Chocolate Jesus

This past week there has been an uproar over the intended display of a crucified Jesus at an art gallery in New York. The representational form has stirred outrage, particularly among Catholics, because it comes on the leading edge of Holy Week, perhaps the most sacred cycle in Christian theology. Outrage focuses on several fronts. One is that the statue is made of chocolate. One is that the statue is "anatomically correct " which I assume means that a penis is represented. The previous observation breeds outrage because the figure is also naked. In all of the hubbub it is not clear what the artist intended to say. News reports suggest that the artist's medium, chocolate, is not really an issue because he usually works in sculptural food, something my mother disapproved of. I think this is disingenuous. I suspect that the artist's choice of chocolate might have been related to our culture's selection of chocolate as the ultimate medium for Easter; we have chocolate eggs, bunnies, chickens and more. Creating a chocolate Jesus would point to the ironic jettisoning of the core Easter symbol, the risen Christ, for a series of chocolate icons. The artist is castigated for presenting Jesus naked and as a real human male. When I heard that this was the case, I recalled all the iconography of the crucifixion I had been raised on. Typically, Jesus is portrayed on the cross with a loincloth. Until the recent uproar , I hadn't stopped to think that the more likely reality is that he was crucified naked. The Roman theory of punishment was to make it as strong an example to the populace as possible. Giving a victim of this system the dignity of a loincloth would have been, I suspect, unlikely. Not something the Church is comfortable talking about I imagine. In truth, the "food medium" artist may have been making a point about general Christian discomfort with nudity when in fact Christ likely died naked. If Christ is indeed the Messiah, I suspect this was not an issue for him. For followers some two millenia later, though such an idea ill fits their orthodoxy.

I don't know, of course, if the artist's intent was to poke Catholicism in the eye and malign Jesus. I think there is at least a glimmer of reason to think that the artist was trying to trigger thoughts about Easter and Jesus that merit consideration. What is most disheartening is to see how quickly orthodoxy coalecses around the pole of outrage. For God's Sake! Don't THINK!