Yo Mama's Last Supper

Yo Mama's Last Supper, 1996

Yo Mama's Last Supper is a work of art, made in 1996 by Jamaican-American artist Renée Cox. It is a large photographic montage of five panels, each 31 inches square, depicting photographs of 11 black men, a white Judas and a naked black woman (the artist's self-portrait)[1] posed in imitation of Leonardo da Vinci's 1490s painting The Last Supper. Cox is pictured naked and standing, with her arms reaching upwards, as Jesus.[2]

In 2001, the piece was exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art as part of an exhibition called Committed to the Image: Contemporary Black Photographers. New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was offended by the work and called for the creation of a panel to create decency standards for all art shown at publicly funded museums in the city.[3][4] Art scholar Camille Paglia, however, said in 2012 that "Renée Cox is an important black photographer and a performance artist, who uses herself... This, I think, is a serious statement, this work. It might be shocking to have a nude black woman in the position of Christ, but I think, as a whole, the work had some dignity, it had gravitas."[5]

The work has also been included in other exhibitions about artistic depictions of The Last Supper, in locations such as the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut; Oratorio di San Ludovico, a 17th-century Catholic church in Venice, Italy;[3] and a gallery in Jakarta, Indonesia.[6]

  1. ^ Tinti, Mary. "Cox, Renee". www.oxfordartonline.com. Oxford Art Online. Retrieved 7 March 2015.
  2. ^ Arthur Coleman Danto, "Renee Cox: Yo Mama's Last Supper", in Unnatural Wonders: Essays from the Gap Between Art and Life (Columbia University Press, 2003), ISBN 978-0-231-14115-4, pp. 101-108. Excerpts available at Google Books.
  3. ^ a b Elizabeth Bumiller, "Affronted by Nude 'Last Supper,' Giuliani Calls for Decency Panel", The New York Times, February 16, 2001.
  4. ^ Monte Williams, "'Yo Mama' Artist Takes On Catholic Critic", The New York Times, February 21, 2001.
  5. ^ Camille Paglia, "Taking Offense: When Art and the Sacred Collide," (lecture), Fordham University, April 25, 2012.
  6. ^ Carla Bianpoen, "Revisiting 'The Last Supper'", The Jakarta Post, April 11, 2009.