You are much more polite than other people who don't like my work. I'm used to it generating strong responses. People either love it or hate it.
ReplyDeleteWhat makes you feel that way? I think subjective responses are of only limited use to an artist in terms of feedback. One needs to know what in particular bothers you. Saying something is "mocking" is a value-judgment about the artist; saying one of the figures,for instance, has an inappropriately silly look on their face is more helpful to me as it gives me something specific to work on. Please mention specifics, but please try not to assume motivations.
The question is whether it is something in my style that is the problem, or whether the fact it doesn't look like most conventional pre-conciliar work.
I admit I do push the envelope on occasion in terms of stylizing things or occasionally drawing from lesser-known sources, though I'm not quite sure what you mean by immodest--depending on who you're talking to that can mean anything from "not wearing a veil" to, well, something really immodest. Same thing with irreverent. I think if you familiarized yourself with some of the work being done in the '20s and '20s (like, for instance, the images in the Bulletin Paroissal Liturgique done in Belgium, Martin Travers's religious illustration work, Harry Clarke, etc.) you might see the pedigree. As to cartoonishness, I work at a very small scale, and one can only fit so much detail in there. As someone who has only looked at, at most, two comic books in his whole life, it's by nature an incidental resemblance.
That's a very striking image of Our Lady! I like the contrast of the very modest look and the very art deco big letters of her proclamation. Also, the candles on the sides are nice.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Maureen! The candles are, of course, a reference to the famous votive candles at Lourdes.
ReplyDelete