Abstract

Art

The almost exact coincidence in time between the destruction of the Buddha figures by the Taliban in Afghanistan and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's renewed jihad against the Brooklyn Museum, New York City vividly underscores the problems that authorities seem to have in dealing with images. It hardly matters whether it is most sophisticated city in the world or one of the world's most backward countries. Artist Renee Cox's suddenly famous photograph which shows a naked woman, at a dinner party, has been stigmatized by Mayor Giuliani, as indecent and anti-Catholic. It is in fact neither. The title, as everyone in the world now knows, is Yo Mama's Last Supper, but Yo Mama has been one of the ways in which Cox has referred to herself. The central figure in Yo Mama's Last Supper, since nude, is hardly ambiguous in point of gender. But it is ambiguous as to whether it is literal or symbolic representation.