Christ as Friend Betrayed: Queer Christology and the Catholic Imagination of Justin O’Brien

This chapter will explore the artistic vision of Justin O’Brien (1917–1996), a member of the Sydney Group of modernist painters and the inaugural winner of the Blake Prize for religious art. It focuses on a mosaic commissioned by the Franciscan Custodians of the Holy Land to represent ‘Australia’ in the Upper Church of the new Basilica of the Assumption in Nazareth, Israel (1969). This curious commission and its syncretic evocation of renaissance artists such as Fra Angelico—alongside a delicate rendering of lyrebirds, acacia, and the Southern Cross—can be read as a powerful assertion of Australian Catholicism’s confident standing within a global institution and an imaginative insertion of an antipodean connection to the historical, biblical narrative. As well as tacitly engaging with the Christological changes occasioned by the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), O’Brien’s much sought-after art resonated more broadly with the Australian public through its engagement with evocative themes such as sin and betrayal, embodiment and homoerotic sexuality, as well as pain and psychological suffering. As such, O’Brien provides a telling case study for interrogating the continued cultural salience of Christian imagery and religious narratives well into the post-war period—centred on the Christ of the synoptic gospels and his ministry to outsiders and outliers, especially Judas. The artistic corpus of this gay expat agnostic—including his ‘The Raising of Lazarus’ acquired as an ‘Australian’ piece by the Vatican Museum in 1973—speaks to the dialogical interplay of modernity and tradition, centre and periphery, and faith and (heter)orthodoxy, as visualised by one of Australia’s most celebrated religious artists.