Ish, Andres Serrano is the artist who did Piss Christ. I tried to find out conclusively if he is Catholic and could not, but his name suggests it.
I think interpretations of his work that are not just vulgar and in your face may not have occurred to you. I found a poem that discusses Piss Christ in another context entirely, and found it really interesting.
And may I point out that because a crucifix is floating in urine, that does not necessarily mean that the artist is saying anything you think he is saying. He may be making a comment on modern culture, of the obscenity of what he thinks Christianity has become, the horror of crucifixion, or any number of things.
Piss Christ
Andres Serrano, 1987
By Andrew Hudgins
Posted Wednesday, April 19, 2000, at 12:00 AM PT
If we did not know it was cow's blood and urine,
if we did not know that Serrano had for weeks
hoarded his urine in a plastic vat,
if we did not know the cross was gimcrack plastic,
we would assume it was too beautiful.
We would assume it was the resurrection,
glory, Christ transformed to light by light
because the blood and urine burn like a halo,
and light, as always, light makes it beautiful.
We are born between the urine and the feces,
Augustine says, and so was Christ, if there was a Christ,
skidding into this world as we do
on a tide of blood and urine. Blood, feces, urine—
what the fallen world is made of, and what we make.
He peed, ejaculated, shat, wept, bled—
bled under Pontius Pilate, and I assume
the mutilated god, the criminal,
humiliated god, voided himself
on the cross and the blood and urine smeared his legs
and he ascended bodily unto heaven,
and on the third day he rose into glory, which
is what we see here, the Piss Christ in glowing blood:
the whole irreducible point of the faith,
God thrown in human waste, submerged and shining.
We have grown used to beauty without horror.
We have grown used to useless beauty.
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