A subtle buzz has been stirring surrounding stories of sculptural Jesus’.
Last Saturday an exhibition of a life-size chocolate Jesus was cancelled, initially supposed to be on view from April 1st to Easter at a midtown gallery here in Manhattan.
Just a few days ago a papier maché messiah created by a student at the Art Institute of Chicago went on view in a downtown gallery in Chicago. The work depicted Barack Obama in a Jesus robe and neon halo.
The 6 ft., 200 lb. chocolate Jesus received a barrage of complaints and threats, mainly from New York Catholics, stating that it was insulting and sacrilegious.
It reminded me of the time Mayor Rudy Giuliani protested the blockbuster ‘Sensation’ exhibition, at the Brooklyn Museum of Art back in 1999 when he deemed a to be included painting by the British artist Chris Ofili, of a black Madonna slung with elephant dung, unfit.
Giuliani was unsuccessful in his attempt to get the Sensation show cancelled, but Cardinal Edward Egan and Catholic officials managed to smother the chocolate christ and it's creator, Cosimo Cavallaro.
I suppose if we were all on Valium and very open-minded, having a mutual understanding that
Imagining absurd gestures, like Keith Richards' bizarre and over-indulgent drug habit, snorting his dead father's ashes mixed together with cocaine, not as a publicity stunt in order to hype up the Rolling Stones' upcoming concert tour, but rather as a recipe of a unique spiritual involvement- an attempt at becoming one with his father, in unity.
Equal open mindedness and additional drugs might be necessary to console President Bush and stand behind him in his failing war in Iraq.
In such a state of mind we would expect greater sensitivity from great institutions too, like that of the Catholic Church, of which has the power to canonize a person into sainthood, (as in the soon to be Pope John Paul II), but not the capacity to let every man exercise the art he knows.
Like with a complex wine, we can learn to appreciate a range of nuances.
We can also take a leap of faith while drinking from the same glass and believe that we are experiencing the blood of Christ.
