Susan Dorothea White Bibliography

In this essay, the use of postmodern rhetorical irony as a subversive strategy is explored. In particular, Susan Dorothea White's painting, The First Supper, is analyzed as a subversive, postmodern ironic reading of Leonardo da Vinci's famed work, The Last Supper. This analysis suggests that subversive irony assumes distinctive and complex technical and theoretical characteristics, most relevant to its postmodern nature; chief among these is the fact that the irony invites multiple readings on multiple levels, thereby creating multiple potential audiences. Significantly, although the subversive function of irony in this instance may be apparent to a postmodern audience, the text may be just as likely to function hegemonically for other audiences.

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To illustrate how postmodern irony functions as a subversive strategy, I analyzed The First Supper, by Susan White. This painting, which exemplifies postmodern irony, has as its premise Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. Indeed, White (1988) states that The First Supper represents an explicit “challenge [to] the acceptance of the image of thirteen men on one side of a table as a celebrated symbol of a patriarchal religion.” In this essay, I first provide a description of each artifact in order to establish rhetorical context. Next, I provide a two-part analysis of the rhetorical strategy of postmodern irony that is at work. In the first part of this analysis, I explore points of congruence, technical and thematic, across the two artifacts; I discuss those features of The Last Supper that White has retained in her painting. In the second part of the analysis, I address the points at which the two artifacts diverge, including those aspects of da Vinci’s original that White has rejected or reconstituted in her work. I then explore whether and how The First Supper challenges the ideological tenets of The Last Supper, based upon my analysis of the relationship between the two artifacts. Finally, I discuss the potential of postmodern irony as a strategy of resistance and subversion.

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In her painting, The First Supper, Australian artist Susan Dorothea White challenges da Vinci’s depiction of the legacy of Western Christianity on a number of apparent levels. Acrylic on wood and measuring 4'4" × 8'4", this work was exhibited originally in Munich, Germany, in 1988. White (1988) explains that, in addition to her desire to challenge patriarchal religion as represented in The Last Supper, the 1988 Australian Bicentennial influenced her painting. The Bicentennial generated a controversy in Australia regarding the appropriateness of celebrating the white invasion of Aboriginal life and land. In The First Supper, the Christ figure has been replaced with an Aboriginal woman wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the Aboriginal Land Rights flag. The table is adorned with a variety of luscious fruits, vegetables, and prepared foods characteristic of the Australian diet. The world beyond the room, framed by the window in the background, features the bright, arid Australian landscape and includes Uluru, a large rock and sacred site especially symbolic to Aboriginal peoples because of its recent (at the time of the painting) return to them by the Australian government.

In her painting, White also acknowledges that Australian society is composed of more than just European colonizers and Aboriginal natives. The figures who replace Christ’s disciples in the painting “represent women from different regions of the world, who are part of Australian society today” (White, 1988). These women are dressed in traditional garb corresponding to their ethnicity and/or nationality. Notably, the only white person present is the woman who replaces da Vinci’s Judas.

The physical proportions and elements of da Vinci’s painting have been duplicated exactly by White in The First Supper. Indeed, White (1988) describes the pains she has taken to replicate scrupulously the physical dimensions of The Last Supper: She notes that she “used a calculator to construct my composition in proportion to Leonardo’s.” She has gone so far as to use the same mathematical Fibonacci series that da Vinci employed in order to convey consistently the missing feet (due to erosion) of The Last Supper in her piece. The only instance in which she deviates, she points out, is with regard to the “impossible configuration of Peter’s arm,” which she suggests is unlikely to be da Vinci’s work (as opposed to that of a restorer, presumably). Instead, White strives for a more natural rendering of the movement by the woman who replaces Peter in The Last Supper by “altering the elbow to an inward-pointing position” (White, 1988). Although the mechanics of White’s scrupulous precision probably are lost on the lay viewer, her meticulous replication of form guarantees the reference to The Last Supper.

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The contents of the table in The First Supper differ radically from those featured in The Last Supper. Only the bread is retained; as White (1988) notes, the wine has been replaced with glasses of water, which symbolizes purity and cleansing. This particular replacement implies a rejection of exploitation and violence as hallmarks of spirituality; the figurative blood of da Vinci’s work is absent. Thus, the bread is decontextualized, no longer representative of a body to be consumed.

The most striking difference between the two table settings is the fact that The First Supper depicts a table laden with a dazzling and colorful array of lush fruits and vegetables, as well as a bright blue-green emu egg, a fresh crab, and a fresh fish. In her artist’s statement (1988), White explains that she has placed each item strategically to correspond to the native origin of the woman depicted immediately behind it. The overall effect of voluptuous abundance enhances the feminine qualities of White’s piece and, again, challenges the notion that denying the physical (sensual) enriches the spirit. Instead, sensual indulgence and pleasure are encouraged in this rendering of the spiritual. In The First Supper, the physical and the spiritual are inextricably linked, and abundance is vital to both.