Andres Serrano's "Immersion (Piss Christ)

Andres Serrano’s “Immersion (Piss Christ)”

From a series of photographs that Serrano took in 1987 of several classical statuettes immersed in different liquids;  milk, blood, urine.

 It is a 60 x 40 inch Cibachrome print, “A darkly beautiful photographic image...the small wood and plastic crucifix becomes virtually monumental as it floats, photographically enlarged, in a deep rosy glow that is both ominous and glorious”

It caused immense controversy.   It won a competition sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts but Catholics were outraged, Serrano himself received death threats and lost grants, and in Australia it was vandalized after The Archbishop of Melbourne lost an injunction in court to restrain the National Gallery of Victoria from showing it.

An art critic and Catholic nun, Sister Wendy Beckett, stated that it was not blasphemous, it was “What we have done to Christ”, the way contemporary society came to regard him and the values he represents.  Serrano himself said that the Piece was not intended to denounce religion but alludes to the commercializing or cheapening of Christian icons in contemporary culture. The issue is that if he had not mentioned the urine nobody would have cared about the picture. There goes FREEDOM OF SPEECH...