Slow Art Milwaukee v1.0: Warhol's Last Supper

I recently hosted a Slow Art event in Milwaukee, at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Think of Slow Art as the museum visitor’s version of chewing your food at least 25 times to get all the flavor out of each and every savory bite. With Slow Art, the idea isn’t to see everything. Rather, it’s to see a few things in depth, to spend the time with a selection of artistic creations.

For me, Slow Art also encompasses an observation of context and the reactions elicited from Joe and Jane Public while they view or interact with a piece. Here is the first installment of my thoughts from Slow Art Milwaukee v1.0.

Perhaps not surprisingly, in the Warhol exhibit people congregated, lingered, and engaged most in the gallery displaying Andy’s homage to DaVinci’s “The Last Supper.” Among the largest of all Warhol’s works, there is a figurative familiarity conveyed through his reworking of DaVinci’s famous fresco.

Mounted on opposite walls, juxtaposed purposely, are a screen print of the familiar last supper scene, albeit doubled and vibrant in black monochrome rendering on a bright yellow canvas, and a Warhol line-drawn rendering, black tracings on a white canvas, overlain with logos from Dove and GE plus a 59¢ price violator. The effect is remarkable, in its devotional aspects to DaVinci’s masterpiece and the modern contextual commentary on the role of religion and corporate iconography.

This was, it turned out, Warhol’s final project, and it is a fitting culmination to the career of someone who so frequently reflected simple, everyday images back at society, challenging us by – perhaps appropriately – elevating the mundane to “art” (Campbell’s Soup can) and reducing the famous to merely “image” (Marilyn Monroe). These last couple works reveal Warhol’s faith and dialog with his faith, and maybe, just maybe, reveal a bit of the inspiration behind his earlier, simpler work.

Please, feel free to comment and by all means, take Slow Art to heart. Savor the creative endeavors of humanity; you’ll be delighted by the experience!