Europe Collage

Traditionally, Annunciation paintings depict an angel, presumably contracted and dispatched by God, visiting Mary. They are there, from on high, to deliver the dubious deets of her upcoming pregnancy and eventual birth of a little baby messiah type urchin. Naturally, this intelligence is received with shock and awe because Mary is purportedly a virgin even though she and Joseph have been married for like a year; sharing the same hammock, finishing each other's sentences, skinny dipping in the Nile, etc. Anyhow, it's all pretty hard to swallow but it makes for a jolting narrative and sells tickets like hot falafel at the Uffizzi. My painting detours in several significant features while still clinging to the dangling participle that is the traditional tableau. First, it's not a painting at all, it's a freakin collage with pictures clipped from a 1972 Encyclopedia Britanica. Second, the angel stopped while he was a head"; a scribbled on, bespectacled haggard head. Instead of announcing with a straight face, "sure you're a virgin (wink wink) but you're having a Jehovah's baby and we want you to name it Jesus H. Christ." my guy utters a fragment which appears to be a truncated commentary about the EPA and how fucked it is with Chump in office. Third, instead of beautiful blonde Nazarene virgin my collage substitutes a 2 headed hermaphrodite in suit selling pencils or asparagus or something. All and all we can either quibble over the differences or we can pop this baby in the canon of great religious art and let future generations contrast and compare.You decide.