The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980's

Circa 1980, tradition and authority are in the ascendant, both in Catholicism and in American civic life. But the public is deeply divided on issues of body and soul, devotion and desire. Enter the figures Paul Elie calls "cryptoreligious"-Leonard Cohen writing "Hallelujah" on his knees in a Times Square hotel room; Andy Warhol adapting Leonardo's The Last Supper in response to the AIDS pandemic; Prince making the cross and altar into "signs o' the times."



In Elie's acclaimed first book, The...