Who hasn't sat on a plane before take-off making a karmic bargain with some supreme being in exchange for not dying a fiery death? Even atheists indulge in this sort of atavistic behavior. Please please please let me land safely and I'll have a local artist friend paint you a picture to celebrate and give thanks for that miracle. Ex voto paintings are proof that some bad things have been avoided and that people are grateful for them, even if they credit the avoidance of bad things to miraculous intervention.
A few weeks ago a large group of ex voto paintings appeared at my local junk shop. They initially looked pretty convincingly old, or at least vintage. Each had a hand-numbered label affixed to the back on top of 1950s-era Italian newpaper pages that held the small, painted panels firmly in place. They looked good, but I think they are modern fakes. The paintings are all on thin composite board (compensato). The frames are re-used and simple or cobbled together from older things and the paintings are adapted to fit into them as well as possible. However, the hand is assured and the compositions are pleasing. The subjects are wonderful - although I may be reading extreme irony and humor into them that the artist never felt or intended to express. Priced from 30 to 70 euros each I had to make a small selection from the many available. My choices were: passengers saved from a bus that has careened off a road into a ditch; a little girl ("our daughter Gemma") saved from death by electric shock as the result of what appears to be using a live wire as a jump rope as her almost equally shocked family looks on; and a fortune-teller who regrets snookering her credulous customers and is moved to refund their money. Details below. All I can do now is envision truly modern re-imaginings by a skilled painter of motifs and scenarios that might appeal to modern thanksgivers. The only copy of a first novel miraculously salvaged despite hard disk failure. Discovery of young acting genius by Hollywood agent at the child's 3rd grade Christmas pageant. Wedding not ruined by the early arrival of first child but its miraculously quick delivery becomes the centerpiece of the wedding reception as baby arrives during first dance etc etc....
Here's a sociological analysis of similar panels in modern Mexico which is interesting, but misses the irony that appealed to me about these small images.
Comments