The Plywood Intercessor

A t the Friedrich Petzel Gallery this spring, I encountered the most startling sculpture I have seen in many a Chelsea season. Called Crucifixion, it was a life-sized depiction of, well-the Crucifixion. Modeled after the great European masters of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the piece consisted of four slightly stylized figures: Christ on the cross with Mary at his feet, John the Baptist and St. John flanking her. Now, in most places, such an image would scarcely garner attention. But in the militantly secular art world, the all-white plywood and plaster sculpture seemed shocking, peculiar, as anachronistic as a Papal Concordat, yet somehow evocative and fresh. Gazing at it, I kept expecting the ironic joke to reveal itself. But it never came. Could it be? I wondered. Could this piece be ... sincere? Crucifixion's maker, Rachel Feinstein, added further intrigue. A highly regarded artist represented by Marianne Boesky-one of New York's top contemporary dealers-Feinstein is known for whimsical, highly ornate, rococo-inflected sculptures that teeter just this side of kitsch. Married to painter John Currin-a major art star who is currently enjoying a mid-career retrospective at New York's Whitney Museum-the photogenic thirty-something and her artwork have been featured in publications ranging from the New York Times to Vogue to Art in America. For an artist of such uncontested "hipness" to risk her reputation on something so declasse as a crucifixion seemed extraordinary. My amazement was excusable. God and art are not on the best of terms these days. Beginning in the nineteenth century with the despiritualized secularism of Courbet and Manet, modern art has