My Fair Deity

This drawing is based on the famous painting by Jean-Leon Gerome of Pygmalion and Galatea in the Met in NYC. In the myth, the sculptor Pygmalion was a misogynist who couldn’t find a woman up to his standards, so he sculpted one of his own.  His own version, of course, was so perfect that he immediately fell madly in love with his statue.  Venus looked down and was so moved by his emotion that she sent Cupid to shoot an arrow that brought the statue to life, and that’s the scene we see portrayed here. But this scenario is also the one that seems to happen to the spiritual side of life here.  Americans don’t quite like everything about some religions, and since they can, tend to create a God that fits their specs a little better, and then fall madly in love with their own creation. So as this shopping mall mentality spreads we get ridiculous creations like the famous blond-haired blue-eyed Jesus we all know too well. Incidentally, all the objects in the background are in one or the other of the two versions Gerome painted.  The title is a reference to the George Bernard Shaw play “Pygmalion”, upon which the musical “My Fair Lady” was based.

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