Alan C. Braddock on Tanner, Hybridity, and the Blood of the Holy Land

“Tanner recognized that the real “danger” confronting him was American racism, which continued to categorize him—and now potentially his son—as second-class citizens, based on absurd “blood” distinctions that chafed against the artist’s Christian worldview. That worldview was selective in its own way, for it privileged a single religious tradition increasingly associated with colonial forms of intervention in Palestine. And yet, if Tanner shared with American Protestantism a fascination with the sacred geography of Christian belief, his interest in the hybridity of the Holy Land diverged from narrow forms of nationalism. The blood that flowed through his veins, like the paint on his canvases, had a more international character.”