Last Supper – Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s

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Temporarily out of stock

ISBN: 9781250437938
Title: Last Supper – Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s
Author: ELIE PAUL

Circa 1980, tradition and authority are in the ascendant, both in Catholicism (via Pope John Paul II) and in American civic life (through the Moral Majority and the so-called televangelists). But the public is deeply divided on issues of body and soul, devotion and desire. Enter the figures Paul Elie calls \”crypto-religious.\” Here is Leonard Cohen writing \”Hallelujah\” on his knees in a Times Square hotel room; Andy Warhol adapting Leonardo’s The Last Supper in response to the AIDS pandemic; Prince making the cross and altar into \”signs o’ the times.\” Through Toni Morrison, spirits speak from the grave; Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen deepen the tent-revival intensity of their work; Wim Wenders offers an angel’s-eye view of Berlin; U2, the Neville Brothers, and Sinead O’Connor reckon with their Christian roots in music of mystic yearning. And Martin Scorsese overcomes fundamentalist ire to make The Last Temptation of Christ-a struggle that anticipates Salman Rushdie’s struggle with Islam in The Satanic Verses.

The Last Supper explores the bold and unexpected forms an encounter with belief can take. It traces the beginnings of our postsecular age, in which religion is at once surging and in decline. Through a propulsive narrative, it reveals the crypto-religious imagination as complex, credible, daring, and vividly recognizable.

Format: Trade Paper
Publication date: 26/05/2026
Pages: 496
Temporarily out of stock