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The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980's
Audio Book
Art History20th Century United States HistoryGeneral Art
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ISBN13: 9798228638624
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Published: Aug 12 2025
Language: English
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Published: Aug 12 2025
Language: English
Circa 1980, tradition and authority are in the ascendant, both in Catholicism and in American civic life. But the public is deeply divided on issues of body and soul, devotion and desire. Enter the figures Paul Elie calls cryptoreligious--Leonard Cohen writing Hallelujah on his knees in a Times Square hotel room; Andy Warhol adapting Leonardo's The Last Supper in response to the AIDS pandemic; Prince making the cross and altar into signs o' the times. In Elie's acclaimed first book, The Life You Save May Be Your Own, Catholic writers ventured out into the wilds of postwar America; in this book, creative figures who were raised religious go to the margins of conventional belief, calling forth controversy. Episodes such as the boycott sparked by Madonna's Like a Prayer video and the tearing-up of Andres Serrano's Piss Christ in Congress are early skirmishes in the culture wars--but here the creators (not the politicians) are the protagonists, and the work they make speaks to conflicts that remain unsettled. The Last Supper explores the bold and unexpected forms an encounter with belief can take. It traces the beginnings of our postsecular age, in which religion is at once surging and in decline. Through a propulsive narrative, it reveals the cryptoreligious imagination as complex, credible, daring, and vividly recognizable.
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