WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?

A loss of faith, in spite of itself, is an expression of faith. Faced with the unfailing fist of mortality, acquitting oneself of the succor of hope is a defiant submission toward fate.

Faun Roberts was that rare early 20th century woman who with an unyielding obstinacy and a mulish instinct for risk defied the dominion of both god and man and declared herself a lesbian.

Sonia Delaunay, Rythme Coloré, 1946

In my extensive research on this long neglected artist I have reached the conclusion that had Roberts made the fateful decision to "pass" she would have entered the annals of art history like her contemporaries Sonia Delaunay and Georgia O'Keeffe.

But she didn't and as a result she remains a footnote, an addendum and a pedantic afterthought followed by an asterisk. 

Her faith in faithlessness is another matter entirely. In 1920's Paris, with the exception of Max Jacob and Paul Claudel few modernists professed any of the prevailing Catholic pieties. In other words, to depict without irony an article of theological confession would be to canonize oneself as a hapless retrograde. And here too Roberts showed herself to be both pioneering and bold.

Without the slightest nod toward what Chalpeux called "the awe of creed" (la crainte de croyance), Roberts managed to marry sapphism with saintliness with her same-sex Pieta paintings.

Credo ergo timorem Domini, oil on linen, Faun Roberts, 1931

I'm not equipped to argue the relative exegetical merits of painting a female Jesus but I merely wish to point out the audacity inherent in such a pictorial gambit. There is simply nothing by either Picasso or Matisse that can credibly compare with this sort of ponderous imagery.

Maybe Faun Roberts presciently placed her faith in someone like me to excavate her oeuvre from the crypt of obscurity and unjustified eclipse.

Maybe I've finally allowed the fist of mortality to loosen its grip around this important woman and her invaluable contribution to the development of modern painting. 

I hope to God I did!