Leonardo's Last Supper: A Vision by Peter Greenaway - commentary

The show at the Park Avenue Armory , on display Dec.3 - Jan.6, was a lot about Peter Greenaway and very little about Leonardo. The visitors confronted a chaotic installation of conflated images of medieval and contemporary Italy. Scale substituted for a refined and well-thought sequence.

The first relevant NYT article is titled "Last Supper for the Laptop Generation." I wonder if the Laptop Generation should be treated to one, in the first place. The second review article in NYC scales back its enthusiasm with a more reflective "Adding Bells and Whistles to Leonardo." Indeed.  

Leonardo's Last Supper, projected on a wall and accompanied with a plastic table and chairs in the middle of the huge armory space, seemed incongruous and disturbing. Or, quite improbably, a witty and subversive reference to American take-away plastic culture. Anachronistic baroque music, supposed to enhance the dramatic impact of the work, was rather distracting. Silence, reflection, wondering around the art work, thinking and experiencing it on your own pace are not allowed. Digital effects soon begin to "light up" different aspects of the painting, and add in some special "zoom in on the hands" effects. In trying to project many different versions onto one, Greenaway rushes the spectator though a light show, which has little respect for conveying the work's sanctity and spiritual elevation.

The third part of the exhibition, an introductory art-history lesson of Veronese's "Marriage at Cana," apart from confusing basic iconography, slices and dices the work into planes and tiles. To the point where dissection takes over artistic appreciation. The didactic approach to the last part raised question - why not superficially lecture about the Last Supper as well? And why lump those together?

Call me old-fashioned. But I do prefer to calmly contemplate in front of Leonardo's pseudo-fresco in Milan, pick up an art-history book and talk with a few people after individual reflection.  On the other hand, not everybody can go to Milan, and not everybody has background about Veronese. On the way out, I heard many viewers comment positively on "the lesson." May be Greenaway's work is pioneering in a direction of using digital media to transform art-education. In the future, I will be happy to go on a web-site and experience similar myriads of digital gimmicks. And a more refined lesson in art-history. In the end, may be I just disliked Greenaway's vision, the way I like Picasso's take on "Las Meninas" by Velazquez.

Greenaway's was as legitimate an interpretation as any other in art, given that art history is history of never-ending inspiration and deconstruction.

For some youtube insights, click here.