La Nona Ora ("The Ninth Hour") is a
1999 installation by
Italian artist
Maurizio Cattelan. The work, which takes its title from the hour of
Christ's death (
Matthew 27:46), depicts
Pope John Paul II after being hit by a
meteorite. The lifelike
wax figure of the Pope is dressed in his papal vestments and is carrying his
crosier crumpled under the black meteorite, while shards of glass are scattered on the crimson carpet in front of him.
Some have interpreted this as a metaphor for the Pope's earthly burden placed on him by the heavens, while others see it as a take on spirituality after the loss of Christ. Aside from the usual whining about the meaninglessness of
contemporary art and so forth, many critics took the work as anti-
Catholic (shades of
Rudolph Giuliani and the
Brooklyn Art Museum). I think it's really, really funny.
Controversy erupted when the wax pope showed up in the Pope's home country of
Poland in December
2000 for a show at
Warsaw's
Zacheta Gallery. Just in time for
Christmas! In the true
Spirit of Christmas, two members of the Polish
Parliament, Halina Nowina-Konopka and Witold Tomczak, moved the rock to "free" the Pope and unsuccessfully attempted to stand the Pope on his feet. "I like the idea that someone is trying to save the Pope -- like an upside-down
miracle, coming not from the
heavens but from
earth," Cattelan responded,
and reminded people that "In the end it is only a piece of wax."
Polish
anti-Semitism reared its ugly head as Tomaczk demanded the resignation of the Zacheta's director
Anda Rottenberg, a
Jew of
Russian birth. In a letter he suggested she move to
Israel and commission a sculpture of a
rabbi being knocked down by
Yasser Arafat. After a political controversy and a deluge of anti-Semetic hate mail, Rottenberg resigned in March
2001.
Recently the work sold at auction at
Christie's to a collector for $886,000.