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Piss Christ is a 1987 photograph by photographer Andres Serrano. It depicts a small plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist's urine. The piece was a winner of the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art's "Awards in the Visual Arts" competition,[1] which is sponsored in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, a United States Government agency that offers support and funding for artistic projects.
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Controversy
The piece caused a scandal when it was exhibited in 1989, with detractors, including United States Senators Al D'Amato and Jesse Helms, outraged that Serrano received $15,000 for the work, part of it from the taxpayer-funded National Endowment for the Arts. Supporters argued the Piss Christ is an issue of artistic freedom and freedom of speech.
Others alleged that the government funding of Piss Christ violated separation of church and state.[2][3]
Sister Wendy Beckett, an art critic and Catholic nun, stated in a television interview with Bill Moyers that she regarded the work as not blasphemous but a statement on "what we have done to Christ" - that is, the way contemporary society has come to regard Christ and the values he represents.[4]
During a retrospective of Serrano's work at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1997, the then Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, George Pell, sought an injunction from the Supreme Court of Victoria to restrain the National Gallery of Victoria from publicly displaying Piss Christ, which was not granted. Some days later, one patron attempted to remove the work from the gallery wall, and two teenagers later attacked it with a hammer.[5] The director of the NGV cancelled the show, allegedly out of concern for a Rembrandt exhibition that was also on display at the time.[2]
Piss Christ was included in "Down by Law," a "show within a show" on identity politics and disobedience that formed part of the 2006 Whitney Biennial. The BBC documentary Damned in the USA explored the controversy surrounding Piss Christ.
See also
References
- ^ Johnson, Jennifer (1998-04-09). "NEA's Cloudy Future". Albion Monitor. http://monitor.net/monitor//9804a/nea.html. Retrieved 2006-02-15.
- ^ a b Casey, Damien (June 2000). "Sacrifice, Piss Christ, and liberal excess." (Reprint). Law Text Culture. http://dlibrary.acu.edu.au/staffhome/dacasey/Serrano.html. Retrieved 2009-09-02.
- ^ Catapano, Pete (2004-04-01). "PopPolitics.com Holy Art (!)". PopPolitics.com. PopPolitics Media. http://www.poppolitics.com/articles/2001/04/04/Holy_Art PopPolitics.com.
- ^ Heartney, Eleanor (July 1998). "A consecrated critic - profile of popular television art critic Sister Wendy Beckett". Art in America. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_n7_v86/ai_21113230/pg_2. Retrieved 2007-09-05.
- ^ http://www.artcrimes.net/piss-christ
External links
- Annotated transcription of U.S. Senate discussion about "Piss Christ"
- Andrew Hudgins's poem "Piss Christ," based on the photograph.
- Article on Hate Crime
- See Serrano's photograph in context of other works considered blasphemous, in S. Brent Plate, Blasphemy: Art that Offends ISBN 9781904772538
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