-- It's Candy-Christ Time Again in New York

IT’S CANDY-CHRIST TIME IN NEW YORK AGAIN
by Michael Jahn


Artist Cosimo Cavallaro's life-size chocolate Jesus is back!

The controversial work of art is scheduled be mounted at the Proposition Gallery in Manhattan's Chelsea. Its title is "My Sweet Jesus." Christ is depicted as anatomically correct and bereft of loincloth. The sculpture will be on display along with chocolate sculptures of eight Catholic saints. They're dressed. Invitations to the exhibition will feature a Virgin Mary with scratch-and-sniff breasts.

Censorers please note -- this could be much worse.

Conservatives are already in protest, against not only the exhibition but its confluence with All Saints Day. Earlier this year, a similar attempt to display "My Sweet Jesus" in conjunction with Holy Week (that's the one before Easter), was killed by the resulting uproar.

If all this sounds familiar, it is. In 1989, photographer Andres Serrano exhibited "Piss Christ," a photo of a plastic crucifix in a jar of his own urine, at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. A scandal ensued

Ten years later a painting, "The Holy Virgin Mary," by British artist Chris Ofili, also exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, showed a black Mary surrounded by elephant dung and clippings of female genitals. Cementing his legend as a patron of the arts as well a fan of the First Amendment, "America's Mayor" Rudy Giuliani tried to evict the museum from the city-owned building it leased. He also sued the museum. A United States Federal Court judge ruled against him.

Shortly thereafter artist Renee Cox exhibited "Yo Mama's Last Supper," an image of the famous feast with the artist herself, nude, as Jesus. It too was shown at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and again Giuliani's critique was scathing. He threatened to cut off the museum's funding.

Ya gotta wonder how President Giuliani will show his appreciation for the arts and his respect for the First Amendment.

Safe to say that there will be no chocolate Jesus at a Washington gallery, no marzipan Mary at a Federal Court building, and as for that Jujyfruit fresco of the conservative members of the Supreme Court ...