Peter Greenaways Original Fake
A 3D â??Last Supper" at Park Avenue Armory By [Nicholas Wells] Peter Greenaway"s films's such as The Belly of an Architect or The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover's have always dealt with different forms of betrayal, usually between spouses and lovers. His new installation focuses on a betrayal at the center of Western culture and art. In Leonardo"s Last Supper: A Vision By Peter Greenaway, the filmmaker illuminates da Vinci"s centuries-old painting through a near perfect â??clone of the original and breathtaking cinematic devices. Greenaway has made it his mission to re-educate the public as to how to interact with art. â??Just because you have eyes doesn"t mean you can see, he explained during a speech he made at a recent event for the installation. In our text-based society, familiar images have been reproduced and satirized so many times, he argues, that we have lost the ability to truly see them. â??Last Supper is intended as the second in a list of 10 paintings's that will potentially include Picasso"s â??Guernica, Seurat"s â??La Grande Jatte and even perhaps Michelangelo"s â??Last Judgment 's with which Greenaway plans to engage in his innovative manner. Using technology to create a stunning visual experience, he says he hopes to â??create a dialogue between 8,000 years of art and 115 years of cinema. For the most part, this installation is visually stunning. After a ridiculously triumphant travel experience, titled â??Italy of the Cities 's which was conceived for the Italian pavilion at the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai's visitors are allowed to enter the main event. A three-dimensional replica of the refectory at Santa Maria delle Grazie has been built in the Park Avenue Armory"s drill hall. At one end of the room â??hangs the clone of Leonardo"s â??Last Supper, dimly lit and exuding surprising power. Centered in the room before the painting is a plaster-cast rendering of the table in the painting, complete with food, wine glasses, the purse of silver that Judas was given for his betrayal and St. Peter"s knife. A spotlight illuminates the painting and sweeps slowly across the figures assembled at the table. Shadows from outstretched hands and bodies dance across the scene in a seemingly three-dimensional still life. Sunlight streams in from the gridded ceiling and moves across the sky in two accelerated days. Then moonlight floods the room like a prison searchlight, casting an eerie blue light, revealing the guests frozen in their shocked positions. The visuality of the projection is more impressive and believable than most contemporary 3D movies. At times the scene appears as a Bavarian woodcarving, at times as a plaster cast of itself, with a spotlight dispersing color as it slowly pans. Wine spills from the table only to disappear as a light passes over. Greenaway revels in the technology available to him and makes good on his challenge that â??it"s a responsibility of all contemporary artists to use contemporary tools of technology. Leonardo would be proud. For no clear reason, other than to train one"s attention on the spectacle, the sequence runs twice and is accompanied by a exultant score that includes Vivaldi and Gabrielis. In the most visually interesting bit, the hands of the assembled are highlighted. Their individual positions could be a series of hand studies, or a warm-up exercise for a shadow-puppet class. After the Vision, viewers are ushered back to the antechamber to see a version of Greenaway"s analysis of Veronese"s â??Wedding at Cana. The painting, a subtle refutation of the Protestant Reformation, depicts the site of Christ"s first miracle, turning water into wine. Greenaway"s installation, complete with booming voiceover, focuses on individual characters from the painting and we hear their private conversations on the miracle they have just witnessed. What of the copy itself? The painting is recreated down to the smallest detail and is virtually indistinguishable from the original. Factum Arte, the company that produced the clone, used 3D scanning, color matching and a high-definition panoramic photo process to duplicate both â??Last Supper and â??Wedding at Cana. The original â??Last Supper began to deteriorate just four years after completion, and viewings are still limited to a few people a day. During Milan"s Design Week, organizers decided to make use of Greenaway"s clone to allow more people to see the â??Last Supper than could be accommodated in the refectory alone. Patrons could choose to wait in line for hours for a quick peek at Leonardo"s masterpiece or reserve a seat to experience Greenaway"s vision of the painting. So we are ultimately left pondering whether this clone is a fake original or an original fake.