A chocolate incarnate finally makes its debut

Volume 2, Number 6 | The Weekly Newspaper of Chelsea | November 16 - 22, 2007

Photo courtesy of The Proposition

Sculptures from Cosimo Cavallaro’s exhibit “Chocolate Saints…Sweet Jesus,” at The Proposition, in Chelsea, through Nov. 24.

By Stephanie Cain

It’s been a bittersweet month for artist Cosimo Cavallaro.

Cavallaro’s milk chocolate sculptures—yes, that delicious dessert substance— have raised controversy with conservative Catholics, not only because of the medium but also the message. The figures? A nude Jesus Christ and eight clothed saints. All chocolate. All fleeting, as they will eventually decay. All exhibited at The Proposition gallery in Chelsea through Nov. 24.

“Chocolate Saints…Sweet Jesus” is Cavallaro’s second attempt at displaying his works that he said comment on the divine religious experience and the commerce of religion. The first time, at the Roger Smith Hotel’s Lab Gallery in Midtown Manhattan in April, strong protests by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights shut down the exhibit, and Cavallaro received anonymous death threats at his Brooklyn studio.

The saint sculptures look surprisingly graceful for being molds of 400. The Jesus sculpture is a one-of-a-kind.

But where exactly does chocolate figure in?

Cavallaro’s creations are not meant for consumption in the traditional sense. His sculptures look more like marble figures than Russell Stover Easter Bunnies. Not quite the technical achievement of a Michelangelo, the figures do resemble accurate humans, especially the life-size Christ, which lies on his back on a table.

They aren’t quite edible, either, except to mice, which ate the first Sweet Jesus. (The one exhibited is a modified version of the original.) And unless a buyer’s taste buds enjoy the steel-and-burlap support system, they’re not really consumable.

But Cavallaro did not intend for Jesus to be eaten like those Jesus medallion-shaped candies sold at Christmas and Easter. He said that the chocolate represents the consumption of the image of Jesus, which has for centuries been promoted by the Catholic Church to seduce its viewers into believing. He links the idea to his theory of pornography, saying that just as pornography is the repetition of an image to arouse, the Church uses the repetition of figures to cement the faith in the mind of believers.

“It’s the commercialization of the image of Jesus,” Cavallaro said. “It’s like, How much can you eat of this? Consume of this? They kept feeding the image.”

It’s the seduction aspect that initially had the Catholic League up in arms last March, as the first show was about to launch. That and the fact that it was shown in a gallery on Lexington Avenue, where unknowing passersby could look in and see the naked body hanging as if on the cross. But this time around, Cavallaro received a somewhat sweeter response. The Catholic League said that while they didn’t approve, they wouldn’t protest.

“The timing was appalling, right before Easter,” Keira McCaffrey of the Catholic League said about the first exhibit. “It was an assault on Christian sensibilities. He [Cavallaro] was being provocative. It was the combination, the fact that it was edible, it was nudity and it’s location.”

McCaffrey said that the show’s current location in Chelsea is more of a destination: a second-floor gallery with no view of the show through windows. It is less obvious to unsuspecting tourists, she explained. In other words, it’s not in the mainstream.

The exhibit did coincide with Nov. 1, All Saint’s Day in the Catholic religion. Ronald Sosinski, the director of the gallery, said that he chose the timing of the show to be a celebration of the saints, making it an honorable installation. The gallery does, however, receive about 100 letters a day attacking the artist’s work.

“It’s all right-wing Christians who have never seen the show, just basing their judgment on the previous controversy, that Jesus is edible,” Sosinski said. “Everyone who’s been to the gallery and seen the show have only positive things to say. ”

But the critics are still out there, and so is the religious chocolate candy. And at every mainstream Catholic holiday it pops up.

“A chocolate head is not something I’d buy,” McCaffrey said of edible chocolate religious figures, then hesitated. “But it’s not meant to be sensational.”

Sarah Hart, owner of Alma Chocolate in Portland, Ore., began selling religious figures like crosses and the Virgin Mary four-and-a-half years ago. Her chocolates are adorned with gold leaf and fully edible. While the business and Hart were never on the receiving end of a Catholic League protest, a You Tube video castigating her edible religious imagery circulated on the Internet.

“I was shocked by the comments on that,” Hart said of the video. “It’s like, it’s okay to make a cheesy plastic Virgin Mary nightlight, but not a high-quality chocolate?”

“Chocolate has a cultural and historical meaning; even the Aztecs thought chocolate had religious associations and healing powers, “ Hart continued. “Just the language of chocolate of has a religious connection: We talk about chocolate being sinful and divine.”

Hart said she had heard about Cavallaro’s controversial art and understands his interpretation of the religious iconography. She said she isn’t sure why the Catholic League made such a “big deal” out of the situation.

As he reflected on it earlier this week, Cavallaro said that the Catholic League’s hypocritical response is just what needed to happen to support his view about the control Catholic Church asserts on its promotional images.

“They say, ‘This is edible’ when you eat the body of Christ every week at church,” he said of the Eucharist, the bread symbolizing Christ given to Catholics each Mass. “There is something sexual about that. They put religion on physicality, not spirituality. I think my sculpture proved that.”

Cavallaro has had some interested buyers for his sculptures, which range from $1,800 for a saint to $50,000 for the single Jesus. But he said he would rather not sell them and instead wants to set up a permanent installation where the pieces could slowly deteriorate as they naturally would, to simulate the process of disappearing.

“It’s fragile. It will melt. It won’t last forever,” he said of his Christ. “That is the beauty of it.”

A high price for something so ephemeral, but chocolate is always a momentary pleasure.