the reception of christian devotional art || transformative triptychs in multicultural america

Transformative Triptychs in Multicultural AmericaAuthor(s): Annette StottSource: Art Journal, Vol. 57, No. 1, The Reception of Christian Devotional Art (Spring, 1998),pp. 55-63Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/777992 .

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Trans ormative Triptychs in Multicultural America

Annette Stott

rom the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries, the hinged triptych with narrow panels closing like doors over a larger center panel became a favorite

form for Christian altarpieces and small devotional

shrines, particularly in northern Europe. In modern times, art historians have spread knowledge of and appreciation for the medieval and Renaissance triptych through books, articles, exhibitions, and the ubiquitous slide lecture. In the process, this format has become thoroughly associated in the public mind with Christianity and with European culture. Widespread awareness of historical altarpieces may have contributed to artists' renewed use of the three-

part format during the past four decades. Unlike the earlier

tradition, however, the contemporary triptych usually appears as three detached panels of equal size that contain no reference to Christian devotional art in title, materials, or content. Instead, such triptychs by artists including Jim Dine, Jasper Johns, and Roy Lichtenstein express a purely formal, aesthetic choice.1

A smaller group of triptychs by contemporary women artists in the United States forms the subject of this study. These triptychs refer directly to Christian devotional art in their subject, form, and content as a way of exploring the

impact of Christian society on the lives and identities of women and people of color. They find their place within the context of the contemporary debate over multiculturalism.

The popular belief in the melting pot (the idea that the different ethnic, racial, religious, and social cultures of native and immigrant peoples should melt into a single, unified culture) is seriously challenged by the concept of a tossed salad or Latin soup in which immigrant and native cultures retain much of their uniqueness as they come

together to form a culture of diversity. Proponents of cultural diversity, or multiculturalism, assert the equal valid-

ity of various identity groups' unique experiences and

perspectives within U.S. culture.2 These groups reclaim their histories and define their identities in relation (often in opposition) to the perceived dominant culture. Oppo- nents of multiculturalism see it as a divisive and destruc- tive trend. They reiterate the need for common language,

both verbal and cultural, in order to maintain national

unity.3 The art object, as an expression of cultural production, has become a contested site within this debate.4

Although the notion of a dominant culture is prob- lematic, multicultural activism is predicated on a belief in a majority culture that attempts to consume and destroy, or at least silence, minority cultures. Dominant culture is a useful term for describing the culture promoted by melting- pot theorists as well as the strategy of assimilation associated with it. Typically, melting-pot culture is characterized as Western European, Christian, and male. Certainly within art circles, power has resided primarily with Caucasians and the patriarchal institutions they have founded. Through a strategy of appropriation and transformation some contemporary women artists are challenging that hegemonic construction, in the process questioning their own identities. For some of these artists, the triptych is a useful symbol of a powerful and historically dominating culture. Some have used the triptych to empower specific sociopolitical messages but most approach it as a tool for

opening dialogue. Jenni Luka., a Jewish artist of Eastern European

descent from Richmond, Virginia, who currently lives in

Lithuania, has explored the triptych in her art for the past ten years. She explains: "The Christian architectural and

figurative tradition is, in the western world, the dominant artistic vocabulary. If one wishes to have a visceral, intuitive effect upon, as well as an intellectual rapport with, a larger Western-oriented audience, one must utilize the vocabu-

lary known to the majority."5 In her Immigrant Shrine of 1987 (fig. 1) she employs the visual vocabulary of the triptych, but the wings take the form of stone tablets with Hebraic symbols for the Ten Commandments, and she has inserted a Star of David in the pedimented house form of the central section. A Japanese paper lantern balances votive lights, and the sacred meets the secular in the forms of a plaster Virgin Mary and a small Statue of Liberty. In this

way, the authoritarian voices of church and state, symbolized by the statues and by the altarpiece format, are tem-

pered by reminders of immigrants from Eastern Europe

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55



56

FIG. 1 Jenni LukaL Immigrant Shrine, 1987. Photo-emulsion on wood and mixed media, 31 x 401/2 x 151/2 inches (78.7 x 102.9 x 39.4 cm). Collection of the artist.

and Asia whose presence is invoked in this shrine. The

blending of Judaism with Christianity and East with West reflects the artist's multicultural experiences in the United States. Raised Episcopalian until age twelve, when her mother converted to Christian Scientism, Lukai also experienced Greek Orthodoxy when she attended neighborhood churches with her friends and celebrated two Christmases and two Easters to accommodate both calendars. Upon her

marriage, she converted to Judaism. Her Immigrant Shrine seems to suggest that there is room for all within the house of God and nation. Yet in pairing the Statue of Liberty with the Virgin Mary, it also asserts that the dominant U.S. culture confronting immigrants of all faiths is Christian. This

perception is shared by many other artists.

Many triptychs by contemporary women address the

subject of Christianity from feminist perspectives. What it means to be a woman in the United States is inextricably bound up with issues of religion, race, class, and ethnicity. While working in the Chicano movement during the 1970s, Yolanda L6pez attended a slide show of women's images from fashion magazines sponsored by Women Against Vio- lence Against Women that she says changed her life.6 As a

result, she began studying the visual presentation of women in popular magazines from Vogue to Penthouse. With an increased awareness of the ways in which popular media exploit, objectify, and victimize women, she also

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examined the visual culture of the Chicano movement. This exercise revealed that women accounted for a very small fraction of the movement's imagery. What she found most often was a reverential and nationalistic treatment of the Virgin of Guadalupe, a blended image combining the

apocalyptic Virgin Mary, brought to Mexico by Spanish priests with the native goddess Tonantzin, "Mother of the

People" or "Mother of the Gods."' Historically, both church and Mexican-American society have promoted the

Virgin of Guadalupe as a model of female behavior and

identity. Cloaked in a star-spangled cape with her eyes demurely downcast, the Guadalupe traditionally stands on a black crescent moon against a radiant sun, upheld by a small boy angel. L6pez considered her "a very beautiful but passive symbol, and still connected with the Roman Catholic Church, which is repressive not only in its sexism but also in its racism.'"8 She therefore decided to transform the Guadalupe into an image suitable for contemporary Chicanas and Chicanos using herself, her mother, and her

grandmother as models (fig. 2).9 In the image of herself as Guadalupe, on the left side

of the triptych, L6pez springs out of the stereotype, seeking freedom and independence from a norm invented for women by male-dominated Catholicism. She leaps down from her celestial perch, planting a foot firmly on the back of the angel as she runs gleefully forward. At the same

time, L6pez does not completely divorce this modern

Guadalupe from her predecessor. The radiant sun remains as a shaping influence, and she carries with her the starry cape, a symbol of Mexican Catholic heritage. But as a

mujer mestiza (woman of mixed race) she also carries a

snake, a native Mexican symbol of self-knowledge, sexual-

ity, and the cycle of life. This represents a purposeful deci- sion to reclaim an older part of an ethnic heritage that had become submerged under the national pressure to "melt" into the mainstream. No longer passive, this athletic

Guadalupe moves confidently into the future. The central image in the Guadalupe triptych repre-

sents L6pez's mother seated at her sewing machine, stitch-

ing the starry cape, while the boy angel looks wonderingly at her activity. The barely visible snake is wrapped tightly around the machine (L6pez says her mother never discussed sex), and the sun radiates behind this image of an

older, more passive Mexican-American woman. In the third and final image, L6pez's grandmother sits on the

cape, a knife and the skinned snake in her hand. She is

fully aware of and comfortable with her native heritage, symbolized by the snake. The crescent moon of the Christ-

57

FIG. 2 Yolanda L6pez. Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mujer Mestiza: Guadalupe, Portrait of the Artist; Guadalupe, Margaret F. Stewart; Guadalupe, Victoria F. Franco, 1978. Oil pastel on paper, each 30 x 22 inches (76.2 x 55.9 cm).

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FIG. 3 Renbe Stout. Trinity, 1990. Wood and mixed media. Open, 45 x 22 inches (114.3 x 55.9 cm); closed: 45 x 11 inches (114.3 x 27.9 cm). Private collection.

ian Guadalupe has become a dress pin. In this and other

triptychs of her family, L6pez substitutes real and complex women for the stereotypical models provided by the church, the male-dominated Chicano movement, and the mass media.

For other artists, the triptych lends itself to use as a

symbol of male dominance because of its perceived association with the Christian Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity

originated in the first centuries after the death of Jesus of Nazareth and became codified in the Nicene Creed as early as 325 C.E. Composed of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three

persons that form a single unified and indivisible God, the Trinity is not only male in concept but also patrilineal. The

description of two of the persons as Father and Son suggests inherited power invested in maleness. According to the original Nicene Creed, a person must believe in the

Trinity in order to be a Christian and to be saved from sin. Thus the Trinity was (and is) a central tenet of Christian belief.10 Although Christian triptychs traditionally portray saints, Bible stories, or the Virgin Mary, not images of the

Holy Trinity, the notion that the tripartite format symbolized the Trinity has recurred regularly in modern history and enjoys some currency today." For example, Ren6e Stout-a Washington, D.C.-based sculptor of African, Irish, and Cherokee ancestry-entitled her triptych Trinity (fig. 3), but she painted her own face on the central panel and portraits of her sister and mother on the wings. Like

many fourteenth- and fifteenth-century altarpieces, the

tops of the wooden panels are shaped, and the paintings inside incorporate gold leaf and inscriptions-clear allu- sions to the Christian triptych tradition. But mother and

daughters replace Father and Son as the referents of this

Trinity, thereby exposing and questioning the patriarchal nature of Christianity and of dominant U.S. society.

The effectiveness of Stout's strategy may be seen in the current owner's response when asked what attracted him to purchase Trinity: "I like the appropriation of the ultimate male group of three as a female trinity and can't

help feeling that there is a little dig intended here .... I think it is also interesting that Ren6e has no shyness at

putting her own self-portrait in the center and making it much larger than the two side portraits. She seems to be confident of herself as an important person."'12

By transgressing the patriarchal and racial underpin- nings of Western Christian devotional art, Stout encourages viewers to explore alternative perspectives. In addition to

substituting generations of women of color for the Christian

Trinity, she has wedded the triptych, a Christian form, to the nkisi, a Kongo form, in order to explore the melding of African and European influences that have produced an African-American culture distinct from either source. Stout's Trinity has the vertical body and short legs typical of the carved wooden nkisi maintained by Kongo practi- tioners for their spiritual power.'3 That power typically resides in the bundle of natural materials usually placed on the head or in a cavity in the stomach of the nkisi by a spiritual leader who activates the figure to protect and bring about good. Stout placed a small vial of African dirt in a framed niche on Trinity corresponding in placement to the medicinal cavity of an nkisi. In addition, a small paint- ing of an nkisi nkondi on one hinged panel (a type of nkisi

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FIG. 4 Mary Ann Hickey. Triptych, 1990. Heat

transfers on satin, glass bugle beads, and

embroidery floss, 13 x 17 inches (33 x 43.2 cm). Collection of the artist.

59

whose power is released by pounding iron spikes into the wooden figure) and numerous symbols scratched into the wooden surface of Trinity refer to Stout's heritage of African spirituality and values.14

Stout has actively sought this heritage because

knowledge of African antecedents has been lost in her family. Familiar with the use of natural remedies and charms

among other African Americans, she has researched African art and religion, and has found evidence that some of her female ancestors were traditional healers. Stout's

placement of a medicinal packet in Trinity makes reference to traditional African religious practice. In this man-

ner, the Christian referent of the triptych format is undercut by reference to a spiritual system condemned by Christian missionaries.

Stout has experienced that tension between religious cultures within her own life. Her grandmother is a devout Christian who devotes her time to watching evangelical shows on television and studying the Bible. As a child, Stout attended Mass with her grandmother and as an adult has been fascinated by the home shrine surrounding her

grandmother's television. The artist has frequently bor- rowed objects from her grandmother to use in works of art but does not show the finished results to her grandmother. As Stout explains, "She wouldn't understand my work. It involves other types of spirituality that the Christian church doesn't condone. My grandmother would probably

see me as a devil worshipper."15 By including both African and Western systems of spirituality, Trinity allows the viewer to consider the cross-cultural influences inherent in the African-American experience.

The historical elision of Christianity with Native- American and African spirituality, seen in both Stout's and

L6pez's triptychs, can be understood in two ways. On the one hand, it was a strategy used by missionaries and Bible-

toting slaveholders to persuade their subjects to accept Christianity. On the other, it was also a strategy used by colonized peoples to hold onto their traditional gods and beliefs under the guise of accepting new ones, thereby minimizing official awareness of and punishment for their resistance. Trinity considers both sides of the story, but, like L6pez's Guadalupe triptych, it is ultimately concerned with the effect that competing religious-cultural systems have on real individuals.

The Chicago fiber artist Mary Ann Hickey is simi-

larly concerned with the effect on real women of dominat-

ing religious-cultural systems. Hickey's Triptych (fig. 4) comments on life within the narrow confines of marriage as it is defined by the Roman Catholic Church in which she was raised. Marriage in this context is a holy sacrament, reflecting the structures of the church, in which a wife is meant to obey her husband and functions primarily as caretaker and childbearer. Inspired by trying to get into her wedding gown more than thirty years, six children, and

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60

FIG. 5 Mary Ann Hickey. Return to the Goddess, 1990. Heat transfer on satin, embroidery floss, and seed beads on wood and black ultrasuede, 113/4 x 11 x 11/4 inches (29.8 x 27.9 x 3.2 cm). Collection of the artist.

thirty pounds after the original event, Triptych consists of three black-and-white photographs of the partially gowned Hickey transferred onto a piece of white wedding satin. She uses the bridal gown as "a metaphor for the protected space presupposed by the patriarchal institution of mar-

riage."16 On a personal level, the peeling away of the gown represents her divorce after twenty-five years of marriage as well as the emergence of her new identity as an artist

during a subsequent journey of personal discovery, part of it in graduate school. On a social level it suggests the

restructuring of marriage to accommodate a variety of con-

temporary lifestyles and gender roles.

Hickey implies that marriage is just one of many patriarchal structures that the viewer should reconsider. She explains further that "the format of the religious triptych is a visual reminder that these structures still exist and that women are still expected to conform to their con- straints. I have tried to subvert this ideal of the virgin [bride] by turning an obviously non-virginal, aging figure around so that the backside is exposed with all its flaws.""' Appropriation, transformation, and subversion are the

techniques of women artists such as Hickey, who use the

triptych as a broad metaphor to prod viewers to examine the structure of their daily lives and the institutions, beliefs, and expectations that shape them.

Not only the format and iconography of Triptych, but also the medium is designed to question gender roles. After

making the phototransfers, Hickey stitched single strands of embroidery thread in a range of reds, greens, and blues

into the images' backgrounds and embellished the whole

piece with gold bugle beads. Textile arts are associated with the feminine in Western culture, and Hickey's choice of domestic needlework techniques and her substitution of

fabric, particularly bridal satin, for the traditional materials of the Christian triptych feminizes the form. Simultane-

ously, the richly decorated fabrics refer to the altar cloths and ecclesiastical dress traditionally prepared and maintained for the church by devout women. Hickey's process is an extension of attempts by feminist artists of the 1970s to elevate women's materials and techniques to the status of

high art and was encouraged by her three years as a needle- worker on Judy Chicago's Birth Project.'8

Triptych is part of a larger body of work that Hickey calls the Outgrown Series. She notes that "all of the works in this series borrow from religious formats because, as a

child, I attended Mass six days a week in a beautiful Gothic style church and . . . while attending graduate school I made a study of Romanian and Russian icons."19 All of the works in this series incorporate images of the

outgrown wedding gown as a metaphor for women's growth beyond externally imposed limitations. One of these

pieces, Return to the Goddess (fig. 5), sheds more light on the meanings underlying Triptych. Hickey based Return to the Goddess on the same photographic self-portrait that makes up the right side of Triptych, but she overlaid the

image with beaded outlines of pre-Christian figurines. Tra-

ditionally called Venuses by archaeologists-the Venus of Willendorf is perhaps the most famous example-proponents of the Goddess theory see these ancient female forms as manifestations of early Goddess worship and have renamed them Goddesses to invest them with dignity and

power.20 This theory, popularized during the women's movement of the 1960s and 1970s, holds that most pre- Christian societies were matriarchal and worshiped a female deity as creator of the universe and ruler of life and death. Although she has had many names among different

peoples-Kali, Babd, Hera, Juno-contemporary believ- ers call this ancient deity the Great Goddess. Explaining her use of the prehistoric Goddess in her art, Hickey has stated: "Early Christianity's devotion to the Virgin derived from patriarchal appropriation of goddess imagery. ... Combining my personal history with authentic goddess imagery is my way of reclaiming this source of power for women."21

According to The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (a compendium of esoteric information used as a resource by some contemporary artists), the Christian Trinity derived from the much older Great Goddess who also assumed three persons: a young Virgin, a Mother, and an old Crone.22 This view of prehistory regards the transformation of the Great Goddess into the masculine Trinity as part of a Christian strategy for stamping out Goddess

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FIG. 6 Jenni Lukat Mississippi Shrine, 1989. Mixed-media

installation with photograph, approximately 96 x 120 x 60

inches (243.8 x 304.8 x 152.4 cm). Collection of the artist.

worship and asserting patriarchal power. With its three female images, Triptych could be interpreted as a revela- tion of the historic appropriation and sexual transformation of the triune Goddess by Christianity and the Trinity's sub-

sequent return to its original female form by feminists. By invoking the Goddess, Hickey attempts to subvert patriarchal Christian authority, questions gender roles and soci- etal expectations in the broadest sense, and suggests a

rebalancing of power. Lukav, L6pez, Stout, and Hickey each examine dif-

ferent aspects of U.S. culture and identity. Lukai reminds the viewer of the Jewish presence and immigrant experience; L6pez challenges the passive Virgin of Guadalupe as a model Chicana; Stout examines the mixture of African and European spiritual systems; Hickey considers the institution of marriage as a metaphor for patriarchal social structure. All transform the triptych from an expression of dominant Christian values into an exploration of the effects of that hegemonic culture on the lives and identities of

people who do not believe they fit within its norms. Another aspect of the multicultural triptych that

refers to the Christian altarpiece tradition is the artist's fre-

quent desire to incorporate a healing function. Lukai considers many of her shrines as agents for healing. This is

perhaps most obvious in Mississippi Shrine (fig. 6). Framed

black-and-white photographs of three civil rights martyrs hang on a wall against a photorealistic, forested, wallpa- pered background of the type once commonly used in den- tists' and doctors' offices to soothe anxious patients. On the floor before the photographs, electric votive candles are scattered through the soil and grass, which blend visually into the forest floor beyond. Noting that there is "no cleans-

ing ritual in our society, no way to be sanctified," the artist creates shrines "to help cleanse people of crimes they had no control over" and "to help them fit back into the cosmic scheme of things."23 The images of James Cheney, Andrew

Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, two Jews and a black man murdered in Mississippi in 1963, seem to hover like lost souls while the lit candles and peaceful forest suggest reconciliation.

Stout is equally concerned with the power of art to heal. A series of inscriptions on Trinity reveals the presence of a family conflict at its core. Stout wanted her sister to give her some dirt from their grandmother's grave, but her sister refused. Under her mother's portrait, Stout wrote: ". . . She says there is already enough fighting in the world, sisters shouldn't act like this... ." Above her self-portrait she noted: "I don't know her very well anymore... ." And at the bottom of Trinity is written: "Since I could not have the dirt from her grave-dirt from the land of her ancestors

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FIG. 7 Judith Baca. Las Tres Mar/as, 1976 (photographed with the artist, 1990). Mixed media, each panel 68 x 16 inches (172.7 x 40.6 cm). Collection of the artist.

will have to do." The rift in the family and the creation of this triptych/nkisi as a step toward healing it became another layer of personal meaning embedded in the work.

As with Stout's Trinity, the primary audience for

many of these triptychs is the artist herself. The Chicana muralist Judith Baca makes the exploration of personal identity the explicit purpose of her triptych Las Tres Marias (fig. 7) through the inclusion of a floor-length mirror as the central panel. The title refers equally to the three Marys of the Crucifixion story and to a name popular among Roman- Catholic Mexican Americans hoping to see their daughters pattern themselves on the humility and obedience of the

Virgin Mary. Las Tres Marias was photographed in 1990 with the artist's reflection in the center, sandwiched between her paintings of a casually dressed 1970s Chicana on one side and a self-portrait as a defiant, self-assured, cigarette-smoking pachuca on the other. (Pachucas were rebellious young women of the 1940s who rejected both

their parents' traditions and assimilation to Anglo culture to define themselves in relation to gang culture through body language and dress.) This self-portrait subverts traditional Marian iconography, opening the way for Baca to examine her own identity. She has written about her work of the late 1970s: "It was a process of coming to know who we are as a race of people, and therefore who I am. What

part of me was an Indian and what part Spanish? Was the mestizo a blending of the two, or did I actually embody, as I feared, the historic struggle between these cultures while displaced in the third culture of an anglo dominated coun-

try?"'24 Baca, L6pez, Hickey, and Stout all incorporate self-

portraits in their triptychs as they reshape their identities on their own terms. Rather than allow the male voice of the church or patriarchal society to speak as an authority for them, these artists place women in the speaker's position.

A second, equally important audience for these triptychs is the greater public. Baca's triptych with its central mirror allows anyone to enter the picture so that the triptych's meaning shifts from viewer to viewer. In Las Tres

Mar(as the viewer's own image becomes the central point of reference, and the viewer must assume a female identity to complete the number of Marys in the title. For a male viewer this means attempting to adopt, however briefly, a feminine perspective shaped by the conflicting expectations of church, Chicano culture, and U.S. culture. Even if he ignores the title, he must consider his image and role in the all-female environment defined by Baca. For a non- Chicana female viewer the process of considering a range of options from traditional conformity to open rebellion

begins as soon as the triptych embraces her image. Baca

compels the viewer, male or female, to take an active role in completing the image of three Marys, rather than allow-

ing the viewer to assume the more traditional (Marian) role of passive observer.

While the individual considered most immediately in Stout's Trinity is the artist, in conjunction with her rela-

tionships to her sister and mother, she, too, has a broader audience in mind, as she explains: "I want people to think about [people of other] cultures who came to the United States and have to totally change who they are. It is so unfair.... Hopefully they will see the choice I have made to explore my heritage and to form my own opinions and go my own way. And be strong enough to resist a society that says you have to live your life one way."25 This theme of resistance to a dominant cultural identity and the admoni- tion to the audience to "form its own opinions" is reflected in the work of all the artists discussed.

The horizons of expectation created by Western culture are such that to adopt the triptych is to demand for one's image the kind of intense, deeply meditative, and self-evaluative viewing that is central to Christian devotional art. Yet rather than promote a particular theology or

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cultural ideal, all of these women artists use the triptych to

explore, and to encourage viewers to explore, the multiple possibilities of U.S. identity. The triptych has become a means of communicating, in a visual language understood at an intuitive level by Westerners, a message that questions the assumptions of their culture. Luka~ asserts: "I see

my work as very political, and what I want people to do is to think, period."26 Stout agrees: "My audience is anyone who is willing to look at things and think.'27

Each of these artists asks who we are in the great blend of intersecting and colliding cultures that makes

up the contemporary United States. The Episcopalian- Christian Scientist-Eastern European Jew, the African- Irish-Cherokee woman, and the Aztec-Spanish-ex-Catholic descendant of a Lutheran and a Quaker suggest that any mixture of cultural influences is possible and even likely in this country. Such intermixing of cultures calls into question both the notion of a dominant, melting-pot identity and the concept of clear and distinct static identity groups such as African American or Jewish American. Cultural identities are always changing as new influences intermix and as the institutions that help shape identity change. Artists

explore the richness of this ever-shifting diversity, hoping to heal breaches through increased understanding. By appropriating a Christian art form, transforming a patriarchal Trinity into a female trinity, mixing African with Euro-

pean with Native American with Jewish with Mexican

religions and cultures, and placing the individual in the

center, these artists replicate the diversity of U.S. society and promote thoughtful, personal consideration of multiculturalism's potential.

Notes I wish to thank Candi Meadows, my research assistant, for her invaluable help in the early stages of this project.

1. For a discussion and examples of this non-Christian tripartite format see David S. Rubin, Contemporary Triptychs, exh. cat. (Claremont, Calif.: Pomona Col-

lege, 1982). A few contemporary artists, including Willem de Kooning and Keith

Haring, have produced triptychs that fall solidly within the Christian devotional tradition. See John Cook, "A Willem de Kooning Triptych and St. Peter's Church," Theological Education 31 (Autumn 1994): 59-73; and Sam Havadtoy, K. Haring (Geneva: Gallery 56, 1990).

2. Throughout this essay I use the adjective U.S. as a more appropriate means of indicating the people and culture of the United States than the word American, which rightfully belongs to the peoples of two continents. I use the term Mexican- American in reference to traditional mestizo culture and Chicano or Chicana to describe the politicized culture of La Raza in the United States.

3. Arthur M. Schlesinger's The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multi- cultural Society (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992) is a classic exposition of this point of view.

4. Lucy R. Lippard documents a wide range of works of art produced in this climate of multicultural awareness in Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America (New York: Pantheon Books, 1990).

5. Jenni Luka6, Kaunas, Lithuania, e-mail to author, January 15, 1997. 6. This and the following information about L6pez, except where otherwise

indicated, is from Yolanda L6pez, San Francisco, telephone conversation with author, January 20, 1997.

7. See also Jeanette Favrot Peterson, "The Virgin of Guadalupe: Symbol of

Conquest or Liberation?" Art Journal 51, no. 4 (Winter 1992): 39-47; and Marina Warner, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (New York:

Vintage Books, 1976). 8. Yolanda L6pez, "Media and Racism: The Politics of Women in Popular Cul-

ture," in Amy Scholder, ed., Critical Condition: Women on the Edge of Violence

(San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1993), 79. 9. L6pez originally intended to have five images in this series but completed

only three in time for her M.F.A. thesis exhibition. She presented these three works as a triptych, never executed the last two proposed pictures, and subsequently con- tinued to exhibit the original three together. In a period of financial crisis, L6pez sold the image of her mother to the art historian Shifra Goldman, which broke up the triptych. In fact, however, this "triptych" was always more conceptual than

physical, since the three pastels had never been mounted or framed together. L6pez says she considers it a triptych, and other scholars have published it as The

Guadalupe Triptych, despite the fact that L6pez gave each image a separate title.

L6pez, telephone conversation with author. See also Yolanda L6pez, "Yolanda M.

L6pez: Works, 1975-1978," M.F.A. thesis, University of California, San Diego, 1978.

10. On the history of Trinitarian theology, see, for example, Edmund J. Fort-

man, The Triune God: A Historical Study of the Doctrine of the Trinity (Philadel- phia: Westminster, 1972); and Basil Studer, Trinity and Incarnation: The Faith and the Early Church, trans. Matthias Westerhoff (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1993).

11. So far as I can determine, no thorough scholarly investigation of the historical relationship between the doctrine of the Trinity and the development of the Christian triptych format exists. Most twentieth-century scholars of Christian

iconography, such as Andr6 Grabar and Victor Schmidt, address the images that

depicted the Trinity or consider the development of the triptych, but not the rela-

tionship of one to the other. In Christian Iconography: The History of Christian Art in the Middle Ages, vol. 2, trans. E. J. Millington, additions by Margaret Stokes

(1886; New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1965), 25-34, the nineteenth-cen-

tury scholar Adolphe Didron did document the relationship of the late twelfth-century order of Trinitarians to the tripartite forms of churches, altars, and objects dedicated to the Trinity but did not discuss the triptych altarpiece specifically. Whether a historical connection existed or not, it is significant for the present study that contemporary artists and writers have made this association. In the cat-

alogue of the 1982 exhibition Contemporary Triptychs, for instance, Rubin writes: "Another factor which must have contributed to the production of ivory triptychs, which remained abundant throughout the Middle Ages, is that, as Christianity spread, the number three became increasingly sacred because of its association with the doctrine of the Trinity" (9).

12. Owner of Trinity, letter to author, February 3, 1997. 13. For a thorough discussion of the nkisi, see Wyatt MacGaffey, "The Eyes of

Understanding: Kongo Minkisi," and for an excellent explanation of Stout's art in relation to nkisi, see Michael D. Harris, "Resonance, Transformation, and Rhyme: The Art of Ren6e Stout," both in Astonishment and Power, exh. cat. (Washington, D.C.: Museum of African Art, 1994). For Stout's comments on nkisi, see Daniel

Shapiro, Western Artists/African Art, exh. cat. (New York: Museum for African Art, 1994), 90-91.

14. Metal ornaments embossed with Celtic designs, probably referring to her Irish heritage, balance the African symbols, just as the nkisi balances the triptych.

15. Ren6e Stout, interview by Julia Barnes Mandle, in Mandle and Deborah Menaker Rothschild, Sites of Recollection: Four Altars and a Rap Opera, exh. cat.

(Williamstown, Mass.: Williams College, 1992), 88. 16. Mary Ann Hickey, Chicago, letter to author, December 31, 1996. 17. Ibid. 18. On Hickey's contribution to that project, see Judy Chicago, The Birth Pro-

ject (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co., 1985), 91, 152, 166, 172-73. 19. Hickey, letter to author. Hickey identifies herself as a second-generation

Lithuanian. 20. Marija Gimbutas's numerous books on ancient images of the Goddess have

been influential for followers of the Goddess, including Hickey. 21. Mary Ann Hickey, "New Works," Fiberarts 18 (November-December

1991): 25. 22. Barbara G. Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (San

Francisco: Harper and Row, 1983), 1018-20. 23. Jenni LukaE, interview by Mandle, Sites of Recollection, 60. 24. Judith Baca, quoted in Elizabeth Partch, ed., Body/Culture: Chicano Figu-

ration, exh. cat. (Rohnert Park, Calif.: Sonoma State University, 1990), 18. 25. Stout, interview by Mandle, 91. 26. Lukai, interview by Mandle, 28. 27. Ren6e Stout, interview by Curtia James, Art Papers 18, no. 4 (July-August

1994): 2.

63

ANNETTE STOTT, associate professor of art history and

women's studies at the University of Denver, has published extensively on American art and is beginning a study of watercolor as a gendered medium.

ART JOURNAL



the reception of christian devotional art || transformative triptychs in multicultural america

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