College football fans may catch a glimpse of the University of Notre Dame's "Touchdown Jesus" during televised games, but you must see the huge mosaic created by artist Millard Sheets for the university library's facade to fully appreciate its beauty and meaning.
University officials envisioned the library as a major focal point on campus, but its blank facade presented a bland face to visitors.
Father Theodore M. Hesburgh, a long-time Notre Dame president for whom university officials renamed the library in 1987, even joked that visitors could mistake the blank wall for something like a grain elevator.
The University of Notre Dame traces its history back to Catholic missionaries arriving to Indiana during the early 1800s. The school honors and celebrates its Catholic identity, so Father Hesburgh suggested using the blank space to honor saints and scholars throughout history as an appropriate way to reference the knowledge contained in the library, as well as representing the spiritual roots of Notre Dame itself.
School officials commissioned California artist, educator, arts administrator, and architect Millard Sheets to create the artwork.
Sheets began painting as a child and exhibiting his watercolor paintings by the time he was a teenager. He studied art in Paris in 1929 and 1930, where he met artist Henri Matisse.
Looking at Sheets' Notre Dame mosaic, I can see a bit of that famous artist's influence on Sheets. Professor John W. Stamper of Notre Dame's School of Architecture also mentioned seeing the influence of Impressionist and Cubist styles in Sheets' mosaic in a short video produced by the school about it.
Sheets became important to California's watercolor movement by the 1930s, becoming the president of the California Water Color Society in 1946.
Sheets also worked with the New Deal's WPA during the Great Depression, helping hire artists and overseeing public projects like the 1937 construction of a 12,000-square-foot art gallery in Los Angeles.
Perhaps his work the WPA helped fuel Sheets' later interest large-scale public projects. By the 1950s, he was an architect and mosaic artist for more than 50 bank branch buildings in Southern California.
The University of Notre Dame commission surely appealed to Sheets' belief that art should be part of daily life, and creating a large-scale public artwork was a good fit for Sheets' talent and experience.
Sheets began by sketching his ideas to illustrate Father Hersburgh's initial idea and a Bible passage (John 1: 1-5) for the piece eventually entitled "Word of Life". He drew Christ as a great teacher, looming larger over the other thinkers and saints throughout history.
The Christ figure's upraised arms, and the mosaic's location on the wall directly behind the north end zone of the university's football stadium, led most people to refer to the mosaic by a more prosaic nickname, "Touchdown Jesus".
The similarity of the Christ figure's stance to a football referee's signal for a touchdown was difficult to deny, and the university chose to embrace the nickname. Father Hesburgh himself saw the nickname as an affectionate appellation for the mosaic.
Sheets supervised workers as they laid out his sketch on the floor of a basketball court and assembled the artwork as 324 large panels. The mosaic consists of approximately 6,700 pieces of granite in 140 different colors and from 11 states and 16 different countries.
Workers installed the panels on the side of the building, leaving a slight space between the wall and the mosaic to accommodate contraction and expansion caused by temperature changes.
The full installation is 134 feet tall and 68 feet wide. The face of the Christ figure alone is nine feet tall and features 115 difference pieces of stone.
Drapery hid the mosaic until its unveiling at the library's formal dedication on May 7, 1964.
The mural still watches over the school's football stadium, although an expansion of the facility obscured the artwork from part of the field.
"Touchdown Jesus" is one of over 200 architectural designs and murals across the US credited to Millard Sheets, and his artwork hangs in 46 museums in 15 states. You can view his work at Midwestern venues like the Chicago Art Institute and the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.
I was especially interested to learn that Sheets created the "River of Knowledge" mosaic on the Cass Avenue facade of the Detroit Public Library. I saw this mosaic many times as I walked to classes at State Hall, across the street from the library on Wayne State University's campus.
Read Back to school at Indiana's University of Notre Dame and Photo Friday: O'Shag Hall at Indiana's University of Notre Dame to find out more about our campus visit.
Curious about the multi-faceted artist? Check out Millard Sheets: One-Man Renaissance by Janice Lovoos and Edmund F. Penney.
You can also check out Touchdown Jesus: Faith and Fandom at Notre Dame by Scott Eden for a look at football and religion in Notre Dame's campus culture.
© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved
Great post, I never knew much about this piece. Dominique, you'd be interested to know that Father Hesburgh lived in the library for quite some time (he may still, my husband isn't sure). He lived on the top floor.
Posted by: Arrows Sent Forth | November 23, 2010 at 05:35 PM
Nicole-I didn't know Father Herburgh lived in the library.
That's the beauty of blogging...I get to satisfy my own curiosity about things. I was surprised to learn about the connection with the mosaic on the Detroit Public Library, too :)
Posted by: Dominique King | November 23, 2010 at 07:27 PM