Feeding the Pope to the Whore of Babylon
I was back in Minneapolis recently and had a chance to go see the new show at the MIA: Luther and the Art of the Reformation. I've been interested in the period for a long time. To me it's similar to ours in many ways: in the 1500s a new information technology was completely upending a long-running, tightly controlled social order. The printing press then, the internet now. Both mean(t) a radical expansion of voices in the public conversation and of access to information – both for the good and for the very very bad (Pizza Gate, anyone?) Hopefully we'll avoid the decades long religious wars that followed Luther – arguably the most violent period in human history. But anyway, I'd never really seen much of the low-and-middle brow artwork that went along with that change at the time. This show has some really great examples.
this is a portrait of one of Luther's principal lieutenants.
This is... yeah... a guy shitting in the Pope's hat.
And again, the Pope riding a pig, holding a pile of extremely aromatic feces in his hand.
The Pope, again. They were not @#$%ing around with this stuff.
demons feeding souls (That's the Pope again) into the open mouth of hell.
Satan breastfeeding – say it with me – The Pope. You can see why the Pope woulda hated these people, right?
From the other side, this is an image of Luther as a seven headed ogre who is also the trunk of a tree whose branches show the ever more radical branches of protestant faith. And he's also got a cup of wine for that sweet innocent nun (Luther did, in fact marry an escaped nun). I guess that's the devil (A) tending the tree.
The Devil playing a clergyman's head like a bagpipe. Blowing in through the ear. I love these weirdly literal metaphors.
This is a drawing of a deformed infant pig that became a metaphor somehow in the war of insults and the interpretation of omens. Simple ink prints were the most easily available images to regular people. A hand-painted version would have been a bit more of a get, and are therefore much more rare, now.
Goat man with kitty-tum hunting human souls with ye olde grim reaper. BFFs.
Lazarus glaring at Jesus for waking him up before he was really ready.
Any Black Metal bands looking for record cover inspiration should def check this show out. Super good stuff.