Layers of representation: The facture, experience and meaning of Peter Greenaway's Last Supper

Abstract

In 2008, Greenaway projected a sequence of dynamic digital images onto Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper in the Santa Maria delle Grazie refectory for one night, accompanied by an orchestral soundtrack. This event was then transformed into a series of installations and projections (referred to here as orchestrations) exhibited in Milan (2008), Melbourne (2009) and New York (2010-11). This thesis focuses on the refectory event and first-hand experience of the New York Last Supper. Greenaway’s Last Supper is a multimedia orchestration involving architecture, sculpture, projections, video footage, performance art and prints. Although this work has attracted little academic attention to date, it is the argument of this thesis that each of these aspects deserves detailed art historical analysis. Many reactions to the refectory event characterise Greenaway’s work as a traducement of Leonardo’s esteemed original painting in Milan, relegating Greenaway’s Last Supper to the status of a copy. The thesis challenges this dismissive response by examining how Greenaway’s Last Supper work employs a complex layering of representations afforded by his use of multimedia techniques, several steps removed from the Leonardo painting. I also situate Greenaway’s work within the larger context of a tradition of appropriation in contemporary artworks by Sherrie Levine, Andy Warhol, Yasumasa Morimura and Thomas Struth, which also, similarly, create layers of representation. Greenaway’s New York Last Supper is a large-scale, composite orchestration that interweaves numerous aspects, or ‘layers’: the digital projections and orchestral soundtrack from the refectory event, a bespoke facsimile instead of Leonardo’s painting, a partial replica of the refectory, and a large three-dimensional cinematic space among other layers and presentations. The complexity of this orchestration requires a systematic analysis of each layer in terms of its facture, how the viewer experiences each of these, and how these aspects contribute to meaning and interpretation overall. This thesis develops a methodology for this purpose, informed by Greenaway’s own creation of layered meaning and artifice in his work.