The work I chose to represent cult value is the Great Reredos in Saint Thomas’s Church. The Great Reredos is a large and vertical wall that arches on the top with many religious figure sculptures built on it. It’s the major object in the church and it’s built in 1823 by architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue and sculptor Lee Lawrie. The Exhibition value piece I chose is the “Drowning Girl”, a pop art piece painted by Roy Lichtenstein in 1963. The painting shows a woman, tearing up while sinking down into the waves and a thought bubble that shows what she’s thinking. Both pieces are very different in purpose, form, and style. Although difficult to tell, but both art pieces were made with a purpose of to be displayed and for people to see.
The Great Reredos is a religious themed piece that requires one to have some amount of knowledge in the stories from the bible in able to truly understand the meaning of the figures that’s sculpted and its arrangement on the wall. The Great Reredos is about 80 feet high and 43 feet wide, it’s said to be the largest reredos in the world. Each figure on there was shaped with unique appearance that reflects his or her own personality. In the lower middle of the reredos is a cross, standing on top of the cross high above is the reigning Christ wearing a crown showing power of his throne, his right hand raised in blessing and his left hand holding the orb of earth. On the two sides of Christ, there is his mother, Mary and his beloved disciple John, both are placed besides the Christ on a lower level. The Apostles are in the arches on the side on the reredos and surrounding the cross are nine Hebrew prophets.
Viewing it from far away, one might have the illusion of seeing the sculptures and the carvings as stacks of marble white bones. Reason for this is that the sculptures were places mostly in a vertical composition with vertical lines or bounds that separates each column. The sculptures were shaped with heads and bottom bigger than the other part of their bodies therefore creating a resemblance of the shape of bones. The Great Reredos is made explicitly for the building upon Saint Thomas Church with the Gothic revival design. It was made for the worship of the Christian followers. The individuality and uniqueness of each figure’s expression and gesture is made to make the figures look vivid and look as if they exist in real life for the purpose of making followers to believe and more faithful experience of prayer.
The “Drowning Girl”, in comparison to the Great Reredos is a modern art piece with the style of pop art. Roy Lichtenstein used an image based on a comic book with adjustment of its original text and composition to create this new piece. It’s a woman’s head in the middle, with her eyes close, tear coming out, and almost sinking down into the wave with her hand shown on the right side. On the top left side next to her head, there’s a though bubble indicating her thoughts, inside the bubble it says “I DON’T CARE! I’D RATHER SINK – THAN CALL BRAD FOR HELP!” There’s a repetition with the light blue color of the wave and the ultramarine blue of the women’s hair, the image as a whole look like a zoom in of the scene in that moment.
The art piece is described as a “masterpiece of melodrama”. The woman in the image seems resentful towards the guy name Brad, possibly her boyfriend, saying that she doesn’t care, she rather sink in to the waves than to call Brad for any help. The woman seems heartbroken form love and emotionally distressed. As Janice Hendrickson said “a young woman who seemed have cried herself a river… is literally drowning in emotion.” It also shows a sense of individualism for female and the will to be independence and rather sink down than to call a man for aid, it showed a sense of female power and independence.
This art piece is displayed in the Museum of Modern Art. It’s showed on the entrance of fourth floor where everybody who enters the floor automatically sees it. The painting is displayed behind a white wall with glass around which gives more significance it. Unlike the setting of the “Drowning Girl”, the Great Reredos is set in a big cathedral with visitors who have to enter two doors to see it. It’s places in the very end of the high ceiling hallway, there’s a whole room of benches to sit and to view the reredos in the front, whereas the “Drowning Girl” is displayed in an exhibition space and has no place for one to sit to view the painting. It’s displayed in a very public space even more than the other paintings because it’s placed right at the entrance, on the contrary, the reredos is displayed in an atmosphere that matches with its own mood because it was designed explicitly for the church, whereas the “Drowning Girl” could have been displayed anywhere in or out of the museum.
The two art pieces were similar in that both were meant to be displayed, but different in that the Great Reredos was only meant for followers or visitors to worship and view with respect but “Downing Girl” was designed for the public and to be displayed as a source of entertainment or recreation of the artist.