The Paris Olympics’ Altar to an Unknown God

The controversy over the Paris Olympics’ alleged mockery of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper throughout the opening ceremony takes us all the way in which back to ancient Greece. Not to Olympia, the positioning of the unique Games, but to Athens, as documented by the evangelist Luke in Acts 17. Then, as now, Christians needed to navigate a tragic misunderstanding of the Good News, and the apostle Paul’s patience with the foolishness of the Greeks (1 Cor. 1:23) just might turn out to be useful as we watch the 2024 Games.

For a few years, I assumed that Paul should have commended the religiosity of the superstitious Athenians along with his tongue firmly in his cheek. But the longer I spend with this story, the more I think my initial reading to be incorrect. Just read verses 22 and 23:

Paul then stood up within the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you’re very religious. For as I walked around and looked rigorously at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: To An Unknown God. So you’re blind to the very thing you worship—and that is what I’m going to proclaim to you.”

There’s no sarcasm here. Paul seems real in his praise. Despite the undeniable fact that the town’s quite a few idols “greatly distressed” him (v. 16), he found something to admire and used the Athenians’ extreme superstition as a gap for the gospel. Could we try the identical with Paris?

But, first, I have to concede that the artistic selections made with this tableau are undeniably awkward, seriously shortsighted about audience reception, and distasteful at best. I understand why many Christians were offended—though I have to also note that evidence for what was intended is inconclusive. Scholars disagree on whether this was a deliberate parody or unwitting allusion, and it’s unlikely that the offended will get a satisfying apology or the confused a concrete answer.

So where can we go from here? This type of thing has happened before, and it’ll occur again. Do we now have an option apart from being offended or turning a blind eye? Is it possible to reflect on this in a more helpful way, and even perhaps to mimic Paul and advance the gospel?

A very good place to start is to ask, “Why might the creators of this spectacle have desired to borrow Christ’s table in the primary place?” This is just not an unusual move within the art world, which has no shortage of references to classic images like Da Vinci’s. Contemporary artists allude to and appropriate Christian imagery on a regular basis. From an art history perspective, the reference itself isn’t all that novel or significant—what matters is the meaning it’s given.

For instance, Andres Serrano’s 1987 photograph, Piss Christ, offers almost no nuance, which is why it continues to generate outrage amongst Christians. By contrast, Andy Warhol made an in depth series of paintings based on Da Vinci’s Last Supper at the top of his life. Those works proceed to receive thoughtful engagement, including from Christians, that’s changing the way in which scholars take into consideration Warhol’s spirituality.

Determining whether such references are intentionally offensive or just inside baseball for art school grads—or a latest incarnation of the confused longing of the Athenians—is usually a troublesome call. That’s exactly what’s disputed with the banquet imagery from the opening ceremony in Paris. Were the organizers honoring the unique—Da Vinci’s masterpiece and/or Dutch artist Jan van Bijlert’s Seventeenth-century The Feast of the Gods—by searching for so as to add to its meaning, or were they demeaning or redefining it?

Image: WikiMedia Commons

Feast of the Gods by Jan van Bijlert

I think the reply comes right down to whether we consider the possible Last Supper reference pictured Christ and the disciples in a wildly inappropriate or out-of-character way. Superficially, the reply could seem to be a simple yes: The disciples were replaced with drag queens, and rather than the Lord’s Supper on the table was an almost nude man, painted blue.

But a part of the explanation it’s so hard to shake the connection to Da Vinci, despite the Olympics’ insistence that the one intended reference was Greek mythology, is that the performance in Paris appears to be pressing the query of who belongs at that special table. And we must do not forget that Jesus himself pressed this issue time and again in his ministry by dining with “sinners and tax collectors” (Mark 2:15–17). Disturbing the established codes for table fellowship got Jesus in loads of trouble, and—off-putting though it was for a lot of viewers—this performance could have been an try and do the identical.

Looking beyond Paris, though, Christians will probably want to rethink our possessive instincts around Christian imagery. I get it. As an art history professor at a Christian college, I routinely find myself getting grumpy about sloppy appropriations of “our” stuff. I could make an extended list of recent examples from movies and tv that got me worked up.

Yet it’s helpful to recall two things which will temper this response. First, our ancient Christian brothers and sisters were often at a loss for methods to each reject idols but additionally depict their faith, so that they recurrently appropriated ready-to-hand visual cultures of their Greco-Roman neighbors. Take a glance on the central scene within the ceiling mosaic of the Arian Baptistry in Ravenna, Italy. Is that a river god present at Jesus’ baptism?

Image: Ввласенко / WikiMedia Commons

Baptism of Christ, a mosaic in Arian Baptistry

Or compare the numerous depictions of Jonah under his vine (for instance, the British Museum’s Jonah sarcophagus) to portrayals from the traditional world of Dionysus or Endymion, reclining under dangling vines. Artists borrow from one another, whether or not they’re Christians or not, and early Christian use of pagan imagery provided visual camouflage to survive essentially the most severe seasons of Roman persecution. With time, that practice of subverting familiar forms gave approach to creating wholly latest ones. (Recall that Christians didn’t depict Christ on the cross for eight centuries after his resurrection.)

This is a component of why it’s difficult to settle the reference query in Paris: The Feast of the Gods looks rather a lot like The Last Supper, so even when the Olympics only had Van Bijlert’s painting in mind, as claimed, the tableau would still appear like Da Vinci’s painting. These works have shared sources, and one generation’s art inevitably informs one other. We can’t accept that sort of cross-pollination when it really works for us and complain when it doesn’t.

Whether we prefer it or not, masterpieces like Da Vinci’s, created by and for the church, are a part of a shared cultural heritage that may proceed to encourage successive generations of artists, generating plenty of hits and loads of misses. Would we actually prefer it otherwise? Perhaps we are able to learn to marvel on the endurance of those images in a secularizing world.

And that brings me to the second reason we should always resist knee-jerk condemnation: Why do these images still resonate? Why did the organizers of one among the few truly global events of contemporary life select this image?

I think the choice says an excellent deal concerning the spiritual needs of our time. In his response to the media after the backlash, the artistic director described the scene as an image of inclusion. He could have chosen many alternative ways to precise that value, but he selected a picture that, for good or ailing, brings to mind Jesus dining along with his betrayer and instituting a meal by which all believers remember him.

Are we actually disenchanted by that selection? Or could we see here a slipshod grasping for truth amid desperation, loneliness, and unconscious eager for God—a grasping that deserves our compassion? Could we, like Paul in Acts 17:27, hope that this tableau’s organizers and fans “would seek [God] and maybe reach out for him and find him, though he is just not removed from any one among us”?

Jesus himself was mischaracterized by his friends and enemies alike. He showed immense patience with the confusion that followed him wherever he went, responding not with outrage or indifference but with probing questions, well-timed calls to repentance, and announcements of the gospel. Even stern ol’ Paul, disturbed by the gross idols around him, found a approach to redirect a confused people to God.

Taylor Worley is visiting associate professor of art history at Wheaton College and writer of Memento Mori in Contemporary Art: Theologies of Lament and Hope.