Piss Christ

photographer, an artist.

the photographer, he has this amazing, brilliant photograph called Piss Christ that gets in some hot water, gets the NEA in hot water shortly before the Mapplethorpe retrospective.

And you know, when Andre Serrano took that photograph, his income was like $5,000 a year working off the book's construction.

Then he gets denounced in Congress.

love to criticize Bail out the banks, no more to the churches Satanic reverse Bail out the banks, no more to the churches Satanic reverse Bail out the banks, no more to the churches Satanic reverse Bail out the banks, no more to the churches Satanic reverse

In 1992, the European Economic Community will reform In 1997, the city of Hong Kong will become a part of the People's Republic of China In 1999, and this is no coincidence The nation of Panama will control its own canal While in the United States Civil rights have collapsed at the hands of fundamentalists And national insecurity's at an all-time high Hell's a band, the photograph of the Piss Christ It's sacrilegious, not anarchist What we all try to discern between our cup of tea And what we call obscenity The House's legislation rips a phony foundation Of what we thought inherent, sent Joey to destroy That was meant to represent The freedom of so-called choice and dissent They almost had me believin' it They were bleedin' it He said, burn, baby, burn till the streets stammer I said to my face that any flags with a shift Was warped from fire in the first place

They all at the banks were markin' the churches Satanic reverses, bail out the banks, won't art to the churches.

Satanic reverses, bail out the banks, won't art to the churches.

Yeah? I mean, there's a reason that people hate the Tate Modern.

Yeah, have you heard the term death work? I've heard this term recently, and there was a thing called Piss Christ, and that was some sort of painting that was meant to be an insult.

I think the artist claimed it wasn't actually an insult, but most people took it as an insult.

One can go back to Duchamp's Urinal, which, again, you could say he was satirising the art world, but really it was like anything can be art, and we lost the idea of beauty.

Then there's modern art is there to shock and says, what if everything was like meaningless? And it's really only one note it can play.

Yeah.

What can Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin do, or even the Duchamp urinal, or even Piss Christ, all these things? They can only do one thing, which is, oh, we're going to just shock your standards and taste and offend you.

That's all it can do.

You know, like...

You know, in undergrad, and we had to go through this fucking class, I forget which one it was, but, you know, we had to talk about Piss Christ.

And we also had to talk about that one painting where a woman used elephant dung to create an image of the Virgin Mary.

And it's like, you know, we're exploring these ideas of like, you know...

And it basically kind of talks about this idea of like what society like enforces is like clean and unclean, like like like food on a plate is clean.

Food on the floor is unclean.

Um, we recently just had our vice president say something to the effect of, um, you know, I'm tired of being called a racist because, uh, we noticed that America is becoming dirtier and it's like, okay, well, how, what do you, what do we mean by dirty? Like, I think we know what, what he means by dirty quickly, but yeah, but it's like, you know, it's a way of like enforcing these kind of like, um, uh, like, uh, ideological forces is kind of like what she's after in that film how society kind of like marshals itself and determines things to be clean and unclean and how animals sit in between in a weird way great book anyway like you know the inclusion of like vomit and all these things it just it doesn't um The more that time has passed between my first encounter with Piss Christ, I don't know that I ever found it offensive.

I don't know that I ever found it remarkable.

And then this one I think is the most interesting because it's sandwiched around a whole bunch of people being like, you want to fuck this pony.

But there's this other guy that writes, Jesus Christ, it's like cocaine.

I'm a 24-year-old man.

I should hate this, but I watched it.

And the guy was like, if you like no effects, you'll love this.

No, I would have that where, like, there would be music I'd like and somebody would play me something that would sound...

I mean, it's sort of like Christian rock, No Events of Christian Rock, where, like, I just find...

It's the exact same radicalization strategy.

at a certain point, that's what makes it work, is that it is up to us to just see that all of this is there, and the movie doesn't know it.

It's like a movie Piss Christ.

It's like,

that's what, like, makes the repression real.

Oh, my God.

It's like a vampire movie, piss Christ.

It's like you watch this and you look at, like, fucking James Wood and it's like, oh, you don't realize what you've made.

Yeah.

Um, and then someone like Andres Serrano.

[laughs] So for anybody who doesn't know, uh, Andres Serrano was the photographer who did, like, the Piss Christ, and he did that...

Uh, he just, everything he did, like the, you know, the Virgen de Guadalupe, I think, with like excrement and stuff.

Mm-hmm.

Sure.

So I'm thinking specifically of Andres Serrano's 1987 photograph, Piss Christ.

Before we get to the photograph itself, uh, what can you tell us about Serrano and where he was in his career in the late '80s?

Yeah, I mean, Andres, uh, is a really interesting case because some of the other artists that I cover were famous and powerful, uh, right? And Andres was not that.

Um, he has, like, one-- He's not well-connected, but he has one or two champions from the New Museum, and they recommend him for this, and he wins.

He wins $15,000.

This is all we're talking about, $15,000, 5,000 of which came from the federal government, for a whole series of different photos, one of which is this photo, Piss Christ.

And how would you describe Piss Christ, and what does Serrano have to say about it?