On martyrdom art

Us humans have hurt each other and have been fascinated by depictions of hurting of each other since the beginning of time. The hurting is in every history text, every art gallery, on every channel of the television, in every comic book, every religious text, every cinema, scrawled on the walls of every church and temple and burial monument and etched into every human heart. When the hurt is put on martyrs, that’s where things get especially sticky.

Martyrdom art is the cherry on that sundae, bloody sundae. It’s a full-blown, collective, psychological complex that we have historically expressed through paint and other media.

With the Canadiana Martyrdom Series, Diana Thorneycroft shows us the maple leaf side of that messy complex.

Thorneycroft’s images are a tangle of popular culture, plastic dollies and collectibles. They are big, uncomfortable dioramas. They are heretical. She takes our Canadian cultural icons and creates magnificent tableaux of faux suffering. She depicts the feeding of the Great One to the lions. For what? For leaving the Oilers? For coaching the Phoenix Coyotes? And she cuts the breasts off of Anne of Green Gables? (Ouch! That hurts me right down to my PEI.)

Our first reaction is to wonder what the hell she is thinking. What’s the connection between real martyrs referenced by her works and, say, Don Cherry? He never got tied to a wheel. And, when did anyone ever crucify some hockey-playing dude at the pond? Or, hey, what’s with the Mickey Mouse being quartered by the Mounties? The odd narratives leave us grasping. Aren’t martyrs supposed to be real people who sacrificed themselves for the good of others, who died a wrongful death? Martyrdom art is about those real events, no? Or is martyrdom art always just about the exaggeration of some nasty, bloody event?

A literal reading of these works can take you off the rails. But if you think about how we chew up and spit out our Great Ones, if you think about what lurks in the hearts of the viewer, in the projecting eye of the fanatic, in the regretful thoughts of the tacit bystander -- then you’re on the right track following the Thorneycroft train into the tunnel of martyrdom.

It’s a black tunnel. Paradoxically, it is illuminating, too.

There’s a dark nationalistic charge I get when I see Mickey Mouse about to be torn apart by the four proud Mounties on horseback. It’s a very nice reference to the fact that, in 1995, Disney temporarily owned the rights to the Mounties’ image worldwide. It was cultural heresy. The garish image is wonderfully stupid, twisted and cathartic in the same view.

Looking into the screaming face of the Great One who is strung up to a tree, I think of that martyrdom complex that is entirely owned by the fanatical audience. We humans can really hurt each other, especially those who make moves that we don’t fully appreciate or understand. Wayne Gretzky went from the Oilers to the Kings. It was his decision. Nobody understood. It was deemed to be treason. And we publicly hung the guy.

Maybe it’s because Thorneycroft uses corny, Canadian icons, hockey players and cartoon heros that a very dark chasm is revealed in the human psyche. The more you look at them, the more you see the whole of martyrdom art and religion as but mere comic books and economic vehicles.

Just look at the whole suffering Jesus thing. He died for our sins, nailed to the cross, a crown of thorns, humiliated in front of everyone. What about all the people who knew Jesus but who stood by and watched him going up Main Street with the cross? I figure that’s where Christianity was born, where it took off. It wasn’t simply because Jesus was a good guy, it was the martyrdom-viewing complex that resided in the hearts of that audience. It is in the guilty realization that someone should have said something before they pulled the hammer from the tool belt and made a billboard out of Jesus.

And didn’t that story and the depiction of it sell a billion books and build a million churches! We bathe and swaddle ourselves in the martyrdom-viewing complex that resides within the audience – nothing to do with the martyr. We build whole empires around that complex. But, the empires are almost all built on the same comic book-level aesthetic.

We do the same thing to our current pop-stars, politicians, heroes, intellectuals and models of sporting perfection. We string ‘em up and hate them for being so good. Then when they die a terrible death, we are forever fascinated, admiring of their talents and intelligence and we start writing our revision statements and painting them. But doesn’t it always smell like a Marvel comic book?

Jesus, we humans are a piece of work.

Martyrdom art is messy. It points fingers. It shows suffering. It shows indifference. It seeks revenge. It’s garish. It makes us feel good. It makes us feel bad. It’s good guy and bad guy. It’s dolls and heroes. And it makes us feel weird.

Diana Thorneycroft gives it to us big, bold and just a little over the top. In so doing, she shows us something about living 2,000-odd years into a Judeo-Christian, violence-loving, weird-as-shit, martyrdom-viewing complex. She shows us something about this country, Canada, and our collective reaction to folks who try hard to achieve something, whether singing or hockey. With her use of dolls and figurines, she also seems to suggest that the martyrdom art complex is wholly infantile. It makes you wonder if we could grow out of it.