Wayne Forte

In this season of serenely saccharine "Away in a Manger" greeting cards, kitschy Jesus-and-Santa tree ornaments, and illuminated plastic Holy Family lawn sets, it is all too easy to forget the first Christmas was nothing like the safe, super-sanitized version served up by our commercial pop culture to the strains of carol-lite, shopping mall Muzak. After seeing a series of Third World Madonnas by California Artist Wayne Forte, I asked him to make me a modern Nativity scene, closer in spirit to the dirt-under-your-fingernails and straw-on-your-clothes story of the birth of Christ found in the Gospels. Urban Nativity proved to be just the kind of real and gritty image of Christmas I had in mind. There is nothing precious or pretty about this manger scene. Forte shows us the Holy Family on the mean streets of a modern metropolis in front of a flophouse with a no vacancy sign. The Virgin Mary cradles the sleeping baby Jesus in a rubber tire, an image inspired by a harrowing newspaper photo of a Somali refugee mother Forte keeps on the walls of his studio. While a streetwise Joseph stands in vigil in the foreground, decked out in a Latino-styled bandana, city sanitation workers finishing the night shift take the place of the shepherds in traditional manger scenes. Forte pairs a white with a black cat, a hint of evil borrowed from Old Master paintings, but hope is the dominant motif in this Nativity at the intersection of Main and Bethlehem. A much painted-over sign marks a pawn (or is that dawn?) shop, suggesting redemption is close at hand. Urban Nativity affirms that the Christmas Story is not set in some mythic galaxy, long ago and far, far away, but in our real world, in real time. In the ultimate plot twist, God chose to take on human flesh and be born on the margins of "good society," among the poorest of the poor. Joy to the world, the Lord has come! (John Kohan)