Peter Greenaway's Light Show on Leonardo's Last Supper

An Art-House Film Director Takes On 'The Last Supper'

Artists have been riffing on Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper" for decades, from Salvador Dali's 1955 painting to Brazilian artist Vik Muniz's chocolate-syrup version. Now, Peter Greenaway has joined them



Mr. Greenaway is best known as the director of such art-house films as the well-received "The Draughtsman's Contract" (1982) and "The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover" (1989), which featured graphic sex and cannibalism. But he started out as an art student. This installation, at the Park Avenue Armory in New York, recreates the refectory of Milan's Santa Maria delle Grazie, home of da Vinci's masterpiece.

For 16 minutes, a series of cinematic projections and an accompanying original soundtrack will play over a copy of the painting that, through the use of high-resolution 3-D scanners, faithfully reproduces the original. It's the first time Mr. Greenaway has shown any of his installation art in the U.S.



Mr. Greenaway projected images on the original in Milan for one night in 2008, then on a nearby replica in an exhibit that drew 55,000 visitors. "The Last Supper" was selected because of its iconic status and because of its increased popularity following the novel "The Da Vinci Code." Through the artist's manipulation of light, at various times the figures in "The Last Supper" can appear three-dimensional, and the time of day seems to change.



The installation was part of a series made on classic works of art, beginning with Rembrandt's "The Night Watch" in Amsterdam and continuing with a reproduction of Paolo Veronese's "The Wedding at Cana" at the 2009 Venice Biennial.



Mr. Greenaway, who spoke by phone from Europe recently, said the idea of the series is to draw people back to the classics via modern technology. "There is a feeling around that the laptop generation believes there is no painting before Jackson Pollock and no cinema before Tarantino, and we have to prove them wrong," he said.



Besides his art career, Mr. Greenaway started writing operas in the 1990s and more recently has traveled around the world as a video jockey, doing light shows in various venues.



The Park Avenue installation will have a prologue, showing in its own room and featuring projections focusing on Italian architecture, and an epilogue including scenes from "The Wedding at Cana." Mr. Greenaway says one might characterize the "Last Supper" installation as "immersive cinema." Then he added, "But that sounds a bit pedantic. It's not a very catchy phrase."

—Katherine Bindley

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