Sunday, December 5, 2010

The Last Supper, Dali

The Last Supper as depicted by Dali merges surrealism with Christian doctrine. I believe he does so successfully. The arrangement around the table is more realistic than da Vinci's set-up with everyone on each side. While convention and tradition are kind of thrown to the wind, it still feels like a spiritually infused painting. I like that Christ's body is over the table, symbolizing his body as the communion sacrifice. It could even be fit into conspiracy theory pretty easily because of its mathematical qualities and the geometry that it seems to draw to its center.

1 comment:

  1. What do you make of the fact that Jesus is semi-transparent at the supper? Are we to take Dali's message as essentially "gnostic" or "eastern mystical" that Jesus was simply "spirit" and not matter before the crucifixion? Or, can we suggest (legitimately?) that the visual cue indicates that more is going on on more dimensional levels than the disciples could be aware of? Does it suggest a radical confluence of multidimensional reality and the limited perception of the disciples who (after all, have heads bowed and eyes closed) seem reverent but not "open?"

    ReplyDelete