BR 12:05, Oct 1996
When Andy Warhol died in 1987, the public knew him mainly as the Pope of Pop. He was that white-haired, avant-garde artist who hung out with rock starsan irreverent iconoclast who tested the boundaries of art by painting the icons of popular culture, like Marilyn Monroe and Campbells Soup cans. But Warhol had another side, private and seldom shared, that he revealed in many of his later works. In the two years before his death, Warhol, a life-long Catholic, produced more than a hundred prints and paintings on religious themes, many of them based on Leonardo Da Vincis Last Supper. In Jesus as Pop Icon: The Unknown Religious Art of Andy Warhol, Jane Daggett Dillenberger suggests that Warhols beautiful, challenging Last Supper paintings reflect his struggle to reconcile his intense religious devotion with the profane but powerful images of American popular culture.