My Own Personal Chocolate Jesus (not!)

This morning I almost blogged about the anatomically correct chocolate sculpture of Jesus that Cosimo Cavallaro was supposed to exhibit at the Lab Gallery (opening after Palm Sunday and closing on Easter Sunday), but decided against it because I wasn't sure I liked it enough to discuss it. I had decided to go see it first and then blog about it if it was as interesting as it seemed. Now I may never know. Under a barrage of pressure and angry phone calls, the hotel that houses Lab Gallery cancelled the show. The gallery's creative director Matt Semler, resigned in protest. And Catholics (and seemingly Catholics alone from reports I can find [because, like, we other Christians don't care about Jesus???]) all over the city are enraged. This all happened in one day.

There are three issues of interest to me here. One is the knee-jerk reaction by some people to artwork they haven't seen in person, to the mere idea of something.

[W]ord of the confectionary Christ infuriated Catholics, including [Cardinal Edward] Egan, who described it as "a sickening display."

Bill Donohue, head of the watchdog Catholic League, said it was "one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever."

"It’s not just the ugliness of the portrayal, but the timing — to choose Holy Week is astounding," he said.

Maybe that's just lazy reporting. Maybe other nonCatholic Christians were also infuriated, but the Associated Press didn't bother to call to ask. Let me just say that as a Protestant, I'm offended that we didn't get our outraged entered into the public records. (OK, so I'm being facetious...I'm not outraged, but some Protestant somewhere must be, no? come on AP...get with it.)

Secondly, and perhaps most importantly for me is the degree of art-history ignorance this rapid-fire outrage reveals. I mean like does the characterization of this work as "one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever" now mean Serrano's finally off the hook? Is chocolate more offensive than piss? And, I'm sorry but "It’s not just the ugliness of the portrayal" suggests Bill Donohue has never even heard of Grünewald...I mean, talk about your ugly Jesuses:

But perhaps worst of all in this is the fact that here I was just a few months ago defending my co-Christians against the irate Muslims of the world who were hopping mad over a few political cartoons. I guess sculpture's too sacred for free speech defenders. If Cavallaro had just drawn Jesus in ink on paper, perhaps, the show could have gone on.

Lame, lame, and such a shame. I really wanted to see it.