Horace Pippin (1888-1946), Holy Mountain III, 1945. Oil on canvas, 25.3 x 30.3 cm. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC.
In honor of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday on Monday, I’d like to highlight the work of one who shared Dr. King’s vision, but whose microphone was a canvas.
This painting by self-taught African American artist Horace Pippin depicts the peaceable kingdom that’s prophesied about in the biblical book of Isaiah, chapter 11. When the Messiah establishes his rule on earth, writes the prophet,
The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
and a little child will lead them.
The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.
They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
—Isaiah 11:6-9
Last spring this painting was featured in the exhibition “Ashe to Amen: African Americans and Biblical Imagery,” curated by the Museum of Biblical Art in New York City. MOBIA published an astute commentary on it on their blog. The commentator points out the shadows of violence in the forest: a lynched black man (left), planes dropping bombs above a graveyard of crosses (center), and two armed soldiers and a tank (right). Yet, the commentator writes, Pippin chose to foreground the Holy Mountain, demonstrating his hope that such a scene would one day be actualized: “Rather than turning a blind eye to the painful realities of a sad and violent world, Pippin presents a vision of mankind moving out of the shadows and into the brilliant light of a peaceful clearing.” Continue reading →
The Jesus Question 