The Spine and Tooth of Santo Guerro, 2007

Art title: The Spine and Tooth of Santo Guerro, 2007

Artist: Al Farrow (b. 1943)

Material: Guns, bullets, shot, steel, glass, tooth, bone and 15th century fabric

Again, this is an art post for the art work I saw when I visited de Young Art Museum in San Francisco. You'll marvel the material used. Below is the text explanations I copy from the museum.

The Spine and Tooth of Santo Guerro replicates elements from several medieval European cathedrals and is fabricated from more than two hundred deconstructed guns, as well as thousand of bullets and shot. Farrow’s use of guns and ammunition comments on the historical connection between religions intolerance and warfare – particularly during the medieval Crusades, which sanctioned the violent conquest of the Holy Land. Farrow believes that, historically, all of the world’s major religions have undermined their moral authority by claiming that “God is on our side” when waging war.

Farrow’s cathedral is transformed into a reliquary by the inclusion of a human spine in the nave and a human tooth over the transept door – both ostensibly belong to the fictitious Santo Guerro (“Saint War”). The spine, mounted for display on ta platform covered with 15th century silk, recalls that many European cathedrals were build with funds derived from the viewing of relics.

Farrow’s bone-filled reliquaries evoke the Catholics Church’s core doctrines of mortality and immortality, and thus serve as traditional “vanitas” symbols illustrating the futility of most human endeavors – even the building of great cathedrals – and the inevitability of death. However, they also suggest that it is neither religion nor the human soul that is eternal, but rather the human instinct to make war.

the tooth

And the grand finale, spinal cord.