New Horsemen, New Whores: Michael Caines “Revelations and Dog”

I always chuckle at the old joke about the dyslexic atheist holding up a sign saying, “There is no Dog!” Whenever talk turns to revelations and apocalypses, we all seem to be reading things backwards and upside down in hopes of making sense of the unknown, usually with comic results. Michael Caines’ Revelations and Dog riffs on the familiar song of the Book of Revelation to come up with a new tune for today’s topsy turvy world on the brink. It’s an almost perverse presentation to publish with Easter coming up, but Revelations and Dog’s joking may be the perfect antidote to the humorless, febrile dreams of religious radicalism. Caines comes up with the perfect new Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and Whore of Babylon for today’s faithful, and unfaithful. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "New Horsemen, New Whores."

[Image: Michael Caines, Revelation chapter 6, ink and gouache on paper, 9.5 x 14 inches, 2009.]

[Many thanks to Mark Batty Publisher for providing me with a review copy of and the image from Revelations and Dog illustrated by Michael Caines.]

Left at the Altar

To make the grand churches of medieval Europe even grander, and to focus the altar as the true center stage, the greatest artists created works on commission to celebrate those holy spaces. Along with Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden created some of the greatest religious images of the Netherlandish school between his birth sometime in 1399 and his death on June 18, 1464. Weyden’s Deposition (above, from 1435) captures the imagination in several ways. First of all, its sheer size (over six feet tall and nearly 8 feet wide) dominates the altar area. Secondly, the colors of the nearly life-sized figures’ garments strike us with their brilliance almost six centuries after they were first applied. Finally, our eye begins to unravel the fugue of movement enacted by the figures. Each figure plays out some small narrative that adds up to the total effect. Christ and his mother, the Virgin Mary, seem to fall in tandem—he clothed in only his marble-like skin and her in a brilliant blue gown of intricate folds. Saint John pulls Mary to the left while Joseph of Arimethaea pulls the dead Jesus off to the right, perhaps echoing the act of the protective doors of the altarpiece opening to reveal this central scene. The action is as high keyed as the color, but there’s no sense of frenzy. Rather, everything seems carefully orchestrated, like different voices all singing at once in a scene from an opera. Or, more aptly for the time, each character “sings” a theme in the great polyphony of action just like the polyphonic music played in the cathedral around it.

The Deposition is the earliest work attributed to Weyden, who would have been in his mid-30s at the time. No work can be conclusively linked to Weyden through documentation. Only traditions tell us that he painted The Deposition and other works, such as the Crucifixion Triptych (above, from 1445). The common theme that drives art historians to attribute such works to Weyden is the signature color, energy, and composition. Weyden unifies all three pieces of the triptych by extending the landscape left and right, although the central scene can easily stand on its own. Mary Magdalene, on the left, and Saint Veronica, on the right, literally stand in the wings, painted on the reverse of the doors normally left closed to protect the central crucifixion panel. The Crucifixion Triptych is less crowded than The Deposition, but there is still a great sense of balance within the interplay of the figures. Christ physically and theologically centers the work, while the women in the wings balance one another out as if they were standing upon a great scale with the cross itself as a fulcrum. My favorite part of this work is the dark little angels in the distance, flitting in the air like musical notes and rhyming with the ends of Christ’s loincloth dancing in the breeze. Again, Weyden demonstrates great musicality in this work, but, in contrast to the active contrapuntal themes of The Deposition, we “hear” here a more restrained, somber adagio.


In The Last Judgment Polyptych (above, from 1446-1452), Weyden uses the multiple doors to visually drag us down to Hell or rise with us to Heaven. We begin in the center, where the risen Christ sits in judgment. Moving to the right, we progress deeper and deeper into the darker ranges of Hell itself. Unlike, say, in the works of Hieronymus Bosch, who paints after Weyden, we see little of Hell’s horrors here. Moving to the left, however, we ascend to the realm of the elect. Weyden elects to accentuate the positive in this depiction of the Last Judgment, which would literally unfold before the eyes of viewers as the doors of the fifteen panels were opened one after another. Weyden painted this polyptych for a chapel for a large hall for the poor and the sick. Just as Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece inspired patients suffering from skin diseases to bear their burden like Christ bore his cross, Weyden’s Last Judgment inspired patients to accept their suffering as the path to greater glory in Heaven. I like to think of the great unfolding of the multiple panels of this polyptych as an unfolding of the church’s “arms” to embrace these unfortunate souls who found little reward on Earth. In this installment of the “soundtrack” of Weyden’s art, you might hear a joyful chorus doing their best to be angelic in singing a song of praise and, through that praise, consolation for humanity.

Mad Prophet

Any red-blooded American boy who ever picked up an issue of Mad Magazine might not know the name but certainly knows by sight the style of Basil Wolverton. Monte Wolverton, Basil’s son, continues to work in a similar style as his father, bringing the bizarre, grotesque Wolverton look to new generations. Although Basil is best known for his Mad work, he himself wanted to be remembered for his little-known work for Herbert W. Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God that appeared in the magazine The Plain Truth. The Wolverton Bible: The Old Testament and Book of Revelation Through the Pen of Basil Wolverton, compiled by Monte Wolverton, brings together the religious work of his devoutly religious father and sheds new light on Basil as a serious illustrator. Basil worked on these 700 images illustrating the Bible from 1953 through 1974 while simultaneously working for Mad and other publications. “In all this, Wolverton saw no conflict,” Monte explains of his father. “One realm was religious and the other secular. He believed religious people need to lighten up and not take themselves seriously.” Part of that lightening up process involved Basil’s dramatic, almost cinematic approach, which could reinvigorate old tales such as Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac (above) with a fresh, contemporary look.

Wolverton began corresponding with Armstrong in the 1940s, after listening to Armstrong’s radio show The World Tomorrow. By 1943, Wolverton was an elder in the Worldwide Church of God and soon on the church’s board. Armstrong soon enlisted Wolverton to use his art to reach younger audiences. “From the beginning,” Monte writes, “both Wolverton and Armstrong sought to create a story that followed the Bible account more accurately than children’s Bible story books on the market in the 1950s” that “laundered” the story’s darker aspects. “Wolverton’s comic horror work and his grotesquely humorous drawings were consistent with his theological understanding of the human condition,” Monte continues, explaining how Wolverton’s artistic style and religious beliefs meshed in his Biblical illustrations. Whereas other depictions of Noah’s Ark emphasized cute animals, Wolverton emphasized the plight of those left behind (above) who faced God’s watery wrath. Unfortunately, Wolverton’s recovery of the violence of the original text challenged the sensibilities of the intended youthful audience as well as the patience of their parents. The Woverton Bible almost bursts open with pictures of masses of humanity facing one catastrophe after another—all drawn directly from the Bible itself, but still capable of traumatizing children unaccustomed to that side of the story.

Wolverton’s illustrations of the Old Testament bring many of the stale tales to life in ways no other twentieth-century artist has. Yet, Wolverton didn’t see himself as a “fine artist.” “Unlike many comic-book artists,” Grant Giessman writes in his Foreword, “Wolverton considered himself to be primarily a comic artist, with no secret longing to break into the fine arts, do portrait painting, or escape the ‘comic-book ghetto’ by going into advertising work. He loved the genre, with all of its perceived limitations.” In Wolverton’s hands, the “limitations” of the comic genre become strengths, especially when tackling the visually challenging text of the Book of Revelations. Wolverton takes the passage discussing “Death on a Pale Horse” and converts the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse into bombers raining death upon the landscape (above). Such images, which played into the already present 1950s fears of nuclear annihilation from above, drew the most complaints—a testament to the power these works had to take ancient words and make them feel immediately present.

Wolverton reveled in unleashing the full extent of his macabre imagination on the material found in Revelations. He called Mutants (above), one of his favorite images, even though Armstrong blanched at using it in The Plain Truth out of fear of how it would affect young minds. Despite such concerns, Giessman writes, “Armstrong clearly had the right man for the job, because it’s difficult to gaze for very long upon Wolverton’s horrific end-of-the-world visions and not wonder if you really shouldn’t get right with Jesus.” Armstrong’s belief in the Second Commandment’s prohibition of images of God kept Wolverton from moving on to the New Testament and the story of Jesus. A stroke in 1974 left Wolverton unable to continue working entirely until his death in 1978. Looking at Wolverton’s body of religious work, you truly get the sense that he drew directly from his body of beliefs. Monte compares his father’s work to that of Hieronymus Bosch, and I agree. Wolverton’s mind set was distinctly that of the middle ages, yet he lived in modern times. In the 1500s, Woverton would have been right at home, whereas in the twentieth century he made the most of thinking and working outside of the mainstream.

As much as the horrific and Bosch-esque in Wolverton’s art strikes you immediately, it’s also important to recognize the beauty of many of his visions, such as his imagining of Jacob’s dreaming of the “stairway to heaven” (above), also known as “Jacob’s Ladder.” In these beautiful images, Wolverton reminds me of another artistic outsider of profound faith—William Blake. Blake painted his unique vision of the Christian faith and emphasized the sublime over the terrible, whereas Wolverton emphasized the reverse, but at some point the two artists intersect in a span that is much too brief, yet touchingly beautiful to behold. When Wolverton draws the creation of Adam using over a thousand dots, we feel as if he’s is building up the first man atom by atom just as God himself did. The Wolverton Bible still has the ability to revolt and repulse viewers, but that is just one aspect of its overall ability to make these well-known stories seem new and, more importantly, inescapably human.

[Many thanks to Fantagraphics Books for providing me with a review copy of Basil Wolverton’s The Wolverton Bible: The Old Testament and Book of Revelation Through the Pen of Basil Wolverton and for the images from the book.]

Taxing Times

Now my advice for those who die,
Declare the pennies on your eyes.
‘Cause I’m the Taxman,
Yeah, I’m the Taxman.

And you’re working for no one but me.

—From “Taxman” by The Beatles

For the March Art Poll By Bob, I asked you to rock out and answer the following question, “Which of these famous statues of antiquity makes you get all old school?” You picked the Nike of Samothrace (3rd century BCE) over Laocoon and his Sons (2nd or 1st century BCE) 17 to 16. Dying Gaul (3rd century BCE) came in third with 10 votes, just ahead of the Venus de Milo (2nd century BCE) with 9. The Barberini Faun (3rd century BCE) held fifth place by itself with 5 votes, while Antinous Mondragone (130 CE), Apollo Belvedere (4th century BCE), Belvedere Torso (2nd century BCE), and Farnese Hercules (3rd century CE) shared a four-way tie for sixth place with a single vote each. Satyr or Faun of Praxiteles (2nd century BCE) brought up the rear with 0 votes. Thanks to everyone who played along.

For April, in honor of the United States looming tax return deadline on April 15th, I’ve decided to ask the following question, “Which of these following money- or tax-related works brings you the most to account?”:


Hieronymus Bosch. Death and the Miser (1490s).

Caravaggio, The Calling of Saint Matthew (1599-1600).

Lucas Cranach the Elder. Christ Drives the Usurers out of the Temple (1517).

Albrecht Dürer (attributed). Of Usury, from Brant's Stultifera Navis (the Ship of Fools) (1494).

John Leech. Ebenezer Scrooge and the Last of the Spirits from Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol (1843).

Quentin Matsys. The Moneylender and his Wife (1514).

Rembrandt. Christ Driving the Moneychangers from the Temple (1626).

Niels Larsen Stevns. Zacchaeus (1913).

Thomas Sully. Shylock and Portia from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice (1835).

Paul Vos, The Tax Collector (1543).

No complicated forms, W2s, or math involved—just sum up the energy to pick your favorite. Unlike the IRS, I’ll even give you until the end of the month to file. Don’t be greedy, just vote for your favorite.

The Man in the Arena

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

From The Man in the Arena speech by Theodore Roosevelt, delivered April 23, 1910

At the edge of the shadowy beginnings of the Italian Renaissance stands a giant—Giotto, who died on January 8, 1337. Born around 1267, Giotto’s name now rings with the almost inhuman divinity of Praxiteles or Zeuxis, thanks mainly to the early mythmaking of Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Artists. Vasari tells of Cimabue discovering Giotto as a young shepherd drawing his sheep on a rock. Later, taking a page from the legend of Zeuxis, Giotto (according to Vasari) painted a fly so realistic that Cimabue tried to shoo it away. Behind the myth of Giotto, however, remains the reality of his groundbreaking realism, which departs sharply from the Byzantine style of Cimabue and two centuries of art before Giotto’s heyday. Although many works once ascribed to Giotto are now disputed, the frescoes of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, also known as the Arena Chapel (shown above from the entrance, from 1303-1306) bear Giotto’s signature, a clear sign of pride in his mammoth accomplishment. Like Roosevelt’s “man in the arena,” Giotto knew victory and defeat, yet continually burned with the passion to strive valiantly through error into what Vasari and others judged as perfection.


There are so many great frescoes in the Arena Chapel that it’s hard to pick a few to talk about. (A nice selection of images of the frescoes can be found here.) One of the most moving for me, as a Christian, is Giotto’s depiction of the Resurrection, also known as Noli me tangere (above, from 1304-1306). It’s amazing to think of such colors surviving seven centuries. Even though Giotto paints the supreme supernatural event of Christianity, he infuses it with his signature realism and humanity. Mary Magdalene gives in to her instinctive impulse to touch the risen Christ, disbelieving her eyes, but Jesus pulls away and tells her, “Do not touch me.” Whereas Mary Magdalene and the sleeping soldiers wear earthy reds and browns, Christ and the angels wear white with golden accents and almost fade away into nothing as Christ freshly assumes his heavenly aspect and begins to leave the physical world behind. The stylized Christ of the Byzantine period now becomes a Christ who walks among real people, thus reaffirming the promise of the Incarnation lost in the Dark Ages and pointing forward to the humanism of the Renaissance.


Before Michelangelo painted his Last Judgment, he studied Giotto’s, placed at the end of the Arena Chapel (above, from 1306). (Better pictures of details of Giotto’s Last Judgment appear here.) We know Michelangelo visited the Arena Chapel and looked closely at the frescoes because some of his studies of those works still exist. Giotto’s vision of the final days must have captured Michelangelo’s imagination and planted a seed that took root decades later when the opportunity arose to cap off his monumental achievement in a different chapel that would become synonymous with his name. A contemporary of Dante, Giotto most likely knew of Dante’s Divina Commedia and its mind-blowing conception of Hell. Giotto creates a visual equivalent to Dante’s Inferno in the lower right corner of his Last Judgment that borders on Hieronymus Bosch in perversity, yet predates Bosch by almost a century and a half. The more you look at Giotto’s work the more he seems like a time traveler, skipping ahead to see what’s ahead and then darting back to his own time to paint it. As much as Vasari overindulged in the farfetched in his Lives, Giotto more often than not manages to live up to the myth.