In 2008 China shocked the world with its Olympic opening ceremony. It grabbed the whole world by its pussy without being rude.
Everyone expected the opening ceremony to be a stiff and regimented affair, showcasing Chinese military might in a way Mao would approve of if he were looking. Instead, it was much more terrifying, as it was elegant and sophisticated. We wanted to see an artist’s expression of authoritarianism, but we were dazzled by a creative display of coordination and synchronised efficiency instead.
The Chinese used the one aspect of their country they knew the West understood and was afraid of – their population size – and turned it into something startling in its beauty. The first scene projected was a giant digital clock, counting down the seconds to the start. In reality, it was 2008 individual drummers with lights, manually turning them around to make up numerals with such precision that it looked like the work of a computer.
In tableau after tableau, the Chinese used humans as pixels in giant images which looked like AI creations or mechanical constructions. It was thousands of Chinese working together to create something novel, as they did when they invented paper, the printing press and gunpowder.
The next morning, I gathered with colleagues around the water cooler, as I suspect many around the world did, and we whispered to each other: “We are probably fucked, aren’t we?”
Many people had a similar sentiment after viewing the opening ceremony for the Paris Olympics 2024, but for different reasons.
Got terribly upset
In particular, one scene at a fashion show sparked a strong reaction. The scene included a group of loosely choreographed drag artists and icons of counter-culture engaged in a festivity. Many people thought the scene looked a lot like Da Vinci’s famous painting, The Last Supper, which has become an important religious symbol for much of the Christian world. Some of them got terribly upset about it and said so.
Other people got even more upset about the upsetness. Good grief, the debauchery, offensiveness and brutishness of it all. How lustfully we all passed the spark of outrage to each other till it reached a fever pitch that outshone the fireworks on the Seine. I am all for righteous indignation, polemic and bigotry, but it has to make sense, goddammit. If arguing badly was an Olympic sport, there would be so many gold medals awarded merely to people on my Facebook friends list, that there would not be enough precious metal left to make a golden calf to worship.
The artistic director of the show, Thomas Jolly, officially denied being inspired by either Da Vinci or Satan. Thus people resorted to artistically directing their own logic! A post by an art historian claimed the scene was based on Van Bijlert’s Feast of the Gods. The post went viral.
Suddenly, everyone was an art expert. I discovered a Wikipedia entry on Van Bijlert’s painting within the first 20 minutes of it being published, claiming an association with the ceremony. Here is the problem with the Van Bijlert theory (apart from the fact that Jolly didn’t claim it) – the artwork itself was based on and inspired by the layout of Da Vinci’s painting.
Visual dilemma
Leonardo, despite his problematic white and patriarchal attitudes, solved a visual dilemma by depicting the infamous scene in the Bible. Previous renditions often struggled to get all the faces nicely into one frame. Some earlier paintings on the topic featured round tables, which resulted in people having their backs to the audience. Da Vinci, with considerable aesthetic harmony, created a linear line-up. The recipe was copied by many artists after that and is still used in TV sitcoms today. You can see everyone in one shot at the same time on one side of the table. Da Vinci, Van Bijlert or the devil? Whodunnit?
In the interest of inclusivity, I consulted a gay Christian friend who pointed me to another painting in the genre. It is called Feast in the House of Levi, which I believe was the true inspiration for the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony. If you too want to become an art expert overnight, save time and skip past the mentions of Van Bijlert and Bellini and go straight to Veronese. It will explain everything. Trust me on this.
In 1573 the Dominicans of SS in Vienna commissioned Paolo Veronese to paint for them their own rendition of The Last Supper. They gave him a larger canvas so the whole world would stand amazed, which it did.
When you look at Veronese’s artwork, you can definitely see Da Vinci’s painting in there. There were so many extra figures in it, however, that it spoiled the resemblance for the client. There were additional soldiers, axe-wielding Germans and a dog, to name a few. It was a lovely dog and well painted; it’s just that the client had expected Mary Magdalene to be seated at Jesus’ feet, not a spaniel. The Tribunal of the Holy Venetian Inquisition was so affronted they put Veronese on trial.
“Poets and madmen”
In response to questions as to why there were so many unusual characters in the painting Veronese answered: “Painters take the same poetic licence that poets and madmen take, and this is how I made these two soldiers, one drinking, the other eating, at the foot of the stairs, though both ready for prompt action.”
Inquisition: And the figure dressed as a jester with a parrot perched on his hand, why did you represent him?
Veronese: He is decorative, as is customary.
Inquisition: What is (St Peter) doing?
Veronese: He is picking his teeth with a fork.
Inquisition: Do you think it is appropriate that the Last Supper of Our Lord includes jesters, drunks, Germans, midgets, and the like?
Veronese: No, your honour.”
Since they could not erase the painting, Veronese was severely reprimanded by the tribunal, ordered to make some adjustments at his own cost, and they changed the name of the painting to: Feast in the House of Levi. My friend suggested that that the 2024 Olympic committee tried a similar trick. We can’t prove anything, yet both Jolly and Veronese had eerily comparable responses to the accusations levelled against them: “I do not mean to defend it, my intentions were only good,” replied Veronese. “I was told to create the painting as I saw fit. It was large and I could accommodate numerous figures.”
Depending on your worldview, Jolly’s blue man with balls hanging out might be slightly more dignified than St Peter picking his teeth with a fork. However, if you can’t see that the Folies de Paris was an accurate reconstruction or reincarnation of the Feast in the House of Levi, you must be a Satanist, a far-right loony or an idiot. Give an artist carte blanche and a public a blank canvas to comment upon and this is what happens.
Zulu drag queens
I am looking forward to hiring Jolly for when the Olympics come to South Africa and he shows Piet Retief and his buddies getting blasted on Klipdrift and Coke while being attacked by an impi of Zulu drag queens in leopard skin loincloths. It should be a jol. My friend certainly indicated an interest in front-row tickets.
I can’t recall people being this angry at each other about an issue since we fought about a conflict in Ukraine that nobody really comprehended and the hostilities in Israel that people pretended they understood. On the bright side, we are so busy clutching pearls and poking bears that, when a real war breaks out, we won’t notice because we will be bickering about whether it was Mao or Lao Tzu who said: “A revolution is not a dinner party or painting a picture.”
We all played our part in this fiery interactive farce. We are like the soldiers in Veronese’s painting: present, drunk and ready for action; if only we knew what the action was.
[Image: Detail from Paolo Veronese’s The Feast in the House of Levi, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feast_in_the_House_of_Levi#/media/File:The_Feast_in_the_House_of_Levi_by_Paolo_Veronese_(edited_2).jpg]
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