Blood: Medieval/Modern at the Getty Museum

Jordan Eagles, Queer Blood America (2021) 1982 Captain America, blood of queer man, collection tube, blue nitrile gloves, plexiglass, and UV resin, 10.75 × 8 × 2.75 inches. © Jordan Eagles. Image courtesy of the artist and the Getty Museum.

“Ecce homo,” Pontius Pilate declared, presenting the condemned Jesus to the people of Jerusalem—behold the man. This scene is represented in numerous illuminated manuscripts, including French artist Jean Pichore’s Poncher Hours (c. 1500). In Pichore’s illustration, Jesus’ expression is neutral, his posture erect. Only the streaks of scarlet dripping down his body indicate that the Passion is underway.

This work is featured in Blood: Medieval/Modern, a new exhibition at the Getty Museum that traces the history of blood iconography in visual culture from the 12th to the 21st century. In all of the works on display, blood confers some significance that transcends materiality, whether in the context of religion, violence, genealogy, or biology. Blood is a reminder of human fragility, and yet it has the power to crown kings, to deem someone a saint or a leper, to give and take life. This paradox emerges as the show’s thesis. Today, as in the Middle Ages, blood is routinely both venerated and vilified—although contemporary artists are recontextualizing and reclaiming its corresponding taboos.

One of the most potent recurring images in Blood: Medieval/Modern is that of Jesus’ side wound, carved by a Roman soldier’s sword. Around the 15th century, artists took to representing this wound as a vulva-like opening in illuminated manuscripts, as in the illustrated Vita Christi (Unknown, c. 1480–90). The appearance of this female organ in a place where it seemingly doesn’t belong—not only on a male form, but in an anatomically absurd location—speaks to God’s divinity as transcendent of mortal logic. Through blood, the Son (a term that itself nods toward a genealogical “bloodline”) reinvented not only himself and his Church, but the very realm of possibility. 

Blood: Medieval/Modern additionally explores the dialectics of blood iconography in the works of marginalized artists who, much like Jesus, are often outcasted from mainstream society—but aren’t always granted martyr status. Blood is the great equalizer, its visual language intuitive to all. Yet it can also be used to discriminate, as conveyed in Jordan Eagles’ Queer Blood America (2021). The work consists of a comic book—Captain America Battles Baron Blood (1982), which sees the American hero fighting a vampire, a figure whose reemergence in pop culture during the AIDS crisis reflects pervasive public suspicion of queer men¹—with a vial of blood imbued in its pages. The liquid is forever suspended, alluding to the United States’ history of barring gay and bisexual men from donating blood.² Although Jesus’ blood was framed as the ultimate sacrifice, for decades, queer men’s blood was denied any salvific power.

In the atrium of the exhibition lie the infamous Satan Shoes (2021) designed by MSCHF and Lil Nas X to promote the musician’s single “MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name).” Not only are these sneakers decorated with pentagrams and inverted crosses—each sole features a real blood sample. Upon the shoes’ release, this detail engendered just as much controversy as the Satanic imagery.³ Perhaps naysayers were objecting to a perceived sacrilege against blood itself, or reacting to its symbolic associations with danger and deviance. In any case, Blood: Medieval/Modern reminds the beholder that one drop of the substance can contain virtue and vice, heaven and hell, the entire universe—a paradigm that today’s artistic risk-takers, particularly those who have been discounted and disenfranchised, are claiming as theirs to exploit. 

Blood: Medieval/Modern runs from February 27–May 19, 2024 at the Getty Museum (1200 Getty Center Dr., Los Angeles, CA 90049).

Blood: Medieval/Modern (installation view) (2024). Image courtesy of the artists and the Getty Museum.

Blood: Medieval/Modern (installation view) (2024). Image courtesy of the artists and the Getty Museum.

Jean Pichore, Ecce Homo from Poncher Hours (c. 1500). Tempera colors, ink, and gold on parchment. Image courtesy of the Getty Museum.

Anonymous, The Side Wound of Christ from illustrated Vita Christi, with devotional supplements, English, (c. 1480–90). Tempera colors and gold leaf on parchment, 4.75 x 7.758 inches. Image courtesy of the Getty Museum.

Lil Nas X and MSCHF, Satan Shoes (2021). Modified Air Max ’97s with human blood in the sole and bronze pentagram, 15 x 9 x 5 inches. © MSCHF. Image courtesy of the artist and Perrotin.

Lil Nas X and MSCHF, Satan Shoes (2021). Modified Air Max ’97s with human blood in the sole and bronze pentagram, 15 x 9 x 5 inches. © MSCHF. Image courtesy of the artist and Perrotin.

Brittany Menjivar was born and raised in the DMV; she now works and plays in the City of Angels. She’s a frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Review of Books and Coveteur; she’s also written for V Magazine, Document Journal, and The Creative Independent, among other publications. Her debut poetry and prose collection, Parasocialite, was named a “must-read release” by Nylon and can be purchased through Dream Boy Book Club or at your favorite bookstore.

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