Jay Constantine Art

A Bad Day in Charlottesville.

 In 2017 a rally took place in Charlottesville, Virginia. The Unite the Right demonstration consisted of an appalling mixture of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, anti-Semites, and White Nationalists who congregated around the statue of Robert E. Lee which was scheduled to be removed.

Counter-protesters were also in attendance at the demonstrations and there were clashes between the two sides.  One White-Supremacist drove his car into a crowd of counter protesters, killing one and injuring many others.  The events of that demonstration represent a truly dark moment in recent American History.  

Title: The Trial in Kenosha

Size: 38” x 62”

Medium: Alkyd on Panel

The painful chain of events that led up to the Rittenhouse trial in Kenosha, Wisconsin resulted from the police shooting of Jacob Blake, an African American man. This incident caused justifiable outrage and demonstrations when no charges were filed against the officer responsible. Anticipating conflict in the community, the police deputized volunteers, but it was later discovered that some of the volunteers were white nationalists. One seventeen-year-old, Kyle Rittenhouse, was deputized and walked the streets with an assault-style rifle during an evening of unrest. Thinking that he was an active shooter, three men tried to disarm the young man who then shot and killed two of the men and wounded the third. Rittenhouse was arrested and charged with homicide. He claimed he acted in self-defense and his tearful testimony on the stand went viral. The trial was contentious with the judge and prosecutor often clashing during the proceedings. Some felt that the judge seemed too sympathetic toward the defendant. Eventually, Rittenhouse was cleared of all charges, but his acquittal exacerbated tensions in an already divided nation. Many individuals as well as the writer felt that justice was not only denied for Jacob Blake but also the men who had been slain or wounded by Rittenhouse.

Title: Alexander and the Diving Bell

Size: 40” x 50”

Medium: Alkyd Oil on Panel

Alexander the Great spent his entire life engaged in battle and conquest, defeating one kingdom after another. He clearly enjoyed the intensity of war and boasted of his conquests though he had very little interest in administering and governing the territories he conquered. One story that has come down to us over the centuries was his experience with a diving bell. Alexander commissioned the construction of a diving bell made largely of glass. It might sound surprising that a man of action like Alexander would show interest in this kind of project until we remember that Alexander’s teacher was none other than the philosopher Aristotle. Aristotle’s observational skills were legend, and he developed a highly systematic approach to analyzing, describing, and categorizing the creatures of the natural world. Perhaps it was Aristotle’s influence that inspired Alexander’s curiosity to investigate the undersea realm. There are many accounts of Alexander and the diving bell and some historians question the veracity of these tales. One such story is that upon being lowered to a great depth in the sea, Alexander was able to observe creatures in their natural habitat but far from enjoying this exploration, he seemed disturbed by the experience. It is said that once he was back on the surface, he exclaimed that “the big fish eat the small fish – we are lost and doomed!” Was the fearless warrior disturbed by the simple interaction between predator and prey? If this is true, it’s an unexpected and ironic statement coming from an individual who wreaked so much havoc and war upon so many nations.

Title: The Discovery of Caligula’s Sunken Pleasure Barge

Size: 40” x 50”

Medium: Alkyd oil on Panel

He’s been the subject of numerous historical accounts as well as films and literature; the infamous Caligula personified the quintessential mad Roman emperor. One of Caligula’s more extravagant projects was the creation of an enormous pleasure barge. Located on a small sacred lake, the barge was palatial in its dimensions (230 feet long and 66 feet wide). For Caligula, it became an escape from the pressures of Rome. However, only a year or so after its completion, Caligula was assassinated by his own Praetorian Guard. The barge was then ravaged and sunk to the bottom of Lake Nemi.

For centuries the sunken barge became the stuff of legend. During the Renaissance, with the resurgence of interest in antiquity, attempts were made to retrieve the barge. Leon Battista Alberti teamed up with Cardinal Prospero Colonna to try to salvage parts of the barge but failed. Not long after, Guglielmo de Lorena and Francesco de Marchi thought of using a diving bell to salvage the wreck. Primitive diving bells had been around since the ancient world, but Guglielmo invented a unique oxygen delivery system to prolong the time a person could spend beneath the water. Using a diving bell with an additional oxygen source, a person could be lowered to a depth of 60 feet to inspect and retrieve artifacts from the ship.

During the 1930s the notorious Benito Mussolini tried to revive all aspects of past imperial glory. In an excessive gesture, Mussolini had the whole lake drained to reveal the sunken barge in its entirety. The sheer size amazed everyone, and a museum was built around the wreck. However, during World War II the barge was bombed and completely destroyed.

Title: The Whitmer Kidnap Plot

Size: 38”x 64”

Medium: Alkyd Oil Paint

There is a tradition of artists using recent history as subject matter: Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa, Delacroix’s Massacre at Chios and David’s Death of Marat are only a few examples of artists painting current events.

The Whitmer kidnap plot is a story replete with informants, undercover FBI, possible double agents and Michigan Militia. The story continues to unfold: Were the participants acting of their own volition, were they entrapped or was it a combination of the two? Fourteen suspects were originally arrested and several of the alleged perpetrators pled guilty and cooperated with authorities. Initially, two men were acquitted while two were convicted. Later, three of the conspirators were also found guilty of various charges. This incident will be documented in Michigan and American history and will represent a time when a democratically elected official was threatened with politically motivated violence.

42” x 54”

Oil on shaped panel

It’s hard to imagine a philosopher more original and influential in the last 200 years than Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s aphoristic style of writing and his merging of philosophy and literature signaled the end of traditional philosophy. In his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he creates the fictional character of Zarathustra who announces to humanity the death of God. The heavy literary style in this book seems to parody biblical language and has been called an example of Nietzschean irony. His approach to re-evaluating major ethical, moral and religious concepts anticipate the deconstructive methods of the Post-Modern thinkers of the late twentieth century. While he has been criticized for his nihilism, Nietzsche’s nihilism was not a purely negative project; his intent was to critique and dismantle traditions to make way for new values that might reflect authentic human needs. Nietzsche’s lack of success during his short, tragic life is well known but in contemporary times his thought has become ubiquitous, even entering the realm of popular culture. He is now the most quoted philosopher of all time. His phrases appear in pop music and hip-hop lyrics. Movies such as The Empty Man and series like Yellow Stone and The Sinner have quoted his ideas (perhaps distorting them in the process). Nietzsche’s ideas are always intriguing and insightful; they often cut through our illusions and cause us to think in new ways.

Scene 1: Friedrich with friends

Scene 2: Friedrich meets Wagner

Scene 3: The incident at Turin, Italy

Scene 4: Friedrich and Palliative care

Circle - top left: Portrait of Friedrich Nietzsche

Circle -top right: Portrait of Lou Andreas-Salomé

Circle - bottom left: Elizabeth Forster-Nietzsche

Circle - bottom right: Richard Wagner

Center Oval: Incident at Turin – close up

In 1780 the scientist, Luigi Galvani, conducted experiments injecting an electrical current into the legs of a dead frog. He was startled to see the frog legs move and twitch in a very life-like way. Later Luigi’s nephew, Giovanni Aldini, took the experiment a step further by putting the electrical current into larger animals and finally human cadavers. Aldini conducted public demonstrations of his experiments and it caused a sensation. Audiences were horrified and fascinated to see human corpses moving and making facial expressions when an electrical charge was inserted into them. It’s unclear whether Mary Shelley attended one of these demonstrations or simply heard about it, but it definitely acted as the catalyst for her great novel Frankenstein. Some literary critics consider Frankenstein to be one of the earliest science fiction novels.

The painting includes portraits of some of the inventors of various forms of plastic. The molecular structure is represented along with references to petroleum used in plastic production. The center area of the painting depicts the grim reality of plastic products that have accumulated in massive quantities in the oceans and water ways.

42”x 52” | Alkyd Oil on Shaped Panel

The painting presented here, depicts an often-overlooked aspect of Jefferson’s life and American history.

So often conservatives insist that the United States was founded on strict Christian principles but in fact many of the founding fathers believed in Deism, the progressive religion of the philosophers. Thomas Jefferson was a Deist. At one point, Jefferson cut the miraculous passages out of his gospel with a razor so he could concentrate on the moral teachings of the bible without the magical thinking of the ancient past. Jefferson believed that scripture needed to be reconciled with reason and common sense.

Despite his progressive ideas about religion and his dedication to common sense, Jefferson had a tremendous moral lapse due to the fact that he was a slave owner. His relationship with Sally Hemmings and the children he had with her have become common knowledge. Because Sally Hemmings was a slave, the relationship she had with Jefferson cannot be seen as consensual. How could someone with Jefferson’s great mind justify the idea of slavery? We have to acknowledge that this founding father has become an extremely problematic figure. Does he deserve admiration or condemnation?

Oil on Shaped Panel 48x48

It’s one of the stranger footnotes in history: Thomas Paine’s wish to be buried in a Quaker cemetery was denied by the Quakers of New Rochelle, New York.

The reason for this refusal isn’t known but Paine’s views on religion were considered radical and it made him extremely unpopular in some sectors of colonial America. He may also have criticized the pacifism of the Quakers during the American Revolution. Initially, he was buried on his own property but his corpse was then exhumed with the intent of sending it to England. Somewhere along the way his remains were dispersed and scattered throughout the states. To this day he has no permanent resting place. It is rumored that some of his body parts are secretly owned by wealthy collectors.

Oil on Shaped Panel 42” x 51”

The painting presented here memorializes an individual who endured discrimination not only because of gender but also due to anti-atheist bias in America.

Elizabeth Stanton was a pioneer in her view that the Bible was one of the greatest obstacles to the equality of women.  Her atheism fractured the suffragette movement. 

Oil on panel 24” x 24”

The painting presented here memorializes an individual who endured discrimination not only because of racial prejudice but also due to anti-atheist bias in America.

Langston Hughes’s poem “Goodbye, Christ” created problems for the poet and was even brought up during the McCarthy hearings where Hughes was not only questioned about communism but also his views on atheism.

Oil on panels 24” x 24”