On this week's edition of David and Art, host David Smith explores how an iconic modern artist's final major project—a series of over 100 paintings based on Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper—revealed a surprising and deeply personal side of the Pop Art icon.
A few weeks ago, we talked about Leonardo’s mural The Last Supper and mentioned its iconic status that has transcended the centuries since its creation. In the late 1980s, it showed up in the work of, perhaps, a very unexpected artist. Between 1984 and 1986, Andy Warhol created a series of over 100 paintings based on Leonardo’s famous mural. It was his last big project before he died in 1987.
The project was the idea of a gallery owner named Alexander Iolas who commissioned Warhol to create a group of works based on The Last Supper for an exhibition in Milan. It was going to be installed right across the plaza from the building housing the original. Warhol initially responded to the money Iolas offered, but it became quickly evident that the project had struck some kind of chord deep within him.
It wasn’t widely known by his fans or even many of his friends that Warhol was deeply religious. His family name was Warhola and in the 1920s his devout parents immigrated to Pittsburgh from Ruthenia, a region at the intersection of Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Hungry, and Slovakia. He was raised in the Byzantine Catholic Church there in Pittsburgh. When he was little, there were crucifixes in his house and a copy of The Last Supper hanging in the hallway. His mother crossed herself every time she passed it. After he moved to New York City in the 1950s he attended mass regularly. He financially supported a nephew who was studying for the priesthood. In 1980 in Rome, he waited three hours to meet Pope John Paul II.
Religious imagery began showing up in his art in the 1950s, well before he became famous. And then, with his variations on The Last Supper, he returned to it at the end of his life.
A couple of years ago at the Brooklyn Museum there was a big exhibit that focused in on the role religion played in Warhol’s life and work. Writing then on ArtNet, Eleanor Heartney said the show was “an unusually complex picture of both Pop art and contemporary faith.”
She noted that his Last Supper paintings came in the context of his terrified response to the concurrent AIDS Epidemic. As he confronted his mortality, the famous image, repeated over and over, marked “the culmination of a process of acceptance: the final image of communion and forgiveness.” Art can express such complexities vividly. And an unexpected artist can let you see them fresh.
