There are plenty of ways to send Christians into a froth-mouthed
rage, but artist Cosimo Cavallaro seems to have struck upon an
intriguingly brand new one - he's made a life-sized chocolate
statue of Jesus being crucified with his balls out.
Cavallaro's chocolate Jesus statue - titled My Sweet Lord - was all
set to be exhibited at the Lab Gallery in New York this week, but
after a flurry of outrage from high-ranking Catholics, seemingly
furious that an artist has insinuated that Jesus had normal
genitalia, the chocolate Jesus show has been cancelled. It's
undoubtedly a disappointment for Cosimo Cavallaro, though, who
didn't even have time to pump the chocolate Jesus full of Cadbury's
Creme Egg filling so that delicious fondant squirted out of his
crucifixion wounds.
Despite being dead for a few thousand years, Jesus is still in high
demand with rubbish Jesus films being made all the time, rappers
dressing as Jesus for magazines, old ladies copying Jesus for cash
and movie directors digging up all sorts of Jesus coffins whenever
the mood takes them. But Christians don't seem to appreciate all
this Jesus talk, and routinely appear to garble outraged soundbites
whenever anything like this happens. Sometimes the outrage is
reasonable - when Tom Cruise was compared to Jesus, for example -
and sometimes it makes them look slightly foolish, like when they
tried to sue The Da Vinci Code. But nothing has polarised opinion
more that Cosimo Cavallaro's chocolate Jesus.
Up until now, the only person famous enough to warrant a life-sized
chocolate statue was Elton John, but he's been superseded by Jesus,
who is slightly more famous despite not having written Honky Cat.
We're taking a wild stab in the dark here, but we're guessing that
by making a chocolate statue of Jesus being crucified, Cosimo
Cavallaro was making a sincere statement about how the various
religious aspects of the Easter holidays have been steadily eroded
by chocolate egg-led materialism in recent years. In hindsight,
however, Cosimo would have probably got his point across better if
he hadn't stuck a big cock on the front of the Jesus statue,
because it's caused something of a shitstorm that's resulted in the
exhibition being cancelled. ABC reports:
A planned Holy Week exhibition of a nude, anatomically correct
chocolate sculpture of Jesus Christ was canceled Friday after
Cardinal Edward Egan and other outraged Catholics complained. The
"My Sweet Lord" display was shut down by the hotel that houses the
Lab Gallery in midtown Manhattan. Roger Smith Hotel president James
Knowles cited the public outcry for his decisionÂ… But word of the
confectionary Christ infuriated Catholics, including Egan, who
described it as "a sickening display." Bill Donohue, head of the
watchdog Catholic League, said it was "one of the worst assaults on
Christian sensibilities ever."
As a protest about the cancellation of the chocolate Jesus
exhibition, the creative director of the Lab gallery has resigned
in protest as what he sees as a "strong-arming" by people jumping
to conclusions about an artwork they've never seen, including
several distinctly unchristian death threats against gallery
workers and Cavallaro.
But perhaps it isn't the chocolate Jesus' penis that's causing so
much outrage - after all, that's a problem that you can fix with a
hairdryer - but the material of the statue. Jesus wasn't made of
chocolate in real life, you see; we've been to a Catholic church
and so we know that Jesus was a giant walking loaf of bread with
booze for blood. In the name of Easter, we hope that the angry
Catholics and Cosimo Cavallaro can put their differences aside and
create a compromise; one that keeps fans of both chocolate Jesus
and bread Jesus happy. Perhaps a statue of Jesus made of a pain au
chocolat or a big Nutella sandwich.
