In this nine-panel, photorealistic painting, The New Adam, Harold Stevenson reimagines Michelangelo's famous Sistine Chapel fresco of Adam extending his finger toward the hand of God by redirecting the subject's gesture inward. Stevenson felt that advertising had reduced the human form to a prop for displaying clothes or selling appliances. He wanted to refocus the eye on the enormous significance of the body and the viewer's gaze. Through the warm glow that suffuses this image, Stevenson sought to evoke his belief in the human soul within each body. The queer film icon Sal Mineo modeled for the painting, which was an homage to Stevenson's lover Timothy Willoughby.
