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Lot 31

 

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As a child in Goa, Souza grew up in awe of the Roman Catholic Church. Admitting a somewhat naive fascination with the pageantry of his faith, which might explain the ornamentation and detail in his works like present lot, the artist reminisces, "The Roman Catholic church had a tremendous influence over me, not its dogmas but its grand architecture and the splendour of its services. The priest dressed in richly embroidered vestments, each of his... As a child in Goa, Souza grew up in awe of the Roman Catholic Church. Admitting a somewhat naive fascination with the pageantry of his faith, which might explain the ornamentation and detail in his works like present lot, the artist reminisces, "The Roman Catholic church had a tremendous influence over me, not its dogmas but its grand architecture and the splendour of its services. The priest dressed in richly embroidered vestments, each of his garments from the biretta to the chasuble symbolising the accoutrements of Christ's passion" (Edwin Mullins, Souza, Anthony Blond Ltd., London, 1962, p. 42). As the artist grew older, however, he gradually became aware of what he perceived to be the pretences and hypocrisy of his religion and its proponents. Ever since, his life and work have been marked by the tension he constantly experienced between the adherence to his faith and the urge to harshly criticize it.

Just as he did with the disfigured portraits of saints and men that he painted, the artist applied the genre of still life to his critical interrogation of the notion of divine sanction, and its various interpretations and vehicles. In paintings like the present lot, Souza presents Catholicism as nothing deeper than vestment, decoration and ceremony - an ornamental faith based on appearances, words and objects rather than people. Instead of mocking its priests and saints, as he does in several of his figurative works from the period, here the artist questions the sacred objects, rituals and symbols of the Church.

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