“If you’re travelin’ in the north country fair” (apologies to Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan), you might consider dropping by Norbert Kox’s new Apocalypse House and Museum of Visionary Art located in the small Midwestern town of Gillett, just north of Green Bay, Wisconsin. Kox recently purchased an early-twentieth-century building that was once the village hospital then stood empty for many years. He is in the process of converting the two-storey structure into a museum, studio and living space. A grand opening was held at the end of June, 2018.
Upon entering the spacious downstairs lobby of the Apocalypse House and Museum, one encounters a long, meandering central hallway that leads into a maze of gallery rooms. They wind along the left side to the rear of the building, continue across the back, and then move up along the right side of the first floor area. The galleries were created by subdividing the expansive first floor into separate-but-interconnected rooms of various sizes and dimensions. Some can be accessed from a central hallway, while others cannot. The gallery room walls are eight feet tall, stopping short of reaching the full 11 feet to the ceiling, effectively lending each room an intimacy but also providing light and ventilation.
Nine areas are sectioned off according to subject matter. Signs inscribed on wooden plaques hang over the doorways to each gallery to indicate what lies beyond. The first gallery is titled “Babylon”, followed by “Light and Dark”, “Good and Evil”, “The Gift”, “Legion”, “Blood Offering” and “Divine Intervention”, in addition to two specialised spaces called “Innocents” and "Demon Hunter”.
Norbert Kox is a prominent figure among a significant subgroup of visionary artists specialising in apocalyptic themes, including contemporaries such as William Thomas Thompson and Frank Bruno. Past masters include McKendree Robbins Long, Gertrude Morgan, James Hampton, William Blayney, Myrtice West and, most famously, Howard Finster. All of these artists created work in response to the New Testament’s Book of Revelations, attributed to John of Patmos who foresaw the end of the world, Armageddon, Christ’s second coming, a 1000-year reign of peace, Satan’s final rebellion, God’s last judgement of Satan, and the establishment of new heavens and a new earth.
During a recent visit to the museum, I asked Kox to elaborate on his relationship to the Bible:
“I believe that the Bible is the word of God, but there are so many different translations”, explained Kox. “Even with all the mistranslations, no matter how the Bible gets butchered, if someone is really seeking God, God will help that person find the way. If one’s heart is right and one is looking for the truth, that person will find it.”
While Kox believes in the word of the gospels, he does not necessarily believe in the words of his fellow Christians.
“I am a follower of the teachings of Christ and a Christian, but I don’t always call myself a Christian because not all Christians believe in the teachings of Christ”, said Kox. “A lot of Christians would disagree with me about whether you can only have salvation through Christ. The way some non-Christians are living their lives, they are living a Christ-like life in better ways than many Christians.”
A rift between Kox and those who might be considered more conventional Christians occurred in the mid 1990s when he unveiled the first in an extended series of controversial paintings that criticise, satirise and otherwise recontextualise artist Warner Sallman’s (1892–1968) iconic mid-twentieth-century portrait of Jesus Christ (see Raw Vision #65). Kox contends that many Christians confuse the real Christ with symbols of Christ, like Sallman’s portrait. This confusion is responsible for an idolatry of Christian images that Kox finds tantamount to worshipping false gods – a deception he feels worthy of the Antichrist.
Visitors to the museum can view a number of Kox’s infamous renditions of Sallman’s Christ on the walls of the gallery labelled “Legion” (Mark 5:9, “My name is Legion, for we are many”) devoted to depictions of The Beast, 666 – aka Satan. They share space with other works, including a mixed media sculpture of the devil himself. The latter is a chilling presence: a towering figure in the posture of America’s Statue of Liberty – yet another object of idolatry – but equipped with the face of a swine (a reference to Christ’s casting out of demons possessing a man into 2,000 pigs) and four brassieres indicating The Beast’s multiple breasts.
Caption: Norbert Kox on his famous “Demon Hunter” Harley Davidson, which he welded together and painted in the mid 1970s. His painting, Betrayed: Yesu Christ at the Hands of His Adversaries (1988–90), hangs behind him. Photo: Fred Scruton
