Final Friday, the Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony featured a efficiency by drag artists gathered round an extended desk. Instantly, conservative Christian politicians and Catholic management expressed disgust and condemnation at what they believed was a recreation of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Final Supper” (1495–98). The Vatican’s consultant for the Olympics, Bishop Emmanuel Gobilliard, mentioned the efficiency deeply damage him, whereas Donald Trump known as it a “shame” and Elon Musk denounced it as “extraordinarily disrespectful.”
Opening Ceremony Director Thomas Jolly was fast to appropriate conservative critics of the efficiency, clarifying that it was impressed by Greek mythology, with many pointing to Dutch artist Jan Harmensz van Bijlert’s 1630 portray “The Feast of the Gods.” Nevertheless, Paris 2024 spokesperson Anne Descamps apologized, together with the Worldwide Olympic Committee.
The extreme pushback and flurry of apologies make two issues obvious: the lack of know-how of Christianity’s artwork historic roots in paganism, and the way the conservative backlash had nothing to do with artwork historical past.
Critics who incorrectly declare that the drag performers had been imitating “The Final Supper” are reinforcing Christian hegemony, or the supremacy of Christianity as a framework of social, political, and non secular life. The truth that they instantly recognized the efficiency, that includes a semi-nude blue Bacchus, the Roman god of wine and merriment, as their faith’s most well-known feast speaks to their very own restricted understanding of artwork historical past. Christian artwork is, the truth is, deeply rooted in pagan iconography.
Early Christian artists typically drew inspiration from depictions of Jupiter, knowledgeable by earlier depictions of his Greek counterpart Zeus, when visualizing their God and his son Jesus. These identical early Christian artists borrowed naturalist pagan symbols, corresponding to fish, doves, olive branches, and lambs, which have now turn out to be central to Christianity. Final Friday’s ceremony didn’t “co-opt” something Christian as a result of none of it belonged to Christianity within the first place.
The efficiency was truly an genuine illustration of the historical past of Greece and its brainchild, the Olympic Video games themselves. Bacchus — the counterpart to the Greek Dionysus — is historically depicted as androgynous, a part of his position as a god of transformation. Historic Bacchanalia, feasts dedicated to Bacchus, might have included queer celebrations, and trendy bacchanalia — reflective of the rising recognition of devotion to historical Greek and different pre-Christian deities — typically function Delight elements.
That is what Paris’s opening ceremonies depict: a Bacchanalia reinforcing the divinity of LGBTQ+ people who find themselves more and more returning to pagan devotions when they’re solid out of or depart church buildings that abuse and persecute them, such because the Catholic Church that funded lots of of Final Supper work. Many drag performers are Christian, and to argue that they don’t have any place recreating iconographic artwork is to disclaim their very own non secular histories. As pastor and drag queen Marge Erin Johnson mentioned in an Instagram put up responding to critics of the Olympics ceremony, “Drag is a sacred artwork. It’s a non secular expertise to remodel your self by way of the artwork of drag.”
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Even when final Friday’s efficiency had been a reference to Leonardo’s “The Final Supper,” it will nonetheless be true to the Catholic Church’s artwork historical past. The idea of depicting Jesus and his apostles as queer isn’t new. Some depictions of the Final Supper, arguably Leonardo’s, depict a femme Jesus and his homoerotic relationship with John the Apostle. In 1998, Swedish photographer Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin staged photos of Jesus carrying heels and surrounded by disciples in drag in her 1998 sequence Ecce Homo. Artist Barry Brandon’s “First Queer Supper” reimagines the scene with gender-expansive apostles. Drag artists have additionally carried out as Jesus by way of their artwork, together with Yvie Oddly, Cybil Conflict, and Landon Cider, and artist Petty Indecencies has created glittery portraits of Jesus in drag from Messiah work discovered at thrift shops.
The backlash in opposition to the Olympic opening ceremony was by no means about artwork historical past or “The Final Supper.” It was about wielding faith as soon as once more to sentence LGBTQ+ folks, censor their artwork, and get queer performers off the stage. However as French drag queen Nicky Doll, who carried out within the ceremony, succinctly responded, “We ain’t going nowhere.”