You had to be there. A hyperbolic production that fuses the hokey theatricality of “son et lumière” (sound and light) tourist attractions with the razzle-dazzle antics of Cirque du Soleil was on view at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City until January 6, 2011. Leonardo’s Last Supper: A Vision by Peter Greenaway, a kitschy, multimedia spectacular (kitschtacular?), is basically a photographic reconstitution of da Vinci’s famous fresco, punched up by films, lighting, music, and voice-overs. Masterminded by Greenaway, the Welsh-born impresario, filmmaker, and artist (with a strong interest in architecture), this splashily souped-up phantasmagoria sought to heighten the experience of a work of art painted in 1498 for the convent refectory at Milan’s Santa Maria delle Grazie.
The original fresco remains in Milan, fragilely holding onto its aura, while its “clone,” as it is called by Factum Arte, the Madrid- and London-based digital production company that created the photographic facsimile, has been painstakingly mounted here in an exactly dimensioned, abstractly rendered reconstruction of the chapel and refectory. The Last Supper clone owes its physical (but not spiritual) substance to high-resolution images made with three-dimensional scanning machines and ink-jet printers rolling over plaster panels mounted on aluminum sheets.
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