{"id":23768,"date":"2013-11-06T14:46:45","date_gmt":"2013-11-06T20:46:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=23768"},"modified":"2025-11-07T22:10:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T05:10:13","slug":"brad-slaughs-feast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/brad-slaughs-feast\/","title":{"rendered":"Brad Slaugh’s Feast"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

At thirty-three feet long, Brad Slaugh\u2019s\u00a0Feast<\/em>\u00a0just barely fits into his studio. It may be the most monumental mural drawing created in Utah in recent years (1998). Pieced together from 48 pastel drawings, the work makes it difficult to achieve optimal viewing distance \u2014 even in the artist\u2019s sizable studio. But size isn\u2019t everything. Other aspects of this work speak to its ambition \u2014 and genuine grandeur.<\/p>\n

Displayed last month at Poor Yorick\u2019s biannual open house,\u00a0Feast<\/em>\u00a0is not just the artist\u2019s masterpiece. It is a paean to epicurism, and also to Utah. Assembling twelve super-sized dinner guests along a makeshift table, the lateral composition and its proximity to the picture plane begs comparison with that other dinner party we all know so well. In contrast to Leonardo\u2019s illusionistic room, Slaugh\u2019s guests are cramped up against a wall, the knots in the veneer screaming of basement rec rooms. Along the left edge, a partial figure in the form of a hand surreptitiously holds out a ham and cheese sandwich. Reminiscent of the Sistine Chapel\u2019s famous \u2018Hand of God\u2019 \u2013 or perhaps Monty Python\u2019s, it tantalizingly suggests a thirteenth sitter, and flirts with Leonardo\u2019s numerology.<\/p>\n

Beyond this,\u00a0Feast<\/em>\u00a0diverges from\u00a0The Last Supper<\/em>\u00a0in important ways. Slaugh\u2019s dinner guests, for instance, are Everyman. They lack the decorum of the apostles and could be anybody\u2019s uncles and aunts, half-brothers and step-moms. Clearly, time has not been kind to them. Their flesh hangs from their bones, perhaps in a nod to Lucien Freud or Eric Fishl. Suggesting the sloth that comes from a lifetime of television viewing, they are signifiers of the downtrodden, the aged and the infirm, and every bit as proletariat as Courbet\u2019s peasants.<\/p>\n

Wearing stylistically obsolete clothes, a sense of nostalgia for seventies fashion and furniture emerges. As such, Slaugh pays homage to a generation of folks just \u2018making do\u2019 on the fringes of society, trapped in that time machine called Utah. He also toys with their proportions, dwarfing some and enlarging others; creating giants only a\u00a0Trollhunter<\/em>\u00a0could love.<\/p>\n

Appropriately, they are faced with the greatest of consolations: a large meal, and the gastronomic catastrophe laid out in front of them adds an element of\u00a0jouissance<\/em>\u00a0to the composition. The table, propped up like the one in Robert Campin\u2019s\u00a0Merode Altarpiece<\/em>, displays a cornucopia of processed foods, along with an unconscionable amount of mustard. The gooey and acrid splendor of American condiments flows to but one thing: indigestion. An anathema to Mormon restraint and sensibility, we are but a small step away from Francis Bacon\u2019s open carcasses. And then there\u2019s the ham and cheese sandwich, hardly the stuff of Passover meals.<\/p>\n

Surprisingly, Slaugh informs me that the sitters would self-identify as Mormon. And yet, they challenge the more conventional model, of mission suits and bleached out smiles. This begs the question: are they heirs to the apostles, or perhaps usurpers? As Latter Day Saints, the gospel has fallen to this motley crew to disseminate. Should we be comforted? Concerned? There may be no greater question facing Utahns today.<\/p>\n

While situating this dilemma in modern-day Utah, and infusing it with a more universal, tragicomic humanism,\u00a0Feast<\/em>\u00a0becomes Leonardo\u2019s legacy. Unlike the\u00a0Last Supper<\/em>, which has been a stable fixture in Milan for half a millennium,\u00a0Feast<\/em>\u00a0is still in search of a home, itself a drifter in the land of Zion.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

Feast<\/em>\u00a0is hanging for a limited time at Brad Slaugh\u2019s studio at Poor Yorick Studios in South Salt Lake. A new painting by Slaugh will be featured in an exhibition to open at Charley Hafen Gallery in November. You can view more of the artist\u2019s work at\u00a0bradslaugh.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At thirty-three feet long, Brad Slaugh\u2019s\u00a0Feast\u00a0just barely fits into his studio. It may be the most monumental mural drawing created in Utah in recent years (1998). Pieced together from 48 pastel drawings, the work makes it difficult to achieve optimal viewing distance \u2014 even in the artist\u2019s sizable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1542,"featured_media":23771,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,14],"tags":[697],"class_list":["post-23768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts","tag-brad-slaugh"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/blog_brad_slaugh.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-07 17:22:38","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1542"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23768"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98065,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23768\/revisions\/98065"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}