“Ukrainian artist Alexey Kondakov has taken the figures from William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s 1881 nativity painting,
The Song of the Angels, and transported them to a rather mundane modern subway car to press upon us our time-transcending common humanity. While some might find Kondakov’s borrowed expression inappropriately out-of-place (or even sacrilegious), perhaps we need to be transported out of our overly idealized—and even romanticized—views of Christmas. We too easily forget that the God of heaven sent His Son to a lowly state of existence. Jesus was not cradled in a mansion as the son of an earthly king, much less as the King of Kings; rather, His crib was a makeshift use of a livestock feeding trough. As the apostle Paul states it, Jesus ‘emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.’ And yet, King of Kings He is. Even as Bouguereau’s classic figures show up in Kondakov’s digitally manipulated image, where we think they do not belong, so the Son of God on that first Christmas showed up where, in many ways, He was out-of-place. And yet, He did belong.”
~Douglas Huffman
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