Art of Dignity and Grace

“Tanner’s art is a uniquely American affirmation of what is supposed to be the American creed: the equal dignity of all people.” The Million Masks of God, Henry Ossawa Tanner and the Art of Sympathy, by Nathan Beacom, Plough, 6/1/20

American creed and Baptismal Covenant...

The quotation above is about Henry Tanner, an African American artist from Philadelphia, whose painting Annunciation lies in Philadelphia’s Museum of Art on a wall opposite one of the city’s great works by Thomas Eakins ,The Gross Clinic.

Where the Eakins is dark and somber and even chaotic,Tanner’s painting is light and still. almost divine. The tension of placement is striking and reminds one of many of God’s tensions: calm and stormy, ordinary and extraordinary, visible and invisible. 

My love of art history, especially as it provides moments of visio divina, was rekindled when I read about Tanner’s life in this article by Beacom. I also realized I was seeking something visual to feed my sin sick soul. 

I was horrified to read that Tanner was actually tied to his easel and thrown into the street in a vicious act of racism; the author uses the phrase: “crucified on his easel”. Amazingly, his reaction was not anger but a still strong dismay and sadness that God’s divine plan for all had been desecrated. The dignity of all meant something so fundamental and essential to him that he is quoted as saying: “race hatred was an affront to divine justice”.

This week we too were accosted by such an affront to dignity and divinity! When our most sacred text was treated with such irreverence as to cause most Americans, not just Christians, and secular and religious leaders of the world, to react with at minimum confusion and more strongly with anger and deep concern, I found this simple article about the Christian values of a painter threatened with persecution for his race to be uplifting and a call to resolve and holy response. 

In times such as these we search for what is beneficially changeless and unwavering. Tanner points us to our covenant with God. It is so simple really. To respect the dignity of every human being because, as his AME bishop grandfather taught him, in Christ there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female. We are One. 

We may be discouraged about our individual abilities to effect a real change in systemic racism but we ought to be encouraged by the God who can do infinitely more working with and through us. “Who dares limit the power of God’s grace on his erring children?” 

Grace never ceasing...

Tanner's paintings filled with devotion, inspiration, divinity, humility, gratitude and grace reveal that kind of character which we believe produces the hope which does not disappoint. Below is The Thankful Poor which might as well be titled grace in the face of destitution. This is our ceaseless dignified conversation with God. There is a balm in Gilead; we must keep telling the story.