Black Supper

1991

Five cibachrome prints face mounted on plexiglas

114.5 x 82.5 cm (45 1/16 x 32 1/2 in.) (each) Overall dimensions: 114.3 x 426.7 cm (45 x 168 in)

Preceded by his sulphurous reputation, Andres Serrano exhibited the polyptych Black Supper based on Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper. He photographed cheap casts of the painter's work and immersed them in water, milk and body fluids such as urine or blood. The saints are painted black, creating an end-of-the-world anxiety.

Black Supper offers a critique of an idolatrous world. The artist claims he is a believer but questions our relationship to religion and the images it conveys. “I don't feel like I'm destroying icons,” he says. I think I'm creating new ones.”

Andres Serrano's Black Supper is in the Pinault Collection. It was presented for the first time during the 2008 “Passage du temps” (“Passage of Time”) show at the Tri Postal in Lille.

Exhibitions