Extreme Catholics smash “Piss Christ”
Read Time:1 Minute, 28 Second
Piss Christ before
Piss Christ is a 1987 photograph by artist and 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, 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.
On April 17th, 2011, a print of Piss Christ was vandalized “beyond repair” by Catholic protesters while on display during the Je crois aux miracles exhibition at the Collection Lambert, a contemporary art museum in Avignon, France. Serrano’s photo The Church was similarly vandalized in the attack.
Here’s the story summary:
A pair of extreme Catholic protesters celebrated Palm Sunday this weekend by bursting into the Museum of Contemporary Art in Avignon, France, and smashing Andres Serrano’s (in)famous photograph “Immersion Piss Christ,” and some other works of art they objected to, with hammers. According to a French report translated by the New Yorker, the men were from the organization Civitas, (“for a Catholic city”), which seeks “the restoration of the social reign of Jesus Christ over civil society.”
The vandals also damaged a second work, depicting the torso of a nun with her hands in her lap, and physically threatened three guards before fleeing, according to the BBC. Police are currently looking for the suspects, who have been identified in photos from a large protest against the works on Saturday. That protest drew 800 protesters, and the gallery’s director tells the Irish Times he’s gotten tens of thousands of emails demanding he remove the photo—which he derides as “injunctions from the Middle Ages.”
Piss Christ after
Happy
0 %
Sad
0 %
Excited
0 %
Sleepy
0 %
Angry
0 %
Surprise
0 %
0
0
This won an award?????????????????
We are clearly doomed – and deservedly so.
Had I not known the substance was urine, I might have thought it was a hell of a photograph. While I still do, I find the use of urine to be – well, stinky. However, I don’t “have” to look at it, if I don’t want to and I certainly don’t believe in destroying someone’s work/property just because I might object to the content.
Had the artist been drinking carrot juice and tequila sunrise while creating this masterpiece?