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Leonardo's Last Supper: a Vision by Peter Greenaway

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Leonardo's Last Supper: a Vision by Peter Greenaway PARK AVENUE ARMORY HOUSE PRESENTS PROGRAM LEONARDO’S LAST SUPPER: A VISION BY PETER GREENAWAY DECEMBER 3, 2010 — JANUARY 6, 2011 1 www.armoryonpark.org PARK AVENUE ARMORY IS NEW YORK CITY’S MOST EXCITING NEW ARTS CENTER, DEDICATED TO VISUAL AND PERFORMING ART THAT CANNOT BE MOUNTED IN TRADITIONAL MUSEUMS AND PERFORMANCE HAllS. board of directors Chairman Marvin Chudnoff Joel I. Picket Elihu Rose, PhD. Sandy Ehrenkranz Joel Press President and CEO Michael Field Genie H. Rice Rebecca Robertson Karl Katz William D. Rondina MG Edward G. Klein, NYNG (Ret.) Janet Christine Ross Adam R. Flatto, Vice Chair Arie L. Kopelman Jeffrey Silverman Marjorie L. Hart, Vice Chair Kenneth S. Kuchin Donald J. Toumey William A. Ackman Stephen Lash Harrison M. Bains Pablo Legorreta Founding Chairman, 1999-2009 Kent L. Barwick Burt Manning Wade F.B. Thompson Cora Cahan Anne L. Millard 2 www.armoryonpark.org Photo: dbox LEONARDO’S LAST SUPPER: A VISION BY PETER GREENAWAY PARK AVENUE Production Credits ARMORY PRESENTS ITALY OF THE CITIES (Prologue) VERONESE’S WEDDING AT CANA (Epilogue) a project of Change Performing Arts, Milan a project of Change Performing Arts, Milan commissioned by the Italian Trade Commission (ITC) in cooperation with Fondazione Giorgio Cini LEONARDO’S LAST SUPPER: and originally promoted by Ambassador and Semana de Musica Religiosa de Cuenca Umberto Vattani in collaboration with Sociedad Don Quijote de Conmemoraciones for the Italian Pavilion of World Expo Shanghai 2010 Culturales de Castilla La Mancha A VISION BY Curator Franco Laera Curator Franco Laera Concept Uberto Siola Visual Design Reinier van Brummelen Dancer Roberto Bolle Photography Adam Lowe / Factum Arte Video Editing Elmer Leupen PETER GREENAWAY Original Texts Peter Greenaway Video Design Matteo Massocco Music Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli: Grand Ceremonial Music Photography Luciano Romano for the Coronation of Doge Marino Grimani Calligraphy Brody Neuenschwander Antonio Vivaldi: Concerto for Bassoon, String Bass Continuo Image Research Laura Artoni with Elena Ciapparelli and Federico in A Minor Del Prete Sound Design Huibert Boon and Stefano Scarani DECEMBEr 3, 2010–JANUARY 6, 2011 HOLIDAY HOURS Scientific Commitee Uberto Siola, Renato Capozzi, Francesco Dubbing Editor Huibert Boon Showings are on the hour. There is no late entry. December 24 (Christmas Eve): 12:00–4:00 pm Collotti, Gianni Fabbri, Gino Malacarne, Daniele Vitale, Sound Studio Boon & Booy Last showing is one hour before close. December 25 (Christmas Day): CLOSED Federica Visconti Video Design Matteo Massocco December 31 (New Years Eve): 12:00–4:00 pm Catalog Skira, 2010 Video Editing Irma de Vries Tuesdays–Sundays: 12:00–8:00 pm January 1 (New Years Day): 12:00–8:00 pm Assistant Video Design Neda Gueroguieva Monday, December 27: 12:00–8:00 pm LEONARDO’S LAST SUPPER Digital Sculptor Rod Seffen a project of Change Performing Arts, Milan Vfx Production Eva Haak Wegmann (Closed all other Mondays) For information and ticketing, please visit with the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities / Catalog Charta, 2009 www.armoryonpark.org or call (212) 933-5812 Superintendency for Architectural and Environmental Heritage of Milan CHANGE PERFORMING ARTS, MILAN originally commissioned by Fondazione Cosmit Eventi under the Artistic Directors Franco Laera & Elisabetta di Mambro patronage of FederlegnoArredo Financial and Operating Director Franco Gabualdi in collaboration with the Municipality of Milan/Culture and the Project Managers Matteo Massocco, Valentina Tescari Italian Trade Commission (ITC) Video Programming Nicola Grillo, Marco Tufariello supported by the Italian Ministry of Economic Development Technical Director Amerigo Varesi Curator Franco Laera Light Design Marcello Lumaca Visual Design Reinier van Brummelen Props Master and Decorator Marco Teatro Music Marco Robino Production Coordinator Izumi Arakawa Performed by Architorti: Giovanna De Liso, Efix Puleo, Logistic and Organization Lidia Gavana, Kristine Grazioli Piermichele Longhin, Serigo Origlia, Marco Robino, Press Office Laura Artoni Paolo Grappeggia Visual Technology Andrea Bianchi, Reinhard Bichsel, Virginia Sound Editing Stefano Scarani and Huibert Boon Forlani, Valeria Palermo High Definition Photography HAL9000 / Haltadefinizione Administration Patrizia Mangone Facsimile/Clone Production Factum Arte: Adam Lowe with Bianca Set Installation Goppion under coordination of Maurizio Morini Nieto Gomez, Rafael Rachewsky, Michael Roberts, Piers Wardle Digital Media Partner Mediacontech Group / Euphon An initiative by I SALONI MILANO Video Editing Irma de Vries A project of CHANGE PERFORMING ARTS, Milan Video Design Matteo Massocco PARK AVENUE ARMORY Production Digital Sculptor Rod Seffen with the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities / Superintendency for Architectural and President and Executive Producer Rebecca Robertson Compositing Neda Gueorguieva Consulting Artistic Director Kristy Edmunds Environmental Heritage of Milan, in collaboration with the Municipality of Milan/Culture, the Italian Trade Installation PhotographyPLuciano Romano / Technical Director Townsend Olcott Commission (ITC) and supported by the Italian Ministry of Economic Development. Additional support provided Change Performing Arts Catalog Charta, 2008 by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the Robert Lehman Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts, celebrating 50 years of building strong, creative communities in New York State’s 62 counties. 4 www.armoryonpark.org As a prelude to the architectural paintings of da Vinci Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, Picasso’s 1937 Guernica sought to emphasize the portraits of the 12 disciples that PETER GREENAWAY: and Veronese – to house them, protect them, inspire in the Reina Sophia Museum in Madrid and Velasquez’s reflect their identities and ages and their relationships to A DIALOGUE WITH ITALIAN them – we have made an introductory prologue of an 1636 Las Meninas in the Prado, Madrid, Monet’s 1920 Christ. We have isolated the musical disposition of the Italy of the Cities. Water Lilies in Paris, Seurat’s 1884 La Grande Jatte in frieze of active hands and their gestures which, it is said, ART & ARCHITECTURE Chicago, Pollock’s 1950 One:Number 31 in MoMa, New play out a musical score that reflects the Song of Solomon TEN CLASSIC PAINTINGS REVISITED York, and Michelangelo’s 1541 Last Judgment in the and Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. ITALY OF THE CITIES Sistine Chapel in the Vatican in Rome. We have had two thousand years of Western painting We have searched out the disposition of the objects on For at least two thousand years of competitive separate and only 115 years of cinema. Both are supposedly in the table – plates, glasses, cutlery, meat, fish, fruit and LEONARDO DA VINCI’S THE LAST SUPPER city-states, Italian urban life developed with great the business of delivering ideas by making pictures, by chicken bones, whose arrangement, some say, creates a ingenuity and variety but always kept in mind a desire making images. The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci was painted in plan of the night sky seen over Northern Italy, at Easter, for a complete domestic lifestyle that is enviable. 1498 at the height of the Renaissance in Milan, in the Do they do it well? Do they share the same language? showing the position of the planet Pluto, four hundred center of Northern Italy, almost exactly one thousand A great deal of this lifestyle was centered around the Are they in the same business? years before this planet was discovered by astronomers five hundred years after the biblical event it depicts. piazza, nominally a square with a fountain or basin in in 1930, all the while being not unaware that the How is it that they are both slaves to text? Painting was the center, and the four sides representing the four major The painting is regarded as the most significant perspective representation of the table is different from an illustration of text till almost the start of cinema, and aspects of civilized life grouped around in harmony – representation of the much-depicted biblical story the perspective of the room such that should an accurate have you ever seen a film that did not start life as a text, religion, politics, culture and commerce – the church, in which Christ ate with his disciples in a suburban three-dimensional model be made of the painting, the a bunch of words? the town-hall, the opera-house and the market. Jerusalem restaurant on a Thursday evening and crockery and cutlery would slide forward off the table – Supposing we try to hold a dialogue between the two? announced he was about to be betrayed to the legitimate painter’s license to marry illusion with retinal Backed by parallel and associated streets, this piazza To mingle and share and cross-refer their vocabularies, authorities as a prelude to his arrest, torture and death and compositional satisfaction. serviced a community of perhaps a thousand people, so to speak. To use painting to fix and stabilize and limit on Friday, before his resurrection on the following before another piazza opened up to do the same all A painting such as this viewed by the faithful and the and frame the image…and to use cinema to make a Sunday. over again, maybe on a smaller and more modest scale, skeptical, by historical experts and aesthetes and wishful painting move and change, have a temporal life and have maybe on a larger scale. A casual Jerusalem evening meal becomes a super- thinkers hoping for magic,
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