In his celebrated oil painting 'The black Christ', artist Ronald
Harrison chose Chief Albert Luthuli as a model for the face of the
Christ. He modeled the two centurions on John Vorster and Hendrik
Verwoerd, the arch-exponents of apartheid. For this bold act of
worship and defiance and his subsequent refusal to divulge the
whereabouts of the painting, Ronald Harrison was incarcerated,
tortured and harassed. The Black Christ tells the story of these
events and, beyond that, the story of man's inhumanity to man.
The
painting, which was unveiled in 1962 at St Luke's Anglican Church
in Salt River, Cape Town, with the permission of Archbishop Joost
De Blank, caused a stir when featured in local newspapers. The
Minister of the Interior instructed that it be taken down, and the
young artist was ordered to appear before the Censor Board. In the
ordinary course of events, the painting would have been destroyed.
Instead – in what the author sees as divine intervention – it was
not confiscated, but was successfully hidden and smuggled abroad,
where it played a key role in raising funds for victims of
apartheid, including the Rivonia treason trialists. The miraculous
recovery of the painting and its return to South Africa after more
than 30 years - it is now held at the South African National
Gallery in Cape Town - are part of the dramatic story of 'The Black
Christ'.
Harrison's painting is an example of the use of art for
political resistance. The use of popular or controversial figures
was common in Renaissance art, as Harrison was quick to understand
and appreciate. His symbolic representation of Luthuli, Vorster and
Verwoerd (with an Asiatic St John in the background and Mary
Magdalene modeled on the artist's mother) reflected 'a young man's
anger, an older man's belief in divine providence, a nation's
painful history and still raises political and theological issues'.
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