Brick Testamant - Bible from LEGO parts

Brick Testament is an illustrated bible entirely made out of LEGO bricks and figures, published in the form of a website and numerous books, translated to many languages.
On the first hindsight, there is nothing special about the Brick Testament other the unusual material chosen for illustration. Skillful, short stories with superb sets and familiar characters form our childhood memories. The viewer first might be overwhelmed by the talent of the creator, being able to construct almost any scene from the book using only traditional bricks from the LEGO range, not using any additional material to picture biblical events.
First, you might thought this is a product of some overzealous people we would like to make their favorite reading more enjoyable to publics who have a fascination with LEGO or toys in general, but you will soon find out, that Brick Testament is one of the most skeptical and satirical site on the internet by religious means.
An atheist guide to Brick Testament:

(the holy trinity!)



Building enormous constructs by small scale, but still familiar modules have ever been a fascinating sight for modern people. Maybe the skyscrapers, aircraft carriers, human-scale sets of these small, and limited--in-form bricks might suggest that things are understandable by us, and not as complex as they seem to be in the reality.
Brick Testament could be another fine illustrated bible, especially popular with children who are already familiar with the popular Belgian toy, but lets take a closer look on the fine illustration of this wonderful bible: there is a more or less codified language of illustrated bibles worldwide: middle east setting, breaded man and modestly dressed woman roaming around in a desert like environment with camels and clay buildings in the background. Even the most accurate illustrated bible we print nowadays are close reading of the original text, but with a certain sense of pictorial neutrality and a heavy influence of late Victorian morals. Most illustrated bibles are seems to be have the same sort of illustrations as a love story of a fairy tale: with the total absence of nudity, obscenity or any visual portrayal of brutal, violent acts.
The most gruesome image we might see in an illustrated bible, either from the 17th century or a contemporary one would be the extremely theatrical suffering of Jesus, or people being drowned during the Great Flood.




Gustav Doré, a French artist from the 19th century, one of the most famous illustrator of the bible, whose illustration inspired many others, portrayed many dreadful scenes of the holy bible, but with the passion of romantic art from that art period, not with the gruesome realism, what we can encounter from press photos nowadays. Bloodless black and white engravings, passionate movements, excellent composition, and almost a complete inventory of sacral images form the past centuries, that’s what Doré’s classic is, being a constant source of inspiration and point of reference to clergy and believers, sacral artist all over the world.
We might refer Doré’s work as an adequate illustration of the biblical events, which well met the representative requirements of the churches and the morals of the bourgeois society by that time, and ever since.
Unlike the Brick Testament, which is as much far away from the traditional ways of illustrating the bible as possible. Since most artist, who illustrate the bible, want to open up its content to an audience who finds the book much easier to understand with images, the Brick Testament seems to do the same, but only at first look.


Yes, Reverend Brendan Powell Smith, is visualizing the bible with LEGO bricks, but not for making it an adorable piece or reading for us, but rather to discover how earthy, pragmatic, inconsistent, brutal and cruel this piece of reading is.
Unlike a religious reader, the Reverend is in fact trying to make his Brick testament as profane as possible. Since he is following the biblical text closely, he can’t ad to much textual comments for the actual pictures. (Although sometimes he does, check out them if you have time, they are hilarious/they have slightly different color then the written text of the bible.)
Hence he is working with two methods to be as critical and satirical about the bible material as possible: by choosing of the images and the sheer portrayal of them. Rape, killing, mutilation, religious intolerance, serious inconsistencies in the text, horrible, senseless acts of violence are especially likely to be featured in Brick testament.
Alex, the main hero of the movie Clockwork Orange (1971, D: Stanely Kubrick) states he likes to read the bible in the prison because of the sex and violence he finds in it. The same of going on in Brick Testament – the artist consequently finds out all the scenes from the book which seems to be un-acceptable, or too-much for out moral standards. Genocide, mass raping, and some form of fascism are side by side with really poignant portrayals of biblical events.
Since only a portion – still it is a large portion - of the actual bible is represented, Brick testament is not focusing on the traditional events we all know from the bible, but rather on those ones, which might change our reading of this book.

(the massacre of those we subverted to a false prophet)


An atheist bible, we might say, despite the number of religious communities featuring Brick Testament on their website. Altorugh God is present in the pictures, and yes, he is immortal and omnipotent, the graphical qualities of the pictures, the choice of the events, and especially the remarks, which the actors are giving on the pictures, and which are not the part of the biblical text are highly satirical about the religious sub context of the original book.

(Cain is being made...)

The titles for each chapter of illustrations is excellent, like"When to stone your entire family?"
It is even worth to browse trough the entire material for those who already very well aware of the nature of this book for the fantastic pictoral solutions of this special technical feat, the conservative (I mean the artist is never ever using any 3rd party material) usage LEGO and
the fantastic comments by the author in some of the pictures (in gray)!

A must see for any secular!

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Popes hit by Meteors

It all started with Maurizio Cattelan and his statue Pope John Paul II hit by a meteorite last year, titled the "The Ninth Hour", referring to the last sentences of Jesus Christ "My God!, My God!, Why hast Thou forsaken Me? - right before passing away.

Then came the flood of images, statues of Popes hit by meteorites:



Of course, Benedict could not evade the large stone falling form the sky too, trough his image is a simple Photoshop modification by an Anonymous artist.





So the Patriarchs of the Ortodox Christian Church, since Ciprian Muresan, a Romanian artist made the eastern version of the very same image, entitled 'The End of the Five-Year Plan'.



Then Elliott Arkin, a clay figure maker/artist from the States, did some hilarious alternate versions of Catellan's original, like "Maurizio Cattelan being hit by three million dollars", referring to the top price received for the highly contraversional original sculpture, or the "Underdog lifting a meteor off the Pope" also reffering events which took place against Catellan's original by two polish MP in a Poland exhibition.




images from Artnet.

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