The incident mentioned in this article was reported in almost every newspaper in the country, accompanied by a wide range of opinions on the subject. It all began when the parish priest at the Caracas Cathedral, Augusto Laborem, attacked the sculpture Retrato espiritual de un tiempo—a work by the German-born Venezuelan visual artist Miguel von Dangel (b. 1946)—demolishing it with a stick and throwing it out into the patio at the Palacio de las Academias, where the sculpture was on display at a group exhibition that had been organized as part of the IX Congreso Latinoamericano de Psicoanálisis. This incident and the furor it stirred up reflect the prudish and intolerant attitudes that still existed in Venezuelan society in the 1970s.
The shattered sculpture was part of a series the artist had shown some years earlier at one of his first exhibitions, Sacrifixiones (Galería XX2, Caracas, 1969); on that occasion the exhibition of these works did not provoke any kind of violent reaction. In all these pieces, as in Retrato espiritual de un tiempo, the artist used a variety of materials, including animal remains, which he placed on rigid supports, usually arranged in the form of a cross, in order to stress the idea of sacrifice. The one that the priest destroyed consisted of a crucified dissected dog wearing a crown of thorns. What was interesting and contradictory about the case was that, according to the artist, his work was not at all heretical; it was, actually, a way to call attention to “the flaws of the world.” Von Dangel’s art was largely a symbolic manifestation of a superior, transcendent order inspired by God, nature, or perhaps even American mythology. At the time he produced Retrato espiritual de un tiempo, his work was marked by a search for God (riddled with doubts and certainties) and a desire to portray Christ-like images. Many years after this incident involving the Catholic Church, von Dangel admitted that it had prompted a powerful sort of crisis that led him to channel his faith toward the natural world. (See Aurora Blyde, 1993.)