Sex and ‘The Last Supper’ by Billy Melina examines how sexual repression, language and art influence each other. Key learnings include:
• Women's sexual repression has existed since the dawn of society and is embedded in religious doctrines such as the Last Supper.
• Language and art shaped how we conceive of sexuality and sex.
• Women have often been portrayed in art as sexual objects and not respected in society's discourse.
• The book discusses social taboos and examines sexual attitudes from some of our oldest and most enduring tradition.
UX Designers would find useful information in this book about the relationships between language, art, and sex. This book along with Sex and Culture by Bronislaw Malinowski and Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud by Thomas Laqueur would be interesting to read for a deeper understanding of the topics explored in this book.
🎀 Highlights
When Christianity tries to see Jesus, it turns to queer artists—from Michelangelo to Leonardo to Caravaggio and beyond.
Leonardo da Vinci, whose was, unlike Michelangelo, not even Christian, and as the art critic Kenneth Clark notes, “gladly allowed his homosexuality to penetrate to the depth of his being.”
The key depiction of Jesus in Christian tradition is a vision of men together with the androgynous Jesus serenely at its center.
It was essentially changed into another painting in 1652 when a doorway was cut into the bottom. A whole section of Jesus’ feet was removed. The effect was to shift the viewer’s eye up to Jesus upper body,
The art critic Leo Steinberg, in Leonardo’s Incessant Last Supper, discusses how cutting the door was supposedly a practical necessity, but he wonders if it wasn’t an effort to remove Jesus’ rather girly feet.
Kahlo’s 1940 painting disappeared in Poland in 1955, but still delights. Full of odd bloody trails, monsters, children and animals, all around Frida as Jesus.
From 1998 on, Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin’s art exhibit, Ecce Homo cause scenes — and, indeed, havoc. For all the many unexpected details, my eyes tend somehow to end up on the messiah’s high heel shoes.
The gay Argentine photographer made a splash with a vision of the Last Supper as, a critic writes, “the virtually sacralized ritual of the Argentine barbeque…”
Renee Cox’ Last Supper caused another “controversy” among Roman Catholics. She responded: “I have a right to reinterpret the Last Supper as Leonardo Da Vinci created the Last Supper with people who look like him. The hoopla and the fury are because I’m a black female. It’s about me having nothing to hide.”
When Christianity tries to see Jesus, it turns to queer artists—from Michelangelo to Leonardo to Caravaggio and beyond.
Leonardo da Vinci, whose was, unlike Michelangelo, not even Christian, and as the art critic Kenneth Clark notes, “gladly allowed his homosexuality to penetrate to the depth of his being.”
The key depiction of Jesus in Christian tradition is a vision of men together with the androgynous Jesus serenely at its center.
It was essentially changed into another painting in 1652 when a doorway was cut into the bottom. A whole section of Jesus’ feet was removed. The effect was to shift the viewer’s eye up to Jesus upper body,
The art critic Leo Steinberg, in Leonardo’s Incessant Last Supper, discusses how cutting the door was supposedly a practical necessity, but he wonders if it wasn’t an effort to remove Jesus’ rather girly feet.
Kahlo’s 1940 painting disappeared in Poland in 1955, but still delights. Full of odd bloody trails, monsters, children and animals, all around Frida as Jesus.
From 1998 on, Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin’s art exhibit, Ecce Homo cause scenes — and, indeed, havoc. For all the many unexpected details, my eyes tend somehow to end up on the messiah’s high heel shoes.
The gay Argentine photographer made a splash with a vision of the Last Supper as, a critic writes, “the virtually sacralized ritual of the Argentine barbeque…”
Renee Cox’ Last Supper caused another “controversy” among Roman Catholics. She responded: “I have a right to reinterpret the Last Supper as Leonardo Da Vinci created the Last Supper with people who look like him. The hoopla and the fury are because I’m a black female. It’s about me having nothing to hide.”
