Ecce Homo

about Ecce Homo

The title of this whimsical piece by Kogelnik can really be interpreted in two directions.

The screenprint depicts a woman dressed in a purple suit lifting her sunglasses to look at the silhouette of a person hung over a clothes hanger like a pair of trousers. "Ecce Homo" is Latin and can be translated to mean "Behold the Man" or "Behold a Man". The first of these alludes to the words used by Pontius Pilate in the Gospel of John when he presented a bound and bloody Jesus to the crowd shortly before his Crucifixion. This meaning is unlikely. More likely, the title refers to the second meaning which is a reference to a disagreement between ancient philosophers Plato and Diogenes. When Plato asserted that man was a featherless biped, Diogenes stood, brandished a bald chicken, and shouted, “Behold—a man".