Today I was flipping through a book at the local
ramsj section. Guess that's a local Dutch term but I think you can figure out what it means. Anyway, this book was one about pictures of babies in Indian art. A deliciously kitschiously book by itself. However, I noticed there were a lot of pictures of baby Krishna in there. Now previously, I
wrote that I can never find any art outside of the religions most familiar to me that strike me as kitschy. I take that back now, these images of baby Krishna were actually sentimental enough to cut it to the kitsch. Something else that struck me was that all these images of Krishna depict him rather, well, feminine. I know of the whole feminine Christ vs. masculine Christ discussion going on, but this doesn't seem to be limited to only the Christian religion. I wonder why the baby Krishna is depicted as so female, sometimes it's just really hard not to think he's a baby girl. I do think Freud, who indeed has had quite an influence on the field of religious studies, had a few things to say about this. Something along the lines of the idea of the mother giving protection being projected upon the idea of a God looking out for you. I don't believe in psychoanalysis but I can't deny it's tempting to invoke his theories in this case. Anyway, enjoy baby Kitschna!
In case you were wondering, the pictures of baby Krishna with the butter refer back to a story of him stealing butter from the Gopis. Not sure what the meaning is there though. Don't know much about what all the other symbols like the birds and the feathers are meant to represent either . In case you were also wondering, yes that winking Krishna is quite disturbing , just about as scary as all the
animated Christian gifs. By the way, if there is anyone out there with some Photoshop skills, please shop one of these baby Krishnas into a Christian nativity scene replacing the baby Jesus!
