Arts Roundup: The Chocolate Jesus Sacked and God’s Writer’s Block
March 30th, 2007 by Menachem Wecker
The Australian reports that the chocolate Jesus, pictured, a.k.a. My Sweet Lord by Cosimo Cavallaroby, has been taken down. See the Catholic League’s responses here, here and here.
See a longer discussion here.
Thomas Krehbiel sees an irony in the public’s response on both a political and artistic level:
I hope all the people who keep saying that Muslims are the only ones who freak out when people offend their religion are taking note of incidents like this. Oh, but there weren’t any riots, burnings, or killings, people will say. The end result is the same, though: Intimidation of minorities and stifling free thought.
P.S. I can understand people being upset about religious art displays involving elephant dung and urine, but chocolate??
“[I]t has long been assumed that the arts are only for those poor souls who have an aesthetic bent, for those who are rather dreamy and not very practical,” writes Fra Domenico (whom I’d love to interview at this point). “Because of this misunderstanding, the arts have been placed in the realm of the subjective. Everyone thinks that art is merely a matter of personal taste. But for the arts which are placed at the service of the worship of God, this is not so.”
“If you say Islam to most Americans, they say terrorist,” says curator Jonathan Bloom, a professor of Islamic art and architecture. “We want to show there’s a different side to Islam. That it has a very rich and long culture.”
[Chicago Tribune]
Mr. Stuart is giving a quiz on Islamic art on Tuesday. Wouldn’t it be nice if he made it available to Iconia readers (hint, hint)?
In honor of Holy Week, Canon Peter Dodd is leading free sessions on Christian art. The only catch? You have to be in Newcastle.
In a post on Christian art, here’s one line I really enjoyed: “We don’t have to be afraid of ‘writer’s block’ — it is like the void before the world began. We trust God to make something out of nothing.”
[GroshLink]
Ethan Gilsdorf, at the Globe, is excited Matthew Polly’s “American Shaolin: Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks, and the Legend of Iron Crotch: An Odyssey in the New China” is the good kind of memoir, not the kind that “is like a dinner guest who natters on about some personal experience, encounter, or adventure — the inept camel ride, the drunken night in Bangkok, the beggar’s mundane wisdom — all the while oblivious to the listener, whose pasted-on smile can barely conceal a look of utter tedium.”