Mr Greenwood's Crucifixion

It was the last holiday we took en famille- my parents, my sister, myself. I forget exactly how old I was. Nineteen, twenty- something like that. I filmed proceedings on my dad's old 8mm camera because those were the days when I thought I was Jean Luc Godard. When I edited the film I left all the shots of myself on the cutting room floor except for a close-up at the end which I thought was a nice, auteurish touch. My mother thought it was wankerish (not language she'd have ever used) but then she never understood me...

I'm remembering all this because today is Good Friday and that was the holiday that took us to Colmar and I got to stand in front of Matthias Grunewald's Isenheimer altarpiece with it's central panel of the crucifixion- the most graphic image of a brutalised human body in all western art. 

(That is, until Mel Gibson came along)



Here's a close-up. Horrid, isn't it?

My mother didn't like it. I did. I liked it lots. 

But now?  But now I see it as manipulative.

Grunewald's trying to get to us.  He's pushing buttons. Sex. Transgression. Guilt.   Especially guilt.  You did this to Jesus, Jesus did this for you: don't you think you should be feeling really bad about yourself?

(And while you're in this mood, how about giving us some money?)

You see,  I've been a Christian preacher. I know how the system works. 

My German is rudimentary, but doesn't Grunewald translate as Greenwood?

Mr Greenwood's crucifixion.  Ha!

Colmar Blues

                                    COLMAR BLUES

 

                                    I've never been to Germany.

                                    No, that's not true; once in my youth

                                    I stepped across the border at Freiburg-

                                    Handsome town.  On the city wall

                                    Are markers showing where soldiers fell

                                    In the 1870s.

 

                                                            Later we drove

                                    To Colmar- which these days is French-

                                    And saw the Grunewald altarpiece-

                                    That great hysterical, cinematic

                                    Tribute to a dying god

                                    That Huysmans made such a fuss about.

                                    They keep it in a cool, white room

                                    All by itself.  Then I went off

                                    On a private mooch.  In a shiny bar

                                    I downed a glass of Kronenbourg

                                    And fell in with a group of kids

                                    Who gave me the usual kiddie-bleat

                                    About how little there was to do

                                    In their dull, old town.  It was getting dark,

                                    With half an hour to dinner time,

                                    So I went and sat in a park and counted

                                    Sycamore leaves on the damp path

                                    Under a marble monument

                                    (It might have been of Marianne

                                    Or a stoic poilu) while a boy

                                    Rode a bike with stabilisers

                                    Round and round and round the plinth.