Art Historian, Jessica Beck: I've always been fascinated to think about Warhol working on these images of Christ. He was raised Byzantine Catholic. And I think it’s a very important throughline in who he was as an artist and who he was as a person.
My name is Jessica Beck, and I’m an independent curator and Warhol scholar.
This is Andy Warhol’s Last Supper from 1986. It's made from a reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, and Warhol has brought in details from different advertisements. In the center, in soft pink, is “Dove” from the Dove soap. And the dove floating above Christ's head couldn't be more direct of thinking about the Holy Spirit. Also, Dove points to this idea of a clean, or a pure body.
At that time, the fear and panic of the AIDS crisis had started to take root in the US. There’s a lot of targeting gay men, in particular, as the bearers of AIDS. In Warhol’s community, people were dying. Warhol’s boyfriend was this young, aspiring Hollywood producer, Jon Gould. Jon gets sick with pneumonia in 1984, and when he passes, what was once this very strong, physically fit man died blind and at 90 pounds with AIDS.
So Warhol's fixation on the dove in this painting or Christ is so interesting when we can see it through that lens of both the time period and then who Warhol was. It becomes this beautiful expression of forgiveness and mercy during the 1980s AIDS crisis.