Judith and the Head of Holifernes.

 In this my version, Judith is still her town’s protectress in lieu of the town’s elders’ cowardice; she is the monied and elegant widow with her enslaved maid-servant in tow bent upon revenge- to sabotage Babylon and Nebuchadnezzer’s imperialistic siege of her Israelite town. Her method the same: liquored sexual seduction and decapitation. 

     Her story is that of a great horror movie of a movie-less age - an A-rated political story of Biblical day. Although of a bygone era Judy’s story can certainly be applicable to contemporary times and it is for this that I chose to depict her “rage” albeit at a later and unmentioned or imagined moment from her chronicle. 

     It was years ago that I first thought of the contemporaneity of the story and its potential for an interesting painting and new take on the scriptural tale when newspapers headlined (for those of you who recall it)  a certain Mrs. Bobbit  and her gelding of her mister. But at the time I thought it would have limited the work's power  and I did not believe I was yet totally capable of executing it anyway.

     But years on, the seemingly never-ending strife and the constant injustices in The Middle East and then too for what I perceived as an outrageous and criminally wrong war in Iraq compelled me to do a political work. So I began studies towards an anti-strife artwork of which a triptych of drawings  called Unequal Sides  ripped from the news of rock throwers shot down by bullets I almost developed into something major.

     Over the previous few years  leading up to this need of mine of political editorializing  I’d painted some fun works about Vampires, a large triptych about Moses , another of Jesus, and I’d completed a painting from, a Mickey Spillane novel; I felt compelled to create an anti-something work and so I finally chose this time for  “Judith…” realizing it had all the ingredients to fill that mission.

     It was as if I were thunder-bolted by Zeus when I realized it wasn’t Un-equal Sides with which I could conflate several of my political pet peeves but rather her story. I saw Ms. Judy as an ancient feminist equal to any man - and in her story more so -she then would be the perfect vehicle to express my own indignations. 

     It is important to me to try to add my own “two cents” - something different or new, to any famous subject that has been often depicted  over the years by the many better masters than I in order to avoid mere empty hubris on my part. In this case I chose to believe that after beheading a human being and, particularly for a good reason the be-header would be so “wired” as to go further, to emasculate, to celebrate giddily  the act of castrating one’s foe.

     Looking back over the years I’ve painted I’ve come to realize there is a bit of a feminist in me- the reasons partly being that I grew up for the first 10 years alone with my Mother and my Nanny though it goes far deeper than that I’m sure. Being an American I take equality very seriously and believe an artist’s duty is to often paint stuff that means something  or takes stands.

     In 1980/81 I painted Christ on the Cross in the guise of a beautiful woman, and now I’ve just about completed a major work of a strong-willed Cleopatra, while over the last 4 years working a huge set of works about Salome ( a rather bitchy young woman yes but an interesting subject never mind her mom Herodias),  my Judith  represents a continued reiteration of  many of the same issues I examined in my (Chapel to Christ as a Woman installation- P.S. 1, Long Island City, Queens , N.Y.) back in 1981.  It (my Judith) is in a broader sense a political tome like a few other works of declarative protest I’ve done over the years ie. Violence in Munich, 1973, September 11, 2001- (a triptych in memoriam) 2002, et al.  

     In closing when I created Judith and The Head of Holiferenes I hadn’t the prescience (until Mr. Craig Krull voiced it) that the work would double as a “fist held up” for the “Me Too” protest movement of today. 

an addendum: I’ve seen many “Judiths” in the real or in reproduction painted by the likes of Rubens, Klimpt, Titian, Vouet, Giorgeone, Carravaggio etc but the most powerful would be Artemisia Gentileschi’s for her 2 versions were visceral cries after her being raped. 

     So I apologize to her “soul” in that I cannot even imagine what it’d be like to experience going through that however I do understand  using the  subject to express ones rage at some given status quo and for this I tried to express my fury for imperialism and war, and the subjugation of another people; hopefully sufficient justification for my making the enslaved and obedient maid servant a Muslim woman (I hope the irony is not lost as in the story essentially the Israelite Judith is enslaved along with her country unto the Mesopotamian empire and now she is something more akin to an overseer), calling out  our President at the time as George W. Holifernes, using a rat and snake for the pestilence of war. 

-Milo Reice November 19, 2K18