My favorite part of this NY Times story about filmmaker Peter Greenaway’s “dazzling confection” Leonardo’s Last Supper––wherin he “enhanced” the original painting for one night only by introducing sweeping lights, “rhythmic” music, and the generally ill-advised planetarium aesthetics––is the explanation of why the event almost didn’t happen:
A vigorous debate erupted earlier this year after some art historians recommended that Mr. Greenaway be denied access to “The Last Supper.” They feared for the well-being of the painting, which began to deteriorate only 20 years after its completion in 1498.
Cultural officials also objected to what they saw as the improper use of a monument with an intrinsic universal value…“I don’t know why we would allow anyone to run the risk of possibly damaging a work of art in which the Italian state has invested a huge number of resources in the last 20 years,” said Marisa Dalai Emiliani, one expert who opposed the project.
While champions insisted that the project would lend new meaning to Leonardo’s painting, she said, “ ‘The Last Supper’ doesn’t need any added value.”
I’m no expert, but from the writeups of the event and the above, frustratingly unprofessional video document, it sounds like the worst fears of Emiliani and friends were justified.
“We’re out to educate you as entertainingly as possible,” Greenaway reportedly said after his 20-minute laser light show, which seems to nail down the problem: is there anything more insulting to a grown-up than smug edutainment?
Supper is the second in a series of projects Greenaway is trying to mount, which he characterizes as “dialogues” with nine paintings, each with “a Cecil B. DeMille cinematic scope.” The first of these projects was Nightwatching––which, you’ll remember, I actually liked at Toronto, although it admittedly put me to sleep. But Nightwatching seemed to be an actual character study, of both a painting and its painter, and not an entirely reductive one at that. So much of Greenaway’s work seems to be based on simple equations: a spewing of Greenaway’s knowledge about art, intermingled with dick/****/poop jokes, inevitably rendered in a posh accent so as to, ostensibly, merge low brow with high. And it’s all didactic as hell. Get it? The entire history of art is mitigated through the artist’s bodily functions and attempts to get laid! Get it? God is in the trance music!!!
Disclaimer: I’m cranky about Greenaway today because I had to watch his The Draughtsman’s Contract for one of Kevin Lee’s video essays. There are Greenaway films that I don’t find entirely abhorrent, but this one…oh, I’ll save it for the tape…
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