"well.....i guess i'll have to develop a sense of humor."

last thursday my friend jon invited me to go to an artist lecture on campus, because i 'like art and stuff'. he wanted to go because his art appreciation class would give him extra credit for writing a short paper over it. i asked 'who's the artist', and he said, 'i'm not really sure, but i think he's kind of controversial...'. that was enough to pique my interest, and i agreed to go. turns out that this particular artist became quite notorious in the late 80's/early 90's for this photograph:

when i first saw this photograph, i thought it was quite beautiful- i like the lighting, the way the crucifix glows against the darker background. 'what about this is so controversial?', a casual observer might wonder. and to be honest, at face value there is nothing controversial about it. upon further investigation, however, one will learn that this is a photograph of a crucifix in a large tub of urine, aptly named piss christ. the artist (mary ann probably already knew this one): andres serrano. this photograph caused an uproar in congress in 1989 and all kinds of censorship debates ensued. people argued that it was offensive to christians, sacrilegious, and profane. what i have to wonder is, if it didnt have such a 'descriptive' title, would there have been any controversy at all?

i really enjoyed his lecture because he was nothing like i expected. i though he would drone on and on about the underlying themes of his work or the responses he was trying to provoke from people...but he was very casual and down-to-earth about it all. why piss christ? all the titles of his work are that frank- they describe what's in the picture. why urine? his early photographs were of fluids- mostly blood, urine, and milk. he did all kinds of 'immersion' photographs, in either water or urine. he claimed that he had no idea that piss christ would cause such a stir. throughout the lecture he allowed the audience to ask questions, and one of my favorites was a woman who asked in a rather haughty tone, 'surely you must have realized that the combination of 'piss' and 'christ' would've upset people...'. he kind of chuckled and replied 'surely, i did not.'

anyway, i was glad that i went because i had always heard about andres' work, but never really looked at it before. i had heard about all the piss christ controversy, but had never taken the time to look at the work itself. perhaps it's naive of me, but i believe the artist when he says that it was not his intent to be inflammatory- he just thought it would look good. and i think it does.