- Oct 7, 2011
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An interesting article from Emily Esfahani Smith.
Piss Christ has been resurrected.
Or, at least, the controversy surrounding it has been raised from the dead, now that it is back in New York at the Edward Tyler Nahem Gallery (through October 26) in an exhibit called Body and Spirit which celebrates the life and work of its creator, the artist Andres Serrano.
Over 20 years ago, in 1989, the hazy image of a crucified Christ, submerged in a jar of Serranos urine, created a public firestorm when conservative Sen. Alfonse DAmato (R-NY) deplored it on the Senate floor as a despicable display of vulgarity one that had, no less, been funded by taxpayers. Serrano was radical, but he wasnt that radical: The so-called avant-garde artist received government support to the tune of $15,000 for the work.
Today, whats astonishing about Piss Christ is not its vulgarity or shock-value; it is a completely mundane work of art which has aged as well as a cheap wine spritzer. The only merit it has is as an historical artifact of the culture wars.
No, whats astonishing is that despite its third-rate stature, it continues, after all these years, to provoke its intended target to disturbing outbursts of anger and violence.
On Palm Sunday in 2011, for instance, a group of radical young Christians stormed a gallery in Avignon, France, which was displaying Piss Christ as part of an exhibit. They made their way past security, threatened a guard with a hammer, broke through the Plexiglas protecting the image, and slashed it with a sharp object. In 1997 at the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia, the work was also vandalized, and gallery officials received death threats for showing it. In 2007, a group of neo-Nazis attacked a Serrano show in Sweden (though Piss Christ was not on display there).
Are there parallels to the recent shocking events in the Middle East, where, on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11, Islamists stormed the American embassies in Cairo and Benghazi, burning American flags and killing U.S. diplomats? Yes and no. The Islamists, too, were protesting an offense to the faith: a bizarre 14-minute anti-Islam YouTube video, The Innocence of Muslims.
On the other hand, no one expects Christian groups to start murdering innocent people over the exhibit.
Still, the Muslim reaction to the video and Christian reaction to Piss Christ raise a puzzling question: Why were members of each faith moved to destroy the object (or stand-ins for the object) that offended them? Why did they overreact to these C-grade works?...
Read more: Piss Christ, art, and violence | The Daily Caller
Piss Christ has been resurrected.
Or, at least, the controversy surrounding it has been raised from the dead, now that it is back in New York at the Edward Tyler Nahem Gallery (through October 26) in an exhibit called Body and Spirit which celebrates the life and work of its creator, the artist Andres Serrano.
Over 20 years ago, in 1989, the hazy image of a crucified Christ, submerged in a jar of Serranos urine, created a public firestorm when conservative Sen. Alfonse DAmato (R-NY) deplored it on the Senate floor as a despicable display of vulgarity one that had, no less, been funded by taxpayers. Serrano was radical, but he wasnt that radical: The so-called avant-garde artist received government support to the tune of $15,000 for the work.
Today, whats astonishing about Piss Christ is not its vulgarity or shock-value; it is a completely mundane work of art which has aged as well as a cheap wine spritzer. The only merit it has is as an historical artifact of the culture wars.
No, whats astonishing is that despite its third-rate stature, it continues, after all these years, to provoke its intended target to disturbing outbursts of anger and violence.
On Palm Sunday in 2011, for instance, a group of radical young Christians stormed a gallery in Avignon, France, which was displaying Piss Christ as part of an exhibit. They made their way past security, threatened a guard with a hammer, broke through the Plexiglas protecting the image, and slashed it with a sharp object. In 1997 at the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia, the work was also vandalized, and gallery officials received death threats for showing it. In 2007, a group of neo-Nazis attacked a Serrano show in Sweden (though Piss Christ was not on display there).
Are there parallels to the recent shocking events in the Middle East, where, on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11, Islamists stormed the American embassies in Cairo and Benghazi, burning American flags and killing U.S. diplomats? Yes and no. The Islamists, too, were protesting an offense to the faith: a bizarre 14-minute anti-Islam YouTube video, The Innocence of Muslims.
On the other hand, no one expects Christian groups to start murdering innocent people over the exhibit.
Still, the Muslim reaction to the video and Christian reaction to Piss Christ raise a puzzling question: Why were members of each faith moved to destroy the object (or stand-ins for the object) that offended them? Why did they overreact to these C-grade works?...
Read more: Piss Christ, art, and violence | The Daily Caller
