In a fractious debate yesterday, Renée Cox defended her iconoclastic depiction of Christ as a nude woman, squaring off against the man who is perhaps her most persistent critic: William Donohue, the president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.
The nude self-portrait, a color photograph that features Ms. Cox, a dreadlocked mother of two, sitting in Christ's place at the Last Supper, led Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani to call for a commission to set "decency standards" to keep such work out of museums that receive public money.
The work, "Yo Mama's Last Supper," is being shown at the Brooklyn Museum, the same institution that drew the mayor's ire for staging "Sensation," which included a painting depicting the Virgin Mary with a clump of elephant dung on one breast.
In a fiery exchange, mediated by Ken Paulson, the executive director of the First Amendment Center — where the debate took place — Mr. Donohue accused Ms. Cox of being an irresponsible anti-Catholic propagandist. "I don't care if Christ is depicted as a black man and black woman," he said. "But this is pushing the envelope." He added, "There would be no problem if you had kept your clothes on."
Ms. Cox said she found "the whole thing sort of ludicrous," adding that "Americans are puritanical."
Mr. Donohue defended his position that his tax dollars should not be used to support "Yo Mama's Last Supper." But he disagreed with the mayor's proposal for a "decency commission."
"I would rather see some self- policing instead," he said.
Mr. Paulson asked Ms. Cox, who said she was raised Catholic but was no longer an adherent of organized religion, if she believed that there was any image so offensive that it should not be distributed publicly. She replied no.
Asked if she had created the self- portrait simply to heighten her own fame, Ms. Cox said she created art that has meaning to her. "I have a right to interpret the Last Supper just as Leonardo da Vinci created the Last Supper with people who look like him," she said.
When Ms. Cox fielded questions from reporters, she said she planned to send the Catholic League "a thank-you note at the end saying, `Thanks for all the free publicity.' "