Holy chocolate Jesus, Batman, is that. a holy chocolate Jesus? In the anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-better world of postmodern art, innovation wins the most points. Sometimes this results in a Jackson Pollack-style reinvention of the form, but other times it results in excrement. literally. Life as art, food as art, Jesus as art, it's all been done. So how does an artist create something wholly original? How about the life of Jesus as food as art?
Early last week, MSN.com featured an article on the controversy surrounding a life-size anatomically correct sculpture of Jesus that was intended to be displayed in a Manhattan hotel art gallery beginning the week of Easter. Sculpted from 200 pounds of chocolate, "My Sweet Lord" depicts the crucified Christ in a manner that is apparently completely unacceptable to the Catholics of New York. Bandying about phrases like "morally bankrupt," and "sickening display," members of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights actually applied enough pressure that the hotel has cancelled the exhibition.
This is utterly shocking in light of National Enquirer accounts of recent acts of God. A man in a Waffle House in East Bumble unearths the image of the Virgin Mary in his chocolate chip pancakes and it's declared a miracle. A card-carrying artist painstakingly sculpts the Lord's son out of chocolate and it's an abomination. Has anyone involved in this controversy ever actually attempted to carve anything into chocolate? I can't even make chocolate curls for cupcakes. In fact, one time I tried to make miniature letters out of gum for a friend's work project and almost lost a finger.
The last few controversies about Christianity-themed art focused on a fecal mother of God and a urinary Jesus, which is slightly more understandable, given the obviously negative connotation behind sculpting things out of excrement. These arguments also centered on the implications of the art itself, which I believe is the point. Like for instance, that using poo as a medium to display the good lord implies that you think said good lord is a piece of ----.
What then is the primary issue in the case of the tasty chocolate Jesus? Well, thus far no one's mentioned idolatry, although in my particular case-not to mention the case of most PMSing women-it's obviously a concern. The controversy also doesn't appear to involve the material itself-that the statue may end up melted and reused in a batch of Chunky Chips Ahoy, that some hungry kid might take the "eat this and remember me" line a bit too seriously, or that the chocolate is not uniformly distributed and homeslice looks a tad splotchy.
No, it appears the Catholic group has taken on as their cause célèbre the fact that, gasp we can see the lord's penis. It appears the artist, Cosimo Cavallaro of Canada, has omitted the obligatory loincloth from his non-traditional portrayal.
Funny, I thought the big deal about Jesus was that he was made flesh like us other dirty humans. Are there actually people who thought that didn't include the naughty bits? I feel that there is enough injustice in the world that the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights can find something more important to protest. Like, for instance, the unbridled hatred and genocide perpetrated daily in the name of God instead of a depiction of Jesus in a decidedly human, and therefore ostensibly naturally beautiful, form.
The MSN article ended with a description of the artist's other works, which include coating an entire house in cheese and plastering ham all over a four-poster bed. Can we really be this upset at a guy who is just having a good time with his lunch? I mean, who hasn't plastered ham all over a four-poster bed? I think I did that to an ex-boyfriend one time. Not to give you any ideas or anything; I doubt chocolate Jesus would approve.
Jacqui Detwiler is a graduate student in psychology and neuroscience. Her column runs every Wednesday.
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