The Procession by Paul Moore

 

I've written about this work for the Briscoe Museum catalogue, but it continues to move me every time I see it.  I wanted think and write more about it, so here goes (this will be a 3- parter)

 

                                               Part I - The Work itself

 

A religious procession winds towards us, apparently coming from the adobe church off to the right, its earthy color the same as the landscape around it.  Leading it is a middle-aged man, very much a portrait-like person with individualized features right down to his receding hairline and grayish braids, holding a processional crucifix of what appears to be polychromed wood.  Behind him is an orderly file of participants, those closest to him carrying an image of the Virgin Mary, her face in shadow under a makeshift canopy of what appears to be wood and canvas.  Everyone but the leader and one man to the left holding a sombrero, is dressed in blankets or shawls of browns and whites, draped over their hair as well as their bodies, muffling their faces so that their genders are unclear, and in many cases their facial features too. Most are of similar height, except for one child near the church.

 

Aside from white in the blankets and shoes and some clouds to the left rear, the only other color beyond shades of brown allowed is a light blue in the shirt of the procession leader, the cloak of the image of the Virgin and a strip of sky. Silver is also present on the halo of Christ on the processional cross, and the smaller crucifix carried the by marcher to the viewer's right of the leader.

 

The barrenness of the landscape with its few scattered shrubs (sagebrush?), the adobe church which seems part of the earth and rising from it, the generic features of the marchers and their blanket-mantles emerging, it seems, from behind the church, suggests the pueblo culture of New Mexico and Arizona, and the isolated location of the building out in the desert is deliberately non-specific.

 

The work is primarily bronze casting including its gilded "frame" and the reclining "ornamental" figures at the top, except for the pale green wooden table on which the framed scene rests, but this too is part of the sculpture, so I guess it's really mixed media. Several features make it wonderfully deceptive. In the composition proper, the relief ranges from low to completely in the round for the leader, his crucifix, and the two figures behind him.  But the church towers also project beyond the "frame," and the canopy over the Virgin image casts a shadow.  The ground slopes outwards so that the foreground figures literally enter the viewer's space, and the bottom of the frame is no longer an ornamental boundary as the sloping ground continues outwards.  

The varying levels of relief and projecting figures and plants also cast real shadows, which ca vary with the way the work is lit, though the patinated shadow cast by a crucifix that appears at an angle behind the leader and over the carriers of the image of the Virgin, made of brownish and blackish tones seems to suggest a different cross altogether--but where is it?. The gilded frame itself with its classical brackets and dentils, as well as the reclining figures on top, evoke a traditional Renaissance-Baroque altar, but the two figures have features and hairstyles of native Americans, as does the pot by the one to the left.  

Traditional Christian altarpieces in the semicircle they flank would have the space there occupied by a Christian icon (Trinity, God the Father, etc.) but here it is a rayed sun. The only additional Christian symbol is the roughly painted red Sacred Heart painted on the real but worn-appearing wooden table below--all of this constructed and decorated too by Moore himself.

 

The bronze composition achieves its earthily multicolored effects by the application of subtly colored patinas. and by making the areas beyond the central plaque of the composition and the "frame" neutral, further enhances the aura of processional theater.

 

            

If a person stands far enough away from the sculpture (in the Briscoe Museum this is possible), they could almost believe that the figures are human, and that they are coming from the church or from behind it, and really moving slowly, stepping into your space and will soon reach you, and then they will be life-sized.

 

Paul Moore's artist's statement about this work pretty much sums it up:

 

            "The Procession" was made to honor the religious aspect of the various Pueblos where     90% of the Pueblo people are Catholic with a blending of their ancient culture intertwined with Christianity. Throughout the year various processions are performed to   honor Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary and the lives of various Saints. I created this piece to look like an alter is coming to life and walking out from the bonds of the frame like the believers do in taking their faith to the masses.

 

To this writer, the key to this profoundly emotional work is the figure of the leader with his individualized facial features and his dignified demeanor.  He is both conscious of his role but also totally absorbed in his own spiritual experience as he turns his head slightly to the right, though he walks straight on.  As he appears to walk forward, the position of his feet and his posture suggest the slow dignified cadence of the procession he leads and how he defines this

rhythm.  The people he leads coalesce behind him into a complete spiritual entity.  Not only does the terrain physically sloping outwards help suggest this (the foreground plants project too), but the artist manipulates the perspective of the figures behind him and the foreshortening of the church and combines this with actual shadows cast by those elements in highest relief and full three dimensionality. It's hard to determine where two dimensionality becomes three.

 

From an art historian's point of view, Moore combines the literally rendered with suggestive abstraction, and blurs the line between art and life; when you look at the desert setting and it multiple dimensions, the flat area behind the composition proper and the projecting elements of the frame suddenly pulls the viewers up short to remind them it's just a bronze plaque.

 

He also subtly combines some artistic conventions of a framed altarpiece in Catholic, European based tradition, and then changes and modifies this tradition both by the reclining figures and sun symbol of indigenous belief, and the deconstruction of the frame at the bottom, which then is seen to be resting on a rough, aging table, reminding us that the whole bronze composition above really is just an altarpiece.

 

            But is it?

            (to be continued).

 

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Paul Moore's Artist Statement can be found at: https://crownartsinc.com/art-gallery/ols/products/the-procession

 

Carmen Tafolla, San Antonio's Poet Laureate of 2015, penned a piece of ekphrastic poetry in response to Moore's piece.  You can watch and hear her reading it aloud in the Briscoe's sculpture garden at: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1136575313578044