Last Supper Kerfuffles

Kimberly Springer, PhD London UK © 2005 Is there any religious event more parodied than Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper? There might be, but there’s definitely nothing that causes equal amounts of religious outrage and attempts at censorship. And evidence is mounting. In 2001, 2004 and now, early in 2005, we have reworkings of the Last Supper drawing accusations of “blasphemy” and cries of anti-Catholicism--all this at the apex of the Da Vinci Code craze. In early 2001, then-New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani froze and tried to revoke the Brooklyn Museum of Art’s municipal funding when they exhibited photographer Renee Cox’s Last Supper as part of a larger exhibit of black photography. In her tableau that recast black men as the disciples and herself as a nude Christ Cox was a few steps ahead in hinting at the Mary Magdalene connection that has Da Vinci Code fanatics buzzing. Giuliani declared Cox’s photo “disgusting” and “anti-Catholic” and set about establishing a “decency commission.” That commission was merely the latest in a series of attempts at artistic censorship Giuliani had waged in his law and order campaign since taking office ---remember the flap over Chris Ofili’s The Holy Virgin Mary in 2000? The attack on the World Trade Center gave Giuliani other priorities and the decency commission was sidelined. In England this past Christmas season, non-BBC Channel 4‘s billboard ads for its hit show Shameless kept the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) busy fielding about 250 phone calls from the religiously offended. Two separate billboards featured the Gallaghers, the show’s unruly protagonists, having a properly drunken holiday supper. The ASA cited complaints that the billboards “mocked the Christian faith, showed Christ in a drunken state and depicted scenes of unnecessary violence.” That may sound like a typical family Christmas for some, but this reenactment, too, brought accusations of “blasphemy” and calls to remove the billboards. Noting that the depiction accurately reflected the Gallaghers and was unlikely to cause offense to the majority because it sent up da Vinci’s painting and not the actual Last Supper event, the ASA didn’t see fit to pursue the matter. Most recently, Milan city authorities ordered fashion house Marithe and Francois Girbaud’s posters removed. They featured women stylistically lounging about a sleek silver table as if attending the Last Supper of Fashion Week. Like Cox’s photo, Marith/Girbaud’s Christ was a woman, but this time fully dressed. The only nudity was semi- and it was that of a shirtless, tan and toned John the Apostle. Milan’s advertising officials reasoned that there was a “high enough concentration of religious symbols” that the ad was bound to offend “at least a part of the population.” In each case, city or advertising regulators determined that someone was likely to take offence, so they considered what proportion of the population that would be. But they’ve also moved closer to defining what exactly it is about Last Supper recreations that have turned a painting into an actual stand-in for a purported event. After all, who was there to witness it? Given that da Vinci’s painting was itself a representation of Jesus’ last time with his disciples, what makes this particular painting so ripe for parody? And why do Christians take such offense at what is, in itself, simulacrum---a re-enactment of a re-enactment? S. Brent Plate, assistant professor of religion and the visual arts at Texas Christian University, says it’s the familiarity. The Last Supper’s recognizability make it an easy target for parody. “How do images work themselves into our sense of history and theology?” is a persistent question Plate encounters. It’s what he calls the “sacred power” of the image that convinces Christians that an event, pre-dating photography or other documentation, happened exactly the ways it’s

represented in da Vinci’s painting. The painting itself serves as a substitute and allows believers to endow the painting with attributes linking “back to the real Jesus, real history,” Plate explains. If Da Vinci’s painting wasn’t the first Last Supper, it is still the ultimate reference point. There’s evidence of earlier depictions of Last Supper-reminiscent banquets in the Roman catacombs. Still, da Vinci’s representation wasn’t necessarily “true.” Plate says, for example, that likely Jesus and his disciples were sitting on the ground and in a circle. He also notes, though, that the radicalism of da Vinci’s representation is often forgotten as it becomes more firmly re-entrenched as an accurate historical representation. Dominican monks commissioned da Vinci’s painting and there was an established Renaissance format for representing this particular Biblical event. Yet, da Vinci composed significant changes that make the Last Supper more egalitarian than accepted depictions. Plate observes of da Vinci’s painting, for example, “We have Jesus sitting on the same level as everyone else. There’s no halo above his head as in earlier representations. He’s framed compositionally by a window and it’s earthly, not heavenly light.” These compositional aspects set Jesus apart, but also make him very human. Tellingly, religious communities are not keen on a Jesus Christ just like you or me. Rather the Last Supper, as part of the trinity of events including the crucifixion and the resurrection, serves as the starting point for a supernatural authority. Protest and accusations of anti-Catholicism are never about the desecration of Leonardo da Vinci’s work. Instead, Giuliani and other anxious voices continue to protest the representation of an event for which there really is no original.