Images of Christ

What's your mental image of Jesus?

Do you picture a tall, slender, white man with a peaceful face, long, brown hair, blue eyes and a white robe? A cherubic-looking baby surrounded by adoring parents and shepherds? A teacher surrounded by crowds near the Sea of Galilee?

The question of what Christ actually looked like has both mystified and intrigued billions of his followers for nearly two millennia since his death. Artists across the centuries have created their depictions based in part on their own cultural milieu — most reflecting a reverence for their own or their viewers' belief in his divinity.

A new exhibit opening Nov. 17 at Brigham Young University will explore depictions of Christ in art and feature a two-day lecture series examining "Art, Belief and Meaning." The symposium, scheduled Nov. 16 and 17 at the school's Museum of Art, will feature a variety of scholars discussing topics centered around the theme, "Pious Pictures: Christian Iconography and Personal Expression in the Production of Faith-Based Art."

The symposium is free and open to the public and will kick off the museum's newest exhibition, "Beholding Salvation: Images of Christ."

David Morgan, professor of Christianity and the arts at Christ College, Valparaiso University, is among the symposium presenters. He said selected images of Christ that have become familiar to those of various faiths are used to promote their particular doctrine, even though that usage "often differs from what the artist intended."

Large treatises on copyright law and fair use of such images have been outlined over time, yet ultimately, "the owners of an image have rather little control over how it's used" because the meaning of the image "changes every time it's put in a new context."

For example, an image would have a very different meaning for children as part of a Sunday School bulletin than it would for readers of an art history book containing the same image. "Context is something larger than the artist, or the institution that owns the image."

The concept can be readily illustrated in reference to a sculpture of Christ called the "Christus," a larger-than-life version of which stands in the rotunda at the north LDS Visitors Center on Temple Square. Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have come to revere the image as something of a "Mormon icon," according to Matthew Richardson, associate professor of religion at BYU. He will speak on the topic during the symposium next month, and addressed it in an article published in 2003 in the Journal of Mormon History.