Unusual Depictions of Jesus Week: Jesus in Soviet Russia

Throughout history Christan mythology has been depicted with great variety. Because images of Jesus are so common in the history of art, I thought it would be interesting to explore some of the more unusual works.

In this poster from soviet Russia two factory workers are shown dumping Jesus out of a wheelbarrow with some bottles, which I suspect is supposed to be trash--a very strange image indeed. I appreciate the clever compositional device of the downward pointing triangle made by the wheelbarrow and Jesus' body—which emphasizes the motion of his fall. Seeing this image makes me think how surprising it is that I've never seen pro-communist posters of their political leaders that use the visual device of a halo considering how semi-deification of leaders is par for the course in communist countries.

At the same time this illustration makes me think how nice it would be to see a poster from a Russian Objectivist of someone throwing Karl Marx in the trash.