THE
BIRTH OF IGNORANCE
1987,
Oil on canvas
40"X 36" / 101.6 cm. X 91.4 cm.
Collection of the artist
In 1986, on commission
from the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the International
Brigades, I started work on THE RETURN,
a canvas commemorating the 50th anniversary of their participation
in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 in defense of the Spanish Republic.
While I worked in my studio at Saint Francis Xavier High School in
Manhattan where I was teaching, a red-baiting campaign which eventually
led to my dismissal in June of the following year was initiated. In
response I produced THE BIRTH OF IGNORANCE
casting my three principal accusers as father, mother, and archangel
in a mock nativity pageant.
William O'Leary, S.J., then Director of Guidance at the school and
prime architect of the campaign, plays "mother" wearing
the traditional black dress of Spanish widows with a white lace collar
representing the clerical Roman collar. The chair of the Social Studies
Department, Francis X. Bambury, is cast as the befuddled "father".
Having posted an open letter to the faculty declaring "Fascism
clearly the more desirable choice in the 1930's" at the height
of the Lincoln Battalion controversy, two swastikas decorate his cape.
The head of the Art Department, Francis Golden, S.J., is portrayed
as a leering, black-winged angel. He holds an unfolding banner bearing
the inscription Ad maiorem Ignoranciae gloriam (To
the greater glory of Ignorance), a play on the Jesuit motto "Ad
maiorem Dei gloriam" (To the greater glory of God). The blue
and maroon of the ribbon are the school colors. The manger's mule
and ox, traditional attributes, stare at the newborn Ignorance, a
fetal skeleton with an open and empty skull.
