When Jesuit artist Nicholas Leeper first contacted the
Sheen Center for Thought and Culture about a possible exhibition, he
imagined it as a culminating moment before the next stage of his
formation.
Over the previous two years, Leeper's paintings — colorful works
blending Byzantine iconography with the visual language of pop art and
advertising — had appeared in group exhibitions across the United States
and abroad, including in Europe, the United Kingdom and Peru. But he
had never gathered the work together in a solo exhibition.
"I thought it would be good to do like a show, a solo show, to kind
of show all of this work in one place," Leeper told National Catholic
Reporter.
The Sheen Center, founded by the New York Archdiocese in 2015 as a
venue for dialogue between faith and contemporary culture, seemed like a
fitting location. Leeper said he reached out in December after noticing
that the gallery calendar for spring appeared open.
After several rounds of discussion, Leeper said, the center agreed to host the exhibition in May.
About two weeks before the opening, however, the exhibition was
abruptly canceled. "They emailed me saying they got some phone calls,
emails expressing concern about the work," Leeper said. "And then they
called me and said it's canceled."
The exhibition, titled "Twilight of the Idols," takes its
name from Friedrich Nietzsche's 1889 critique of Christianity and
modern morality. Leeper's paintings place familiar forms of commercial
advertising inside the structure of Byzantine icons.
In one of the central works, "Madonna and Child (Tomatokos)," Mary
appears as a smiling 1950s housewife from a Campbell's soup
advertisement, holding a can of tomato soup instead of the infant Jesus.
The picture "The Visitation" reimagines Mary and Elizabeth as figures
in a midcentury cigarette advertisement, leaning toward one another in
conversation and recognition.
"Madonna del Parto (Once Upon a Time ... in Bethlehem)" portrays a
pregnant Mary through the image of Sharon Tate, suspended between
expectancy and uncertainty. While in "Santa Abraham (The Three
Strangers)" Abraham is depicted as a Santa Claus figure from a vintage
Coca-Cola advertisement.
The work is intentionally provocative, but Leeper describes the
project less as an attack on religious imagery than as an invitation to
reconsider it.
"For us Jesuits, it's finding God in all things," he
said. "How can we really see God working through all art forms, not just
the ones we like?"
Leeper said he was never told who objected to the exhibition or what
specific concerns had been raised. Surprisingly, one of Leeper's works
remains displayed in the rectory of St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York.
The Sheen Center for Thought and Culture did not respond to NCR's request for comments.
Leeper described the cancellation as disappointing and "certainly a
shock," particularly given the Sheen Center's role as a cultural
institution connected to the New York Archdiocese. Yet the setback
proved brief.
Within a day, the exhibition had found another home. At lunch in the
Downtown New York Jesuit residence where he lives, Leeper informed
Jesuit Fr. Kenneth Boller, pastor of the Church of St. Francis Xavier, about the cancellation.
"We were in the Jesuit dining room, and he said he had
just gotten the bad news. And I said, 'How many pictures do you have?
How much space does it need?' We looked around the dining room. I said,
'The Mary Chapel will do very well.' That's it," Boller said.
The exhibition ultimately opened May 9 in the Mary Chapel at St.
Francis Xavier Church in partnership with Xavier High School, where
Leeper teaches art, Scripture and ethics.
"I appreciate his work and the perspective he has on it to present
our own Catholic belief that the Holy Family and the various saints were
ordinary human beings touched by the divine," Boller said. "And so
using the pop art medium to depict it is a way to get you to rethink
what you see."
To explain the tradition Leeper's work draws upon, Boller pointed to older forms of sacred art.
"There's a wonderful exhibit
on Raphael in the Metropolitan Museum of Art now," he said. "Raphael
has wonderful pictures of Mary, Jesus, John the Baptist, etc., all
through the image of Renaissance art, the style of clothing, the manner
in which they hold themselves, the surroundings are from the perspective
of his time and place, beautifully done. But that's not how Mary
looked."
He also referenced images of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which depict Mary
as an Indigenous woman appearing to Juan Diego in 16th-century Mexico.
"The point of it is that Our Lady relates to the Indigenous people as
well as everybody else," Boller said.
Leeper's work, he argued, operates similarly, but through the imagery of modern consumer culture.
"What Nick does is a different medium, but it's the same idea,"
Boller said. "He uses the medium of pop art, the '50s and '60s
commercialism, to say, 'What would an ordinary person do?' "
Jack Raslowsky, president of Xavier High School, said he was
disappointed by the cancellation at the Sheen Center. "I think it's a
missed opportunity on the part of Sheen," Raslowsky said to NCR. "I
would always hope there's dialogue and conversation before decisions are
made, and that was lacking here."
Like Boller, Raslowsky viewed the exhibition as an invitation to
reconsider familiar religious images. "How many works of art of the
Blessed Mother look the same, right?" he asked. "Reality is not that
simple. Life isn't that simple. The Blessed Mother's not that simple.
God's not that simple."
The exhibition's move to St. Francis Xavier also placed it within
institutions with long Jesuit traditions emphasizing dialogue,
intellectual inquiry and engagement with culture. Xavier Church in New York is internationally known
for being a welcoming Catholic hub at the forefront of social justice
issues, such as the environment, the fight against racism, and LGBTQ+
inclusion, especially during the AIDS epidemic. Leeper connected his
project to broader questions about aesthetics, faith and identity within
contemporary Catholicism.
"Right now, there's this kind of return to this older
Catholic aesthetic, which is great and fine," he said. "But I think we
can't be so close-fisted about our style preferences, our aesthetic.
What we should be close-fisted about is our ethic, that we care about
the good, the true, the beautiful, not aesthetically, not just in looks,
but in meaning."
For Leeper, the title "Twilight of the Idols" also reflects what he
sees as a danger of turning particular artistic styles into absolutes.
"Sometimes we think like Jesus must look like this and that, he must
be a white guy, he must be half naked on a cross," he said. "That is an
aesthetic, but that's not the only way to depict him."
"When we look at those things and think that's the only way our
church should look, or when we go to our parish and we find something we
don't like in the liturgy, and we think that's the only way, like, this
can't be, 'We need it to look the way I want it to look,' we're kind of
becoming idolaters in a certain sense," he added. "We're worshiping the
thing rather than God."
Leeper said some viewers initially skeptical of the work
became more receptive after discussing it. Among the most enthusiastic
responses, he said, came from his students.
For Raslowsky, the educational value of the exhibition lies in its ability to unsettle assumptions.
"I think good art helps us break free of those limits," he said. "And
then hopefully helps us enter into relationship with that God who loves
us beyond all understanding in new ways."
"There are no limits to that love," he added. "There are no limits to
that forgiveness. There are no limits to God's hopes, dreams and
desires for us."
The controversy surrounding "Twilight of the Idols" arrives at a
moment when Catholic aesthetics have gained renewed visibility among
younger generations, especially online, while debates over tradition, liturgy and artistic expression continue within the church.
Leeper said he hopes the exhibition can contribute to those conversations rather than deepen divisions.
"With the polarization and the silos, that's really because we don't
talk to each other," he said. "And I feel like art is something to talk
about. Art brings us together to have that conversation."
