Religion and its hold on contemporary pop-culture and art: David LaChapelle
<p>Art, by its very nature, remains to be a nuanced and subjective experience for each individual audience member, thus, as society progresses, notions of what qualifies an artwork as ‘valuable’ continue to come into question. Known for his eccentric album covers and commentary on celebrity and pop-culture, David LaChapelle, utilizes his artwork as a vessel to push boundaries regarding traditional and contemporary perceptions of artwork and the binaries in which audiences use to regard it as ‘valuable’.</p>
<p><img alt="" src="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:512/0*U-kuVo3L3v2RVNCa" style="height:379px; width:512px" /></p>
<p>‘Last Supper’ (from the series Jesus is my Homeboy), 2003.</p>
<p>Post-modern artists such as David LaChapelle often utilize art history and religious imagery to create pieces that challenge the audience’s views of religion, forcing them to view it through a modern lens.</p>
<p>LaChapelle utilizes vibrant imagery to explore pop-culture, religion and art history through a surrealist lens.<strong> LaChapelle’s pieces are often humorous or provocative</strong>, exploring ideas such as religion through <strong>contemporary or bizarre imagery.</strong></p>
<p>This is especially prevalent throughout his piece ‘Last Supper’ (from the series Jesus is my Homeboy), 2003. Reinterpreting ‘The Last Supper’ by Leonardo da Vinci into a contemporary landscape. Through this piece, he refocuses the lens from a traditional piece, such as ‘The Last Supper’, renowned amongst millions, towards more pressing, contemporary societal issues as seen through the urban landscape illustrated within the piece. He is modernizing the life of Jesus, reimagining iconic religious imagery into the landscape of a contemporary living room, sitting amongst a table of friends.</p>
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