I have this growing fascination with the use in pop-culture of Christian sacred imagery. I’m thinking of doing an occasional post that treats a Christian (or other religious) icon and examples of its currency in our culture. My current fave is the Last Supper (most artists seem to play off of Da Vinci’s famous painting). There’s quite a variety here, including a surrealist painting, a scene from a Broadway musical, and a fashion ad.
Each of the images is also an external link–either to a bigger image or to additional information.
I should start off with the grandpappy of all Last Supper depictions:
Salvador Dali:
I scanned the next one from the insert from my Jesus Christ Superstar Motion Picture Soundtrack. I love the lyrics from the song that leads into this scene:
Always hoped that I’d be an Apostle
Knew that I could make it if I tried
Then when we retire
We can write the Gospels
So they’ll still talk about us when we’ve died
The next one is one of my favorites (it’s the centerpiece of a collage of Last Supper pictures in my office). It was the subject of some controversy.
This next one is from Bettina Rheims’ I.N.R.I. I’m not sure if this was the intention, but much of it Gucci’izes the Christ narrative. I have mixed feelings about her work, which I may make the subject of another post.
I’m going to include one more photo (not of the Last Supper) from Rheims to show more of her style. This could be the cover of a U2 album, if U2 had 10 extra members (and you can see Apostle Edge in his trademark beanie).
The next painting is kind of neat because it inserts women and children into the more typical all-male meal:
I’m curious to hear what you think about these experiments with a convergence of Christian narratives and icons. If you know of any links to other cool depictions, please let me know (though you might not want to post multiple links at once in a comment, cause then the spam-checker gets mad).
