Maybe it’s Easter time, but Jesus artwork is making the headlines this week.
First, a life-size chocolate statue of Jesus, entitled My Sweet Lord, was censored and/or banned from an art exhibition in New York City. It took over 200 pounds of milk chocolate for Cosimo Cavallaro to make the hanging sculpture that was to be in an art exhibition at the Lab Gallery in a hotel in Manhattan. The exhibition was cancelled after complaints came in from Catholics, including Cardinal Edward Egan. It is not known whether spectators were offended by the chocolate material used to sculpt Jesus, or whether it was that Jesus was naked and represented anatomically correctly. It is also thought that the timing of the exhibition around Easter had Catholics upset as well. It is unusual for a work of art to attract such attention in New York City, a city where one would think, art spectators had seen it all.
The second Jesus controversy comes from Chicago, Illinois where David Cordero, an art student at the School of Art Institute of Chicago, created a life-size papier mache sculpture of United States presidential hopeful Barrack Obama as a smiling Jesus with a blue neon halo.
So why are these sculptures offensive? Jesus has been the subject matter of artwork for hundreds of years. Sculpting Jesus from chocolate challenges our sensibilities about Easter, about what is art, and about traditional art materials. It is the goal of the artist to challenge, not to pacify. And Barrack as Jesus must offend some because Obama is black. Perhaps in both cases the reaction is also based on the white Christian’s belief that Jesus was definitely white. Both sculptures challenge the viewer about the race of Jesus, perhaps. The Barrack statue also makes the statement that he is being looked to as a new political messiah to save us all after the ravages of the Bush administration.
It is interesting to note that both artists have been contacted by people who have offered death threats as well as by interested buyers.
One would imagine that most people who are offended by such art are Christians. In the contemporary world of Christianity we are supposed to ask what the great peacemaker Jesus would do. This writer speculates that Jesus would enjoy both sculptures and neither would offend him as much as the indifference we show to our fellow man everyday through inaction and ambivalence.
Sources: Chocolate Jesus
