Is this really that bad? (No offense intended to Catholics or other Christians)

[tevarin]

Update: The hotel hosting the gallery canceled the display, citing fears for their safety. I think there's a big difference between calling in to express displeasure (or even a commercial boycott) for a perceived insult, and sending death threats. The first is defensible; the second is censorship through terror

Comments

[vrimj]

What do you want your dieities to incarates as? Fluffy bunnies? The most beautiful bull? Showers of gold?

Human seems the most useful form in general use without needing a special order carnal body which would tip your hand.

[tevarin]

In modern Judaism, the deity doesn't incarnate at all. The sight is thought to be too intense, maybe inherently fatal to onlookers

[vrimj]

But wouldn't an incarnation solve the burning eyeball exploding brain problem? Having a handy meat puppet seems the resasonable answer. The problem would be if the meat puppet was taken as diety instead of as a tool of the diety, which christains do seem a bit conflicted about.
Greeks and other "primiative" people were clearer about the meat puppet idea, which might be why the forms could be more amusing.

[vrimj]

On the one hand, it seems a little suspicious that God would hide his face. I mean, what's He/She trying to conceal?

And what does God need with a starship?

When Moses on Mt. Sinai gets to talk directly one-on-one with God, and see a glimpse of his "back" (face or full-frontal view is specifically forbidden for safety reasons), that's a big deal.

If you look at the complete Sistine Chapel ceiling, there is actually a funny visual pun along these lines, in the panel where God is creating the Sun. I don't know if it was deliberate, or if it even could have been, but it's funny now.

Is God Black or White or Japanese?

This is actually another facet of the sculpture at issue: it's brown chocolate, rather than white chocolate, bringing the race of Jesus issue into play.

Personally, I think that the statue is great, but perhaps also I am missing something being a non-Christian.

--josh

i like your interpretation...

[metahoss]

though he didn't need to include the penis to get those two messages across...i think the uproar comes because people are by and large repressed, and since religion (especially Catholicism) is a major agent of repression, they find this portrayal unsettling...which is after all one of the main goals of art (at least according to some). If you count forcing people to consider the full implications of an incarnate deity as a third goal for the sculpture, then of course the loincloth must go.

Regarding visualizations of the Creator, even before the burning bush there was this: http://scripturetext.com/genesis/1-27.htm

Re: i like your interpretation...

[tevarin]

Good points. Along with the lack of loincloth, the choice of a specifically sensual, romantic food like chocolate (rather than, say, rock candy) could well be a deliberate attempt by the artist to emphasize the sexual nature of the work.

I'd agree that the book of Genesis seems much more comfortable than later books with an anthropomorphic deity, and even one that walks among humans. Adam and Eve seem less..awestruck than their descendants.

Re: i like your interpretation...

[tevarin]

I found a link to the sculpture.

http://www.cosimocavallaro.com/

Scrap my above theory. As far as I can tell, it's not meant to be sexual at all, just a somewhat emaciated (or maybe dehydrated?) naked man.