'Sin' at the National Gallery

The National Gallery has just opened a new exhibition titled 'Sin', an exploration of depicting the concept of sin in art. It's a nice provocative title but I'm not sure it really lives up to the name. It's in the ground floor galleries and is, essentially, a one-room exhibition of about 14 works. The first painting you see as you walk in is Bronzino's 'Allegory with Venus and Cupid' which could mean virtually anything. Beside it on the wall is Tracey Emin's 'It Was Only A Kiss' in neon lighting. 

To mount an exhibition about 'sin' in only 14 works is quite a challenge. The poster girl for the exhibition is Valesquez's 'Immaculate Conception' and the first painting on the walls is Jan Breughel's 'The Garden of Eden', a delightful little painting full of animals he probably hadn't seen when he painted it. We then move on to Cranach's 'Adam and Eve' and the first sin of eating the fruit of knowledge from the forbidden tree.

A work I hadn't seen before was 'The Scapegoat' by William Holman Hunt on loan from Manchester Art Gallery, a rather strange small painting with a woolly goat looking out of the picture in an odd landscape with a moon and  rainbow in the background. The sign explains that the goat is a symbol of sin and it carries away the sins of the people when it's set free to wander away. I can't help but feel that if you've got to explain something then maybe it's not the best exhibit to use. 

The final work is a small statue of a young man lifting up his tee shirt to look at a wound in his side simply called 'Youth' by Ron Mueck. The sign says, 'The work proposes a path of redemption that questions, disrupts and dismantles stereotypes and prejudices....'. That's a roundabout way of saying the young man in the statue is black. Has he been stabbed or is he the risen Christ for a new age? There are many paintings of Christ showing his wound, often to doubting Thomas, and this statue repeats that image but with the lad in tee shirt and jeans. I couldn't help but think back to Madonna's video for 'Like A Prayer' in the '80s and the outrage at the figure of the 'black Jesus' and the burning crosses. 

It's a free exhibition in the ground floor galleries that you can visit after you've seen the collection and before the shop and exit.