Subj: Devils and Hell etc. A marvelous book, 'The History of Hell' by Alice K. Turner, H

Subj:   Devils and Hell etc.

A marvelous book, "The History of Hell" by Alice K. Turner, Harcourt and
Brace,1993 goes into the history of how Western art depicts hell and the
devil and all that.  Many pictures of paintings from Egyptian times through
the 18th Century Europe, in  churches and museums.  A very good account of
the Judaic-Christian-Muslim tradition of glorifying  violence, rape, torture,
incest, murder, adultery, genocide, etc.  You know, the traditional
Judaic-Christian-Muslim family values.  The Old Testament glorifies these
horrible human behaviours in words and myths - the later Christian painters
and sculptors do it with pictures and carvings etc.  Nonetheless, the same
old western religious stuff.

This was Ms. Turner's thesis in Art History at Michigan.  I was privileged to
hear her lecture at the Art Institute of Chicago about a year ago.  She has
adelighful and very iconoclastic sense of humor.  Her slides were much more
salacious than what she has in the book.  Although pain, lots of nucity, and
various depictions of the devil abound.  My favorite two were the depoiction
of the devil on a chamber pot swallowing the lost and damned while excreting
the previously swallowed  souls down to hell.  The full scene from swallow to
poop is depicted .  The other is the church scene where the seven deadly sins
are portrayed and Lust contains depictions of oral sex.  Not bad for a middle
age church.  A harbinger of 20th century X-rated stag films.  Maybe that's
how the church fathers got their rocks off.
Good reading.

Walter Laffer