Was it based on Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper? The pun gave it away. That scene was called Une scene sure la seine de la cène. Three words that apparently sound the same in French Une scene = a stage La seine = the river La cène = the last supper If you look up la cène, images if the Da Vinci painting will appear.
But it was a depiction of a bacchanalia – a drunken feastt named after Bacchus wasn’t it? Yes. That’s why Bacchus, the Roman god ofagriculture, wine and fertility of mostly naked but blue, appeared. That reflected another painting The Feast of the Gods by Dutch artist Jan van Bijlert.
Both? Yes, a complex piece of performance art can have many references. It’s probably compulsory.
What were the organizers trying to say? The Artistic Director, Thomas Jolly, explained, “We wanted to talk about diversity. Diversity means being together. We wanted to include everyone, as simple as that.” LGBTQIA inclusion was a major theme of the opening ceremony. Perhaps the message was meant to celebrate transgender inclusion in religion.
Jolly told a French TV station, BFMTV (pictured) on Sunday that The Last Supper was NOT his inspiration. “There’s Dionysus arriving on a table. Why is he there? First and foremost because he is the god of celebration in Greek mythology and the tableau is called ‘Festivity,’” Jolly said, translated to English. “He is also the god of wine, which is also one of the jewels of France, and the father of Séquana, the goddess of the river Seine. The idea was to depict a big pagan celebration, linked to the gods of Olympus, and thus the Olympics.”
He contradicted an earlier statement from the Paris 24 producers: “For the ‘Festivities’ segment, Thomas Jolly took inspiration from Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting to create the setting,” The Wrap and Yahoo News reported. “Clearly, there was never an intention to show disrespect towards any religious group or belief … [Jolly] is not the first artist to make a reference to what is a world-famous work of art. From Andy Warhol to ‘The Simpsons,’ many have done it before him.”
A performer in the scene acknowledged the link to the Last Supper “We are not making fun of anything,” defends Piche, a drag queen revealed by the show Drag Race who participated in the sequence. “No one was dressed as Jesus, no one was parodying him, neither in their attire nor in their behavior. The idea is to bring a new perspective. In the past, there have been a lot of representations of the apostles’ table and it has never shocked anyone. As luck would have it, when it is LGBT and drag queens, it is disturbing. But we are used to it. People are obsessed with gender issues that disturb conservatives.”
Why were there divided opinions among Christian responses? There was outrage, and then there were people who did not want to be outraged. • Some conservative Christians were simply outraged. • Other evangelicals pointed out that there were other things, such as mass death in Gaza, that we should save our outrage for. • Many simply wanted to keep out of a culture war. • Progressive Christians mostly liked the inclusion theme. Many people seized on the bacchanalia theme to say the scene was about something else, not the last supper..
It was good agitprop art. As Piche the drag queen observed, criticism that rejects the depiction on the grounds it featured gay people looks like a rejection of LGBTQIA people themselves.
And here’s a positive response: pray for France and the Paris Olympics, especially for christian witness at the games https://www.lovefrance.world
