It would be easy to dismiss Jamie and this photograph as the self-obsessed, if not blasphemous parody of a great painting, offered by a wealthy person to their rich clients – and that would be somewhat true. However other aspects of Beck’s work – her painterly studies of flowers, foods and landscapes in her newly adopted country, suggest a contemplative gaze and a desire to penetrate beneath the surface of things to deeper realities. Beck describes her Last Supper created in 2017, shortly after her move to France – as a ‘multifaceted portrait of myself’. It cleverly retains many features of Leonardo da Vinci’s original – the twelve disciples grouped in threes, reminiscent of the Trinity; the central ‘Jesus’ figure forming between head and two hands a perfect triangle; Judas as the only disciple with their elbow on the table hiding money and spilt salt; Peter looking angry and wielding a knife to remind the viewer of his later angry reaction to the soldier in Gethsemane; John inclining towards Jesus. The figure of Philip, the most questioning in Leonardo’s painting, is here represented by the figure with the hat and the camera, perhaps suggestive of Beck’s own interrogation of the scene.
I invite you just to spend a couple of moments now in quietness taking in the picture as a whole and noticing perhaps resonances and dissonances from the familiar original that strike you...
a time of silence
Is it I, Lord?
Leonardo da Vinci attempted to portray the apostles’ reactions to Jesus’ assertion that one of them would betray them – and their faces portray variously horror, fear, anger and astonishment. Behind Beck’s work however is the question they each ask, and which might perhaps be our own question tonight – ‘Is it I Lord?’ The work suggests that each of us has aspects of our own personality that mirror those of the apostles; that each of us might wield a sword, betray the Christ or have the capacity for love depending on the circumstance. It reminds us that we are only ever partially known, even to ourselves and that each of us has capacities for good and evil of which we are largely unaware.
The striking red-clad figure of Jesus in Beck’s interpretation, suggests perhaps the True Self, known only in God – assertive without aggression; wise and compassionate to all that is happening but unmoved by it. The hair drawn back to form a classic almond mandorla shape, suggests the impassivity and meditative stillness of a Buddha. The candle that burns before them a reminder both of Christ as light of the world, and of the practice of lighting candles before an icon – the central figure in this case an icon of our inner Christ-like nature and our capacity to be shaped in the likeness of Christ. I invite you now just to spend a couple of moments in quiet looking at the central Christ figure as an image of the True Self and allowing yourself to read and be read by that portrait...
a time of silence
speaking into our human complexity
As Beck presents them, the figures represent something of a continuum, from her more masculine self on the extreme left, to the nude feminine figure on the right that plays perhaps with notions of left and right brain. There is a constant interplay of colour, half of the figures being clad in white or buff tones, and the other half in black; half with their hair constrained in some way, half with it out – and enough mixing and ambiguity in all that to preclude any simple binaries. Beck is trying to suggest something of the complexity of what it is to be a human being, at once faithful and promiscuous, generous and greedy, courageous and fearful. Take a moment now in the silence with that continuum and see if there is perhaps one figure that strikes you more than the others – what is it speaking into in your own life as you come here this Maundy Thursday night?...
a time of silence
what is God saying to us tonight?
For Beck we are all the figures in the Gospel account – and more; and all the figures are also us. Each of them invites us to see, welcome, accept some part of ourselves that is also part of the Christ. So how are we turning up tonight? From what parts of ourselves are we turning away? What parts of ourselves are we choosing to nurture appropriately – and which perhaps to over indulge? As the body and blood of Christ, how are we holding and embodying Christ in the world around us? What are we allowing ourselves to express or repress that is hurting or healing others?
Beck says of her own practice of photography: ‘you make art for you. Because it feels good to you. It’s healthy for you. You have something to say.’ However, the effect of her art and her inner reflection – as perhaps of any spiritual practice that leads us beyond ourselves – is to transform those who look at it. Her reflective process, her contemplative gaze upon herself and her environment invites our own. The table she sets – reminiscent of simple meals on simple tables in Provence is full of subtle symbols and subtexts beyond those of bread and wine – garlic, lemons, passion orchids, dusty books full of words pointing to the Word. What’s on your table, your plate tonight? Are you warding off evil, seeking cleansing and renewal, seeking a word of life and peace in a world that seems intent on destroying itself? Let’s just take a couple of final moments in silence to think about that and what Christ might be offering us at this table of reconnection and transformation...
a time of silence
‘Is it I Lord?’. It is me, it is you, it is all of us in our complexity and our simple need. And may Christ say to each of us, ‘Come, for all is prepared. This is my body. This is my blood. We are the body of Christ – do this to remember them – all of them’. Amen.
by Penny Jones, at Pitt Street Uniting Church, Maundy Thursday, 28 March 2024