{"data":{"id":"15775","type":"artwork","attributes":{"id":15775,"topgoose_id":11464,"portfolio_id":null,"tms_id":15775,"title":"The Holy Artwork","display_artist_text":"Christian Jankowski","display_date":"2001","accession_number":"2002.293","dimensions":null,"medium":"Video installation, color, sound, 16:30 min.","department":"collection","classification":"Installations","credit_line":"Purchase, with funds from the Film and Video Committee and Bert A. Lies","is_virtual":false,"is_portfolio":false,"portfolio_tms_id":null,"portfolio":null,"edition":"3/5, II","publication_info":"","description":"\u003cp\u003eChristian Jankowski, \u003cem\u003eThe Holy Artwork\u003c/em\u003e, 2001. Video installation, color, sound, 16:30 min.. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Film and Video Committee and Bert A. Lies 2002.293. © Christian Jankowski, 2001\u003c/p\u003e","object_label":"\u003cp\u003eChristian Jankowski filmed \u003ci\u003eThe Holy Artwork \u003c/i\u003ein Harvest Fellowship, a Baptist church in San Antonio, Texas, with the full participation and collaboration of the church’s pastor, a televangelist preacher named Peter Spencer. The video is simultaneously a work of art and a sermon; it was shown as a regular broadcast of the pastor’s weekly television show and screened in gallery contexts by Jankowski. At the beginning, Jankowski collapses as he approaches Pastor Spencer’s podium. The pastor nonetheless continues uninterrupted, his speech drawing parallels between art and biblical creation, likening an artist’s creativity to god’s work forming the world. Made while Jankowski was in Texas for an artist residency program, the video nonetheless grew out of longstanding interests. In particular, it was inspired by a painting that Jankowski admired in Spain, \u003ci\u003eSaint Dominic in Soriano ri\u003c/i\u003e, by Juan Bautista Maino (1578-1649), in which an angel takes up the brush of the painter who appears to have suddenly died. For Jankowski, who encountered a preponderance of Christian video on Texas television, \u003ci\u003eThe Holy Artwork \u003c/i\u003egave the seventeenth-century theme a contemporary, local resonance, questioning the role of spirituality in art while also poking fun at the mass-media spectacles created by the religious entertainment industry.\u003c/p\u003e","ai_alt_text":"Man speaks on stage while another person lies facedown on the floor reaching toward a phone.","alt_text":null,"visual_description":null,"on_view":false,"created_at":"2017-08-30T16:52:32.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-02-06T12:00:38.268-05:00","images":[{"id":104080,"url":"https://whitneymedia.org/assets/artwork/15775/2002_293_vw1_still.jpg"}]},"relationships":{"artists":{"data":[{"id":"7858","type":"artist"}]}}}}