The porcelain Christ is heavily embraced by rosaries and crucifixes; below his statuette lies a bouquet of plastic flowers.
The two elements of plastic flowers and crosses combine in a series of ‘maestine’, the name given to the characteristic wayside shrines of this region. Each ‘maestina’ is a painted amalgam of flowers and crucifixes within a wooden frame headed by a pediment. The setting for these creative transformations of traditional symbols are the gallery’s walls now painted a sombre but scintillating black. The effect is quite affecting…indeed, overwhelming.
Taking these elements and deepening their significance, the ‘maestina’ literally means ‘little majesty’; the Maestà are portraits of Christ in His Majesty and the finest Italian artists, from Duccio through to Michelangelo and beyond, have all painted truly magnificently powerful representations. In the ‘maestine’ the quality of ‘majesty’ remains but the size is diminished. Although they may be painted maestine are usually relief-sculpted and sadly many maestine have been stolen since they are often in remote mountain locations.
The arrangement of the flowers reminded me uncannily of Dutch seventeenth century painters like Jan Van Huysum. Interestingly a cleric who visited Keane’s exhibition ignored the flowers in the tableaux and remarked on the wonders and proliferation of the crucifixes: ‘‘chacun à son goût’.
Plastic flowers and plastic crucifixes may be regarded as sheer bling in many quarters but behind these items lie a huge part of the people of the world’s concerns and sorrows. In the context of cemeteries plastic flowers give a false impression of eternity lasting so much longer than the real thing, although even they must fade and lose their colours’ original brilliancy. Perhaps not as eternally as their artistic representations, however, for paradoxically Keane has immortalised the remains of the plastic flowers in a three–layered painting where their disintegrated elements are pieced together to blossom anew; their own special reincarnation maybe?
Crucifixes are constantly being offered for various blessings in so many parts of the Christian world. The crosses may plead for consolation in the event of a tragic family loss or clamour for improved luck in a distraught life. Today blessings are increasingly offered with symbols other than crucifixes. Who has not glimpsed at the padlocks of romance impregnating bridges and balconies, symbols of eternally sworn loves, safeguards as much as those crucifixes against the devotee’s disintegration into ashes and dust.
Keene’s is more than an exhibition; it is an experience. The gallery’s ambience wraps around oneself. The extraordinary perspective of black arches leading towards images weirdly infinitesimal, the strange juxtaposition of natural and artificial floral world and those crosses turned from images of devotion into ornaments, that Christ originally triumphing over death as in the earlier Maestà turned into a figure suffering under mortality were all thoughts that entered my mind as I was strangely transformed into yet another devotee of plastic adoration.