Two art works of Andres Serrano from the exhibition "Je crois aux miracles"
Sunday 17th April at the contemporary art museum, Collection Lambert, in Avignon, a group of individuals, after having been denied entry into the exhibition, “I believe in miracles”, which celebrated the museum’s tenth anniversary, made for the room where two of the American artist, Andres Serrano’s works were on display. They immobilised the guard and repeatedly struck the pieces several times with a hammer and screwdriver, damaging them to an irreparable extent.
The first artwork was the famous, ‘Piss Christ’, a 1987 photograph which represents Christ on the cross. For the image’s production, the artist dipped a small plastic crucifix into a glass of urine and blood.
The second, ‘Sister Jeanne Myriam’, a photograph from 1991, shows the bust of the nun, her hands joint in prayer.
The show, which recounts more than forty years of history of contemporary art, had been previously displayed in different art centres and international museums.
It’s a matter of a premeditated act which played out shortly after a procession of several hundred people covered the streets of Avignon, willing the museum to remove these works from the exhibition. This rally, organised by the association, Civitas, had benefited from the active support of the local National Front.
Originally a public controversy led by His Grace, the Archbishop of the City of the Popes, bitterly disparaged the work of Andres Serrano, maintaining that ‘Piss Christ’ was offensive for the Catholic religion and faith.
In setting himself up as the defender of Good and in showing a nostalgic tendency for the Inquisition epoch, he becomes thus the instigator and “moral” support of this imitation crusade which intends to do away with the American artist’s “excommunicated” artwork from the sacred territory of the City of the Popes.
This action and the comments which have determined it harm, and aim to deny the fundamental principles of freedom of expression in terms of the artistic creation’s spirit and meaning.
It’s a question of an act of pure barbarity, which responds to the same bestial mentality which drove the Taliban fundamentalists to destroy the large Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan, an emblem of humanity.
The destructive act is also, paradoxically, one of desecration, being that it struck and disfigured the image of Christ which the artist, when producing his work, hadn’t ever altered or modified.
Indeed Andres Serrano, of Christian faith, had no intention of disparaging Christ on the cross when producing his piece, rather quite the opposite…
… 1987 was a year marked by the Aids drama which became the central topic of the collective preoccupations of society, disturbing awareness, history and behaviour.
Urine, saliva and blood became symbolic of the transmission of the virus even within the general unawareness.
A period conditioned by fear of the body, of its substances and its matters, and by the fear of risks linked with physical contact.
In the United States in particular, the most radical and conservative communities triggered off veritable public campaigns of demonization of sexual relations, slander, intolerance and homosexual discrimination.
Without restraint, they used the image of Christ on the cross as if it were a symbol capable of exorcising all non-conformist behaviour which existed within American society and which they considered deviants and sources of Evil.
In this particular context, Andres Serrano, in order to embody a conceptual thinking and denounce the artistic use of symbols, and of the crucifix in particular, created a series of works in the same process, of which the subjects are symbols of our education, that is the crucifix.
Andres Serrano’s Christ, although immerged into “liquids” which obscurantist ethics identifies ‘à la pomme du pêche original’, is a coherent work of art, honouring Andres Serrano’s work… it could even be exhibited in a church or, if one believes in miracles, be part of the collections of the Vatican Museum.
The Archbishop of Avignon was aware of the conceptual significance of the work, with it being explained publicly to him.
Despite that, like all spokespersons of dogmas and all who prey on ignorance, he preferred “to sit astride it”, to instrumentalize it with Middle-Age curses and to nourish it with lies and hypocrisy.
In spite of all that, we want to believe that it will be possible that he, his procession and all the villainous profaners of this house of God of Avignon can also realise the value of diversity, accept it and adapt it as a means to profit from the benefits which it represents, and respect the different opinions and stories which it conveys.
Ezio Barbaro / modemonline.com
