Wow,HE USED WRIGHTS sermon as a title for his book.
Obama's book was inspired by an 1885 painting by Victorian painter George Frederic Watts entitled "Hope", and Reverend Frederick G. Sampson of Detroit, Michigan. In his convocation speech at Virginia Union University School of Theology, Sampson spoke of the piece, as being a study in contradictions because what is depicted as the title and what is on the canvas seems to be in direct opposition one to the other. Very much like the United States herself over the past century, and the life paths of her inhabitants.
“Hope” shows a woman sitting on top of the world playing a harp. Now at first glance, that would be all right, for what more enviable position could one ever hope to achieve than being on top of the world with the whole world, everything and everyone dancing to your music. But when you look closer at the picture, when the illusion of power gives way to the reality of pain the world at which this woman sits, our world, that is a world which is torn by war, destroyed by hate, devastated by despair and devastated by distrust. The world on which she sits is on the very brink of destruction. Famine ravishes millions of the inhabitants of this world in one hemisphere while feasting and gluttony are enjoyed by inhabitants of another hemisphere. A time bomb ticking is the world on which she sits with apartheid in one hemisphere and apathy in the other hemisphere and enough nuclear warheads scientists tell us, to wipe out all forms of life except for cockroaches, ...and that is the world on which this woman sits.
A world which cares about more bombs for the enemy than it does about bread for the hungry. A world that is still more concerned about the color of skin than it is about the content of character. A world more finicky about the texture of hair or what is on the outside of your head than it is about the quality of education or what is on the inside of one’s head. That is the world on which this woman sits. You and I think of being on top of the world as being in heaven, but when you look at the woman in Watt’s painting a little closer what you discover is that this woman is in Hell. And that artist Watt dares to entitled the painting “Hope.”
"Then, on top of that, she’s sitting there in rags. Tattered clothes as if she herself has been in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Her head is bandaged and her blood is beginning to seep through the bandages. Scars and cuts are visible on her face, her arms and her legs. That’s when you look closer at the picture. And the instrument, on which she plays, her harp, has all but one of its strings broken, torn or ripped out. Even the instrument has been damaged by what she has been though and she is even more the example of quiet despair than anything else. Yet, the artist dares entitle the painting “Hope.”
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Hope - George Frederic Watts 1885
This very same painting on display at London's Guildhall Art Gallery and it's analysis by Reverend Sampson, was also instrumental in inspiring a sermon by Rev. Wright entitled "The Audacity to Hope." Obama's book is entitled "The Audacity of Hope".
If anyone or anything is to be given credit for inspiring both book & sermon, it could more accurately be assessed to George Watts' painting, Rev. Sampson, and the very state of the Union.
