A Critical Analysis of cristyr8606's Image of Jesus ... on Backbone of Fish (eBay , $99.99)

As we all know, non-representational art is maligned (or worse, ignored) by mainstream America.  Joe Sixpack, after a hard day fixing motorcycles and chopping wood in the American heartland, would prefer to see a Monet hanging over his couch than something like Sterbak's Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic.

But there is hope.  I believe that America's growing obsession with miraculous images of Jesus will ultimately benefit the cause of abstract and non-representational art in this country.  As people become more willing to find images of Jesus in things like a dried-out piece of dead fish, they may also be more willing to find beauty in other works of non-representational art.

So let's compare and contrast two works of challenging art: Image of Jesus ... on Backbone of Fish (starting bid $99), and Gerhard Richter's Abstraktes Bild, painted in 1981.

Artist and ebay retailer christyr8606 presents a work of art to the world that she calls Image of Jesus ... on Backbone of Fish.  This work uses non-traditional media (dried out fish piece) to weave a fascinating visual and narrative tapestry.  The design builds on a series of elongated perpendicular shapes upon a roughly rectangular background.  Color is used sparingly, with only shades of yellow, beige and light brown employed to define the form.  As the shapes build on each other, they form what to most viewers would be a random pattern. But is it truly random? 

christyr8606 declares that the image of Jesus on the cross is in the dried out fish bits, a divine revelation in the most profane of environments.  Indeed, christyr8606 urges the viewer to not only share in her interpretation, but to participate in the work itself, by paying a minimum bid of $99 plus shipping to demonstrate acceptance of her vision. 

In this way, the abstract becomes concrete, the random dried out fish parts become an manifestation of God, and christyr8606 has enough money in her Paypal account to eat at Wendy's for a week.  

christyr8606, in commenting on her work, said "YOU CAN HAVE IT TODAY FOR A VERY GOOD PRICE ESPECIALLY FOR AN ITEM THAT PROBABLY HAS NOT BEEN VIEWED BY A VERY SMALL PORTION OF AMERICANS." 

Gerhard Richter, one of Germany's most influential artists, is best known for his blurry photo-realistic style.  He was a founding member of the Capitalist Realist school of painting, a German analogue to the American Pop Art movement of the 1960s.  Over time, his paintings moved from the figurative to more abstract, non-representational themes. 

It is from this genre that we examine his Abstraktes Bild, painted in 1981.  A series of sharply defined red, blue and yellow strokes appear on an amorphous background.  Unlike christyr8606, Richter does not tell us what Abtraktes Bild is about.  Thus, the viewer is forced to overlay his own interpretation.  Is it a chart of some kind?  Perhaps a graph showing declining levels of disposable income as Americans spend more and more of their income on miracle tortillas and dried fish parts?  Perhaps it describes the loss of credibility suffered by a religion when its icons become little more than tasteless jokes?  And what of the irregular blue field in the chart?  When this work was painted, in 1981, Donkey Kong had just been released.  Was Richter describing his pattern for beating the notorious 22nd level?  Or is this a Ms. Pac-Man strategy? 

We may never know the true interpretation of Richter's work. As he once famously commented,  "I believe in nothing."

But thanks to artist christyr8606's Jesus fish, the pendulum is swinging away from the comfy hammock of representational art and into the uncharted Jello mold of the abstract and conceptual. 

And America's Joe Sixpack moves one step closer to hanging the work of Germans from Düsseldorf over his couch.