Have you ever noticed how chocolate is a seasonal treat? M&Ms are even offered in seasonally appropriate colors. At Christmas time there are the chocolate coins we all get in our stockings. Then there’s Valentine’s Day with heart-shaped boxes of fancy chocolates. And then stores go straight into the chocolate bunnies of Easter.
A few years ago some artistic type displayed a lovely portrait of the Blessed Virgin, Mary, Mother of our Lord and employed the media of elephant dung. Another gallery displayed a crucifix in a vat of human urine.
At least Cosimo Cavallaro used 200 pounds of milk chocolate to sculpt his life-size statue of Jesus.
Of course, he used 200 pounds of milk chocolate to sculpt a life-sized, naked, and apparently anatomically-correct Jesus. Most crucifixes discreetly cover Jesus’s privates with a carefully draped loincloth, but it’s not likely that the Romans were so discreet to those being crucified. But are we, who celebrate the Circumcision of our Lord every January 1, actually offended by a Jesus with his loins ungirded?
Why chocolate? Apparently the artist is a bit avant-garde, using food as media in a number of his works, including covering a house in Wyoming in 5,000 pounds of pepper jack cheese, Twiggy (the model) in processed canned cheese, a bed in slices of ham, and a number of other similar “edible” projects.
He’s clearly a creative kind of guy. Considering his other pieces, a chocolate corpus isn’t that bad.
The chocolate Jesus was originally completed in 2005 and bore the name, “I did it daddy” according to Cavallaro’s online gallery (search and view at your own risk – be prepared for some offensive language and images). When the piece was being prepared for a 2-hour per day Holy Week showing in the front window of a New York City gallery, it had been given the name, “My Sweet Lord”.
One journalist, Yahoo’s David Kao, has an interesting take on the whole situation. He writes, “If art is free to express itself, however, so too the public is free to declare judgment. And so with this piece of “art” I can freely say that I think it is absurd… but also that in some ways it is actually the perfect piece of art for holy week. Why? Because it reminds all of those who follow Jesus of how he was mocked and ridiculed, how he was scorned and beaten, how he was humiliated… and all because of his love for us. Those are good things for his followers to remember.”
So what, exactly, is offensive, about this rendition? Is chocolate an inherently inappropriate media for sculpture? Christians rallied to have the gallery pull the display, successfully. But it is “scandalous” and “sickening”? Why is this particular chocolate Jesus more offensive than the ones for sale this chocolate Jesus (and Mary) or this chocolate Jesus?
Is it that an artist is depicting Jesus in non-traditional media? Is it that Jesus is depicted at ALL? Is it chocolate? Would it be better if the artist used bread and wine? Is there something wrong with my sensibilities that I don’t get what the hoopla is about?
by Sandra Ostapowich
