There is a duality between the popular interpretation of whiteness as purity and salvation, with the popular interpretation of whiteness as eerie and sinister. This duality is what Sacrilege will be exploring through the medium of plaster casting, using Luca Della Robbia’s The Visitation to cast from. This quintessential renaissance statue depicts the Virgin Mary during an encounter with St. Elizabeth, after both have experienced a miraculous conception. The original statue was hugely influential as it was constructed from terracotta and glazed in a newly invented recipe which created an almost iridescent pearly whiteness. Utilising modern techniques the media object seeks to re-create this pearly whiteness, but through the careful re-framing of the statue, it also seeks to elicit the uncanny valley affect rather than the feelings of hope and salvation originally intended by the statue’s materiality.
The revolutionary glazing technique of the original statue, along with the impressive anatomical realism, dynamic asymmetrical pose and religious subject, cements the art piece as an icon of the renaissance period. The same eerie whiteness which characterises the visitation has emerged across media history as a symbolic characteristic of numerous fictional figures. The Whiteness of Herman Melvill’s Moby Dick. The whiteness of the Judge from Cormac Mcarthy’s Blood Meridian. Endless accounts of the supernatural. In perhaps most of these cases the characters represent a portent of doom and the struggle between man and fate. So why is whiteness also a motif for religious aesthetics and symbols of purity? Perhaps whiteness represents the hand of god in all its unknowable beauty and horror.
Extrapolating on Mark Fischer's writing, the uncanny valley represents a kind of disillusionment from reality. Considering this, embracing the uncanny in this project will be a form of rebellion from the classical religious aesthetics of the renaissance. These aesthetics have historically helped to reinforce regressive societal hierarchies and the faulty premise of human enlightenment, which fails under the context of our chaotic modern world.
