Miracle An Open Letter to Andres Serrano
The offending photograph, from the exhibition website, Collection Lambert en Avignon
Two photographs were vandalized last Palm Sunday in an art gallery in Avignon, France, one of them that famous picture of a crucifix submerged in urine the other a photograph
of a praying nun by the same photographer. Here’s the event as reported by The Telegraph, April 19, 2011. The modern art museum, the Collection Lambert, in southern France, said an assailant destroyed the photograph by American artist Andres Serrano, "Immersion (Piss Christ)" on Sunday and apparently accidentally damaged another of the artist's works while struggling with a guard. It was not immediately clear whether the assailant was part of a demonstration a day earlier by a rightwing group denouncing the 1987 photograph as blasphemous and demanding its removal from the exhibition, entitled "I Believe in Miracles." According to police, citing witnesses, two people tried to enter the museum late on Sunday morning carrying a can of paint spray and a chisel in their jackets. The guard removed the objects - just as a third person took a hammer to "Immersion." The attacker struggled with a guard, but helped by an accomplice, managed to escape, police said. In the struggle, he apparently damaged another work, "The Church (Sister Jeanne-Myriam)," which shows a nun praying. The police officials asked not to be identified by name because they weren't authorized to discuss the investigation publicly. The museum's doors were shut Monday for its weekly closing. However, it said it will reopen Tuesday with the destroyed works on display so that the public can view the damage. The museum closed early Saturday because of a protest. Serrano made the controversial work by placing a crucifix in urine and blood, and it has drawn criticism in the past from some Christian groups. Young far-right Christian activists from the General Alliance Against Racism and for the Respect of the French and Christian Identity is taking the Collection Lambert to court Wednesday to try to have the crucifix photograph removed from the exhibit. The group denounced the photograph on its Web site, saying it "insults and injures Christians at the heart of their faith." The exhibit opened last December and is to run until May 8.i
Angelique Chrisafis, covering the vandalism from Paris, was more detailed in her report for the Guardian. When New York artist Andres Serrano plunged a plastic crucifix into a glass of his own urine and photographed it in 1987 under the title Piss Christ, he said he was making a statement on the misuse of religion. Controversy has followed the work ever since, but reached an unprecedented peak on Palm Sunday when it was attacked with hammers and destroyed after an "anti-blasphemy" campaign by French Catholic fundamentalists in the southern city of Avignon. The violent slashing of the picture, and another Serrano photograph of a meditating nun, has plunged secular France into soul-searching about Christian fundamentalism and Nicolas Sarkozy's use of religious populism in his bid for re-election next year. It also marks a return to an old standoff between Serrano and the religious right that dates back more than 20 years, to Reagan-era Republicanism in the US. The photograph, full title Immersion (Piss Christ), was made in 1987 as part of Serrano's series showing religious objects submerged in fluids such as blood and milk. In 1989, rightwing Christian senators' criticism of Piss Christ led to a heated US debate on public arts funding. Republican Jesse Helms told the senate Serrano was "not an artist. He's a jerk."
Serrano defended his photograph as a criticism of the "billion-dollar Christ-for-profit industry" and a "condemnation of those who abuse the teachings of Christ for their own ignoble ends". It
The photo after the vandalism of Palm Sunday from the ARTINFO web site was vandalised in Australia, and neo-Nazis ransacked a Serrano show in Sweden in 2007. The photograph had been shown in France several times without incident. For four months, it has hung
in the exhibition I Believe in Miracles, to mark 10 years of art-dealer Yvon Lambert's personal collection in his 18th-century mansion gallery in Avignon. The show is due to end next month, but two weeks ago a concerted protest campaign began. Civitas, a lobby group that says it aims to re-Christianize France, launched an online petition and mobilised other fundamentalist groups. The staunchly conservative archbishop of Vaucluse, JeanPierre Cattenoz, called Piss Christ "odious" and said he wanted this "trash" taken off the gallery walls. Last week the gallery complained of "extremist harassment" by fundamentalist Christian groups who wanted the work banned in France. Lambert, one of France's best known art dealers, complained he was being "persecuted" by extremists who had sent him tens of thousands of complaint emails and bombarded the museum with spam. He likened the atmosphere to "a return to the middle ages". On Saturday, around 1,000 Christian protesters marched through Avignon to the gallery. The protest group included a regional councilor for the extreme-right Front National, which recently scored well in the Vaucluse area in local elections. The gallery immediately stepped up security, putting plexiglass in front of the photograph and assigning two gallery guards to stand in front of it. But on Palm Sunday morning, four people in sunglasses aged between 18 and 25 entered the exhibition just after it opened at 11am. One took a hammer out of his sock and threatened the guards with it. A guard grabbed another man around the waist but within seconds the group managed to take a hammer to the plexiglass screen and slash the photograph with another sharp object, thought to be a screwdriver or ice-pick. They also smashed another work, which showed the hands of a meditating nun.
The photograph after the Palm Sunday vandalism
The gallery director, Eric Mézil, said it would reopen with the destroyed works on show "so people can see what barbarians can do". He said there had been a kind of "inquisition" against the
art work. In a statement, he said the movement against Piss Christ had started at the time of President Nicolas Sarkozy's ruling UMP party's controversial debate on religion and secularism in France. At a record low in the polls before next year's presidential election, Sarkozy has been accused of using anti-Muslim and extreme-right rhetoric to appeal to voters and counter the rise of the Front National. Asked by the daily Libération why the Piss Christ protest had happened now, Mézil pointed to Sarkozy's speech in March lauding "the Christian heritage of France" at Puy-en-Velay, where the first Crusades were preached. He said: "Clearly we saw in Saturday's demonstration that a Catholic fringe wanted to take the president at his word, with extremely violent appeals." He said there was a climate of tension, with protesters insulting museum staff of north African origin. One guard said he heard: "I'm going to pour donkey piss on the Qur'an." An email to the museum talked about "plunging the diary of Anne Frank in urine". The French culture minister, Frédéric Mitterrand, condemned the vandalism as an attack on the fundamental freedoms of creation and expression, but recognised that the art work could shock audiences. The secretary general of Civitas, Alan Escada, told Le Dauphiné Libéré paper: "I don't support or condemn what happened," adding that the attack on the picture "reflects an understandable exasperation" with the museum. A police complaint has been filed by the gallery and the guards.ii
In its report, Les in Rocks added that the vandals yelled “Vive Dieu!” (“long live God”) as they fled.iii
Jean-Pierre Cattenoz, Archbishop of the Diocese of Avignon
Earlier, on 8 April, Jean-Pierre Cattenoz, archbishop of the diocese of Avignon wrote and posted on the archdiocese web page: “How is it possible to put a crucifix in a glass, this “piss on Christ on the cross,” take a snapshot of the result and declare it a “work of art?” For me, a bishop, as for every Christian and every believer, this is a provocation, a desecration at the very heart of our faith! How is it possible to highlight such a piece of trash, this photograph of 1987, to display it in the city of the popes? Why does the Collection Lambert show a photograph that seriously wounds all those for whom the cross of Christ is the heart of their faith? Do they want to provoke believers by mocking what for them is at the center of their lives: the Cross of Christ, the only source of life for humanity? How could the local authorities have washed their hands like Pilate, saying that the city—which partially subsidizes the collection--did not intend to “interfere in the artistic choices made by those responsible for private arts works shown a gallery which is not a municipal museum”? But do not local authorities have the mission to ensure respect for the faith of believers of any religion? Yet this photograph is a desecration that, on the eve of Good Friday when we commemorate Christ who gave His life for us by dying on the Cross, touches us deep in our hearts. Is there sometimes two weights and two measures? If a picture representing a Koran dipped in urine was displayed for all to see as a work of art, the local and state governments would denounce it immediately as an insult to the faith of our Muslim brothers. The perpetuators of such behavior would be called to justice and condemned and I’d be the first to join in their reaction and would denounce what would be a desecration and grave scandal to the faith of those believers. But why do the state authorities do nothing about this display of a crucifix dipped in urine? Faced with such a scandal, I must publicly notify the authorities of my country who claim to defend positive secularism that these pictures seriously undermine the faith of Christians. Once again, in this case of an attack on our Christian faith, we see the authorities reacting in silence as they continue to support behaviors that wound us in the heart of our faith; this time the assault is on the Passion and all that it represents for us.iv
While directed to the Gallery Lambert’s exhibition, the archbishop’s comments need to be understood within the contemporary situation in Avignon. The church of Saint Jean Baptiste, in a working-class district of the city with a high Muslim population, has been vandalized a number of times in last several years, attacks apparently carried out by young gangs (ironically, one incident included a boy entering the church and purposefully urinating in it). When commenting about the situation, Cattenoz said that he was personally familiar with anti-Christian ridicule: “My pectoral cross is often the object of mockery by young French persons of North African origin. When I tell them that it was given to me by Pope Benedict XVI, the say, ‘Who is he?” He went on to say: We are at a turning point in the religious history of our country. Gallic families, traditionally Christian, are having on average two children. Muslim families living in France have close to four, five, even six children. Based on that, it is easy to imagine that France will be majority Muslin in twenty or thirty years. For fifteen years I lived in an Islamic land. I am therefore
prepared to live in a France that has a Muslim majority. It’s just that I wonder what the condition of our cohabitation will be like.”v
As can be imagined, the affair has created a fair amount of comment. My friends at First Things asked me if I had any thoughts about it. I do, quite a few actually, since I’ve spent most of my life dealing with this kind of thing. And they’re here in an open letter to Andres Serrano, the artist around whose work this little tempest is puffing. There are other people involved, the Archbishop, the thugs who vandalized the pictures, a gaggle of French politicians, and most certainly the folks associated with the Collection Lambert themselves, but I really can’t speak to them directly, with authority, because I’m not French, I’m not Roman Catholic (let alone an archbishop), and in regards to the vandals I don’t even know who they are (and, apparently as of yet, neither do the French police because they haven’t made any arrests). But I can speak with Mr. Serrano directly and with authority about art because we’re both artists and issues of faith are very much a part of our work. Yes, I know that an open letter is a bit of a snarky device--if I’m really interested in Mr. Serrano why don’t I afford him the courtesy of private correspondence; why air this linen in public? But being an artist means being public; we don’t compose our music to be heard by nobody or hang our pictures only to be locked up in closets. Our art, to be art, must be public and talking about it has to be too. So, the open letter.
Dear Andres: We’ve never met and I’m sorry about that, I hope our paths cross. Lunch is on me. You seem like a very sweet guy from your various interviews and you’re certainly an imaginative artist—and you repeatedly describe yourself as a Christian artist so we’re brothers in the trenches. I am too. I’m sorry that your photographs were vandalized last week but not that sorry. Yes, I know that’s a bit rough but I’ll tell you why later and I think you’ll understand. But before we go any further, that picture of the submerged crucifix, could you change the title? I can’t even say it because it’s impious—it’s like cussing and you know it. I don’t think it’s good for folks to cuss and I think it’s unseemly of you to expect us to cuss when we give the title of your photograph (and it’s especially bad behavior on the part of a Christian to kinda trap people into that kind of a predicament). So, change the title, please?—and I have a new one for you that I’ll tell you later. Yes, I know that this photograph is part of a set of “piss” pieces that you started in 1987 (there’s this picture, and also a “Piss Satan”—Okay, guess I don’t mind cussing about Satan, “Piss Elegance”, and “Madonna and Child II”, and you’ve added to it at least one other “Piss” piece that I have to mention later), the various statues photographed through the wall of the same five gallon aquarium filled with a mixture of your urine and cow’s blood—but I think you haven’t exhibited them as a set in quite a
Reproductions of four “Immersion” photos from off the web while and hardly anybody remembers any of the other ones—so changing the title of this one wouldn’t be such a big deal. But until you do change the title, except when there’s no way to avoid it, I’m going to call your photograph “Pee-Cee.” Everybody will know what I’m referring to, it kinda matches your original title, I don’t have to cuss and it’s, well, very “PC.” Press reports say that “Pee-Cee” was damaged “beyond repair” and are making a bit of a fuss about what a loss this is to the art world. I doubt that you’re going to throw it away (and I’ll get back to that too later) but even if you did it’s not like what could have happened to Paul Gauguin’s “Two Tahitian Woman” if that lady who attacked the painting in Washington last month had thrown harder punches (she hit the picture because it “was very homosexual” and bad for children). She could have destroyed it and there’s only one of them; that would have been a real loss. But you have nine other prints of “Pee-Cee” so the damage to this one is basically a business loss, not an aesthetic one; you’ve lost inventory. A lot of folks are upset about a picture of a crucifix suspended in urine. They think your “Pee-Cee” is disrespectful and even blasphemous and mumble you should have lost your entire inventory. I couldn’t disagree with them more. I think it’s a great work; at least the idea of the photograph is great if maybe not the execution. Bravo. I mean that. Bravo. One of the biggest problems Christians have is believing Christianity. We say we believe it, but we don’t, not really. We’re always trying to tone it down, take out its bark, prettify it and make it tame. As C. S. Lewis reminded us, Aslan isn’t a “tame lion” and our job as Christians artists is sometimes to remind folks of the Gospel’s roar. Flannery O’Connor
wrote in a letter that she had heard that somewhere they were breeding chickens with breasts so big that it was impossible for them to fly. She thought that explaining the gospel to a lot of people would be like trying to teach those kinds of chickens how to soar— you’d have to shake their chicken coop a whole lot to get them off the ground. Tony Campolo is a Baptist preacher. Baptists are keen on missionaries, or at least are supposed to be. About twenty years ago Campolo was famous for going to churches and standing in the pulpit and saying “Today, tens of thousands of people are going to die and go to hell because they are without Jesus and you don’t give a shit.” And he’d pause. And then he’d add, “And you’re more upset about me using ‘shit’ from the pulpit than you are about people going to hell.” (There are various versions of this quote but that’s the one I remember). Of course he was right, they were more upset about his language than they were over their own failure to fulfill the Great Commission. He made his point and everybody in the pews got it. It’s called shaking the chicken coop. Both the tendency to de-Christian Christianity and the need to shake the chicken coop started pretty early, apparently with those arguments over circumcision. Faith in Jesus wasn’t enough, there had to be extra stuff added to it. Paul had some pretty shocking words to say about the folks who were insisting that Gentile converts be circumcised. It’s been a while since I studied my Greek but if I remember right that passage in Galatians 5:12 that the old King James translates “I would they were even cut off which trouble you” and the American Standard Version as “I would that they that unsettle you would even go beyond circumcision” can be idiomatically translated as “may their knives slip!”, meaning “those who insist upon circumcision, well, let their knives cut off their cocks and balls too!” Yes, it’s vulgar but Paul was really angry and the Gospel was really being compromised and he needed to get the Galatians’ attention. And he apparently got it. And God inspired his words, his shocking words, all of them—at least folks like me think so. And while we’re on the subject of God’s shocking words, do you ever think about Jesus as our greatest artist? Well, he was. Storytelling is an ancient art form. ART—that’s the key—the “art” part. Storytelling is an art with forms and conventions and traditions within which the storytellers work, fulfilling some expectations while purposefully violating others. Kenneth E. Bailey has reconstructed those ancient traditions and applied
Bailey’s Poet & Peasant from the Amazon web page
his insights to our Lord’s parables in his Poet and Peasant. You think the Parable of the Prodigal Son is audacious? Wait until you read Bailey’s analysis, the story becomes really shocking (for one thing, the parable really isn’t about the younger son at all but about his older brother, the “good” boy, and Jesus doesn’t finish the story on purpose, he leaves it hanging, kinda like Hitchcock’s Rear Window without the final four minutes). Bailey’s book is so important that I think it should be the starting point of any one who wants to be a Christian artist. Read it. I think you’ll like it. It’s had a tremendous influence upon me. So what does this have to do with your “Pee-Cee”? It’s this: the scandal of The Incarnation. Like Paul when writing to the Galatians and Christ when telling the tale of the Lost Son, and O’Connor and Campolo too, you use shock to help us understand the scandal of God’s purposes, at least that’s the way I take your photograph (and others have also). About two thousand years ago Paul summed up this scandal when he wrote “Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. . .”(I Cor. 1:22)—but after two millennia how can we get folks to understand how outrageous, even how unseemly, this is? How preposterous the Gospel of John is when we read “the word became flesh and made his dwelling with us” (John 1.14). “Word”, which is logos in Greek—the same noun Euclid
uses for “ratio”, the purity of changeless and eternal mathematical relationships, placed in the same sentence with “flesh”, sarksi (the same noun that gives us sarcophagus)—and the Greek writer even forces those two words right up next to each other in that sentence to drive home the point—the Greeks knew this was an absurdity and even an obscenity— and it is. But it’s true. It’s what God did. The limitless creator of the cosmos emptied himself and became finite. What was pure and eternal and changeless was born, went through puberty, experienced hunger, got dirty and had to get cleaned up—all of what it means to be mortal. But more than this: he was crucified and rose from the dead. This was an essential part of apostolic preaching and people who heard it in the first century found it very upsetting. Today we hear this and even believe it and nod, “Yeah, right. Ho hum. The gifts of God for the people of God. Next.” Until your photograph. For the first time in probably several hundred years your photograph drives home the shock of the Incarnation. We look at your picture and we get it. And we know we get it because we’re offended by it. The Son of God in a tub of urine. That’s what John 1.14 means. Your photograph is not a piece of theological dialectic. It’s not a bunch of professors chatting about the notion of beauty and the divine infinite. It’s a kick in our guts. And that kick reminds us of what God has done for us. He’s left Glory to become part of his God damn creation—and I’m not being impious here, that’s what Paul means in Romans when he writes that “For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. . .” It’s under a curse because of our sin and God came in Jesus of Nazareth to redeem His whole creation because of God’s love for it. His love for us. And if we’re not kicked in our gut by this Gospel we’re not really hearing it. Your photograph helps us hear that. That’s a tremendous accomplishment and Christians everywhere owe you our thanks. It helps us more keenly and deeply understand the Gospel and strengthens our love of God. So, thank you. And Bravo. I mean that. Bravo. But—and you saw that “but” coming—our greater understanding of the Gospel doesn’t really come from your photograph, does it? That kick to our guts doesn’t come from just looking at your picture; no, it comes from reading your title. You’ve said “The title, ‘Piss Christ’, has no hostility toward Christ or religion. It’s simply a description.”vi Right. So if it’s just a description, why isn’t it “Piss and Blood Christ”? Because it’s not “just” a title; we’re both fluent in English and have spent time on the streets of New York, that’s cussing and—this is important although nobody mentions it—that unspoken “on” that we all know goes between your title’s two words. It’s not just “Piss” and “Christ”, there’s a mute “on” between them (and don’t say I’m making this up; we both know it’s true, we’re not stupid). And about that “piss.” You say that it’s urine and that it’s yours. But we have to take your word on that don’t we? As far as we know, it’s just a picture of a crucifix suspended in something with some bubbles, might as well be Gatorade. In a poem Andrew Huggins published in 2000 about “Pee-Cee” he says that you stored up your urine for weeks to fill up the aquarium. I don’t know how he knows that, maybe
you did. But five gallons? That’s a lot of, well, personal piss. I feel my credulity being stretched. And you also have that story circulating about how you originally took those photographs to protest the commercialization and debasement of Christian images in contemporary culture—well, that’s stretching my credulity too. I’ve never met a Christian who particularly cared about the debasement of a little statue of the devil; most would probably say a tub of urine would be just where he should be. Besides, how can you be so opposed to “commercialization” when you’re part of commerce yourself? You might not have expected your photographs to be sold back in the late ‘80’s (as you’ve said) but that can’t be said today. Galleries represent you; you aren’t giving your prints away. They’re for sale. You’re all in business. Your works are no less commercial than those glow in the dark praying hands of Jesus, you’re stuff is just more expensive.
And in that 1991 interview for High Performance you said that you’re not “opposed” to being called a Christian. You said, “I am drawn to the symbols of the Church. I like the aesthetics of the Church. I like Church furniture. I like going to Church for aesthetic reasons, rather than spiritual ones. . . . I am drawn to Christ but I have real problems with the Catholic Church. I don't go out of my way to be critical of the Church in my work, because I think that I make icons worthy of the Church.” When asked if you saw yourself carrying on the tradition of religious art you responded, “Absolutely. I am not a heretic. I like to believe that rather than destroy icons, I make new ones.
But in 1998 you make another “Piss” photograph but now combined the word in the title with GOD. PISS G*D. Is that what you call a “new icon”? Yeah, right. Making a title that blatantly makes anyone who says it violate the Third Commandment, that’s just evil. Doing it so you can make money on it, I don’t think I have a word for that. But I do have a word for this: going to church for aesthetic reasons. That’s like a gourmand going to a restaurant just to admire the silverware—it’s called dumb. You’re not dumb. But with all that urine and interest in anti-capitalist religion and being “drawn to Christ”, well, maybe it’s all possible, but I think that mostly you’re putting us on, like with that line “it’s just a title.” Yeah. Right.
And that’s the real problem with “Pee-Cue”. I think it’s a put-on. The more we look and think about “Pee-Cee” the faster its problems start to show themselves. For one thing, it’s not that interesting a picture. The color is beautiful, yes, but the composition is too static (why didn’t you twist the vertical axis of the crucifix as well as the horizontal? Just a little turn and the picture could have had so much more depth). Interesting that you made it 60 x 40 inches, which makes it three inches longer that would be needed for a
A screening of the Warhol “Blow Job” at the Museum of Modern Art from the ARTNET web site.
golden rectangle. But you could have made the “transgression” aspect of the piece more powerful if you’d more dramatically transgressed the traditional canons of proportion too (it’s what’s called a lack of concinnity). And I think you pulled your punches in this photograph. If the urine, your urine so is important why didn’t you make sure we knew it was your urine and film yourself through the process of making the photograph and then make the film part of the work of art? I bet that’s what Andy Warhol have done (he wouldn’t have done the urinating himself, he would have filmed DeVeren Bookwalter or Joe Dallesandro doing it, but he would have filmed it). The weeks it took to urinate into
an aquarium, filling the five gallons, then putting the crucifix in, adjusting the lights, getting the angles right, developing the prints, filming it all and including the film with your photograph instead of just a label with a name on it—THAT would be an interesting work of art, and a really edgy one. But you didn’t do that. You just took a picture and told us what you want us to believe the liquid to be. And that telling is supposed to shock us. Okay. So you shock us, it gets us to base one, but it’s not even a double hitter. The problem with “Pee-Cee” isn’t that it’s shocking. The problem is that it isn’t shocking enough. You could have done so much more. But you didn’t do more because I think you’re not really committed to your work. It’s really a stunt. Fill up a tank (maybe it’s urine, maybe it’s not, maybe it’s yours, maybe it’s not), put in a plastic Jesus, and a plastic Satan, a Madonna and Child and then a plastic Venus (or is it Dionysius? The picture and the poise doesn’t make it clear), put a label next to the picture sounding like a sailor’s cuss, make up a story about the commercialization of religion, get some press and you’re off to the races. Of course I could be wrong about all this, and if I am I apologize, but I bet I’m not. I think the only reason “Pee-Cee” is of any continuing interest is because of your title and a title doesn’t make for a very substantial work of art. Perhaps you could argue that “Pee-Cee” is like René Magritte’s La trahison des images (that’s the painting with the pipe that has written across it "Ceci n'est pas une pipe"—“this is not a pipe”) and you might be right; it’s the title that makes that painting but with Magritte the irony of his title is compounded by the fact that it’s actually part of the painting itself, he painted it. Your title is attached to the wall beside you photograph, it itself isn’t part of your piece at all, it’s an instruction, like the gallery’s “EXIT” sign. Ah, yes, the EXIT sign. Folks leave when they’re not interested anymore and buyers have been kinda exiting your recent auctions. Back in December 1999, one of your “Pee-Cee” prints was auctioned in London. While the pre-sale estimated value lay between $20,000 - $30,000 the photograph sold, apparently to everybody’s surprise, for $162,000. But on May 11, six years later, another print sold at Sotheby’s New York for only $42,000. Market goes up, market goes down. In the May sale of 2008, Christies’ New York sold a print for $277,000 but just a year after another print only went for $146,500 over at Sotheby’s and just last April 9, 2011, Phillips de Pury & Company in New York was only able to sell a print for $84,000. That’s not just going down that’s
The web page from Christie’s May 2009 auction
called a market collapse. And when looking at recent auctions of your other photographs the picture just gets more problematic. Here are some highlights.
Piece
Sale Date
Auction House
Successful Bid
Estimate
“Native American”
9 April 2011
Phillips de Pury NYC
37,000
15-20,000
“Dante’s Inferno”
9 April 2011
Phillips de Pury NYC
11,250
15-25,000
“White Pope”
9 April 2011
Phillips de Pury NYC
27,500
25-35,000
“Klansman” (Imperial Wizard II)
8 April, 2011
Christies’ NYC
27,000
25-35,000
“Piss Discus”
8 April, 2011
Christies’ NYC
3,500
3-5,000
“Untitled” (Ejaculate XIV)
8 April 2011
Christies’ NYC
no buyers
12-18,000
“Dante’s Inferno”
6 April 2011
Southeby’s NYC
no buyers
25-35,000
“Hercules Punishing Diomedes I and II”
10 March 2011
Christies NYC
35,000
20,30,000
“Piss God”
9 March, 2011
Sotheby’s NYC
12,000
12-18,000
“Heaven and Hell”
9 March, 2011
Sotheby’s NYC
no buyers
20-30,000
“Oiseau sur une branche”
18 January 2011 Venderkindere, Brussels
no buyers
April is the cruelest month. While your “Native American” and “Hercules” sold more than their pre-auction estimates, the other photographs were sold at the low range of theirs and four works failed to find buyers at all. If I were your dealer I’d be looking hard for a way to turn up the buzz on “Pee-Cee”; it’s loosing its value, as are most of your other works. A nice little melee that could get in the international press would be just the thing to resurrect interest and maybe pump back up your prices. There have been attacks on “Pee-Cee” before. Last Palm Sunday wasn’t the first time somebody took a swipe at your photograph. In 1997, while a print was being exhibited in the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia, “Pee-Cee” was attacked twice. The first time a 51 year old man named John Haywood took the photograph off the wall and kicked it. At the man’s court appearance he said, “You can go so far with taking the piss, you understand. . . . It riles me, it really gets me very upset.” Asked what he’d like to say to you he replied, “I wouldn’t like to say nothing to him, I’d just like to punch him in the
nose.” Well, you weren’t in the gallery at the time so he kicked your photograph instead (gotta love the directness of the Aussies). The kick only resulted in minor damage and Mr. Haywood got a one-month jail term that was suspended. But the next day a couple of teenagers was more successful in their vandalism. One of them acted as a decoy, kicking one of your portraits of a Klansmen while the other smashed “Pee-Cee” about a half-dozen times with a hammer. There was a tussle in which the hammer fell out of the boy’s hand and hit a guard on the knee—so far, besides pushing and shoving, that’s the extent of the physical violence on people your work has resulted in. Yet, with all the ruckus the Aussies decided to close down the exhibit (your “History of Sex” was being shown across town in Melbourne’s Kirkcaldy Davies Gallery without incident and that remained open). But you didn’t like the fact that the National Gallery was closing your exhibit and you called a press conference: “I denounce the director Timothy Potts’ spineless lack of support. I denounce any and all acts of terrorism and violent dissent, most of all I denounce the cowardice of those unable to fight for and defend the principles of democracy.”
That was a lot of denouncing; you sound like a commissar in one of Stalin’s engineer trials. And calling taking a hammer to your photo “terrorism”? What, the picture got all nervous, trembled and was scared to death? That’s a bit much. And as far as defending the principles of democracy is concerned, I’d lay a bet that a fully democratic society would applaud throwing your photograph in the rubbish. So, I think you were being a bit silly in Australia, but it was certainly great theater. And the theater has continued with Avignon. You haven’t said much about this most recent vandalism except to repeat that you are a Christian artist who collects religious art and has “no sympathy for blasphemy. Quite the opposite of my nature.” But the museum’s director, Jean Marc Ferrari, has had himself photographed, arms outstretched a la crucifixion, in front of your damaged print. Yvon Lambert, who owns the gallery, announced that he intends to file a lawsuit on account of the works’ destruction (I’m not sure who he wants to sue) and he immediately reopened his gallery, unrepaired print in place, so that the public could gaze upon the mutilated art work; Ah! No, not the mutilated artwork, the martyred art work.
That’s it. The martyred artwork. Your exhibition opened in Avignon on December 12, 2010 and for three months it attracted almost no attention (just as had a previous exhibition in the same gallery in 2007). Of all the works in the exhibit, the Collection Lambert chooses “Pee-Cee” to put in the exhibition’s poster and distributes them throughout the city, pasting them to kiosks and hanging a reproduction of the poster as a huge banner in front of the gallery. But, after about ten weeks of this, the local archbishop calls the exhibition odieux, there’s a demonstration were nearly a thousand conservative Roman Catholics march through the streets, then an attack by aesthetic assassins, who leave shouting a rather odd French version of the Islamic Allah Akbar —who, without any hard evidence what-so-ever, the media suggest are conservative Roman Catholics who participated in the demonstration and voilà, a scandal with a martyred art work—just in time for Holy Week and the next auctions of your pictures in May. What lucky timing. Luck? Maybe more. After all your exhibition was titled Je crois aux miracles (“I believe in miracles”).
A member of the “Pro Freedom of Expression” movement holds up an exhibition poster on 20 April 2011, outside of the Court of Justice in Avignon
But there is real miracle--or there can be--and I’m getting to it. In looking at the pictures of the damaged print with its crushed and broken cover, I think it’s now a better work of art. Rather like Duchamp’s “The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even”, “PeeCee” looks better broken; your photo now has greater depth (literally), more variety of color and shadow. The strata of lines over Christ’s face wonderfully enrich the image, there’s a juxtaposition and dissonance between the generally softened contours of the image and the sharp angles of the cracks that gives the picture a tension and drama that your original lacked and needed. In fact, now you can’t really see Christ’s face, it’s veiled behind the results of those hammer blows. I really liked the idea of your photograph before, the execution, well not so much. But I really meant those bravos. Even with all the problems, “Pee-Cee” is an important work. But now, after it’s been broken, “Pee-Cee” is poignant. It’s interesting. It’s moving. These vandals did you a favor; they took your art to where you didn’t have the nerve to go. They finished it for you.
The vandalized photo, from the les in Rocks website.
And this too has happened to you before. Here’s how Carol Vogel, writing for the New York Times, described the incident in the October 9, 2007 issue. A grainy video of four masked vandals running through an art gallery in Sweden, smashing sexually explicit photographs with crowbars and axes to the strain of thundering death-metal music, was posted on YouTube last week. This was no joke or acting stunt. It was what actually happened on a quiet Friday afternoon in Lund, a small university town in southern Sweden where "The History of Sex," an exhibition of photographs by the New York artist Andres Serrano, had opened two weeks earlier. Around 3:30, half an hour before closing time, four vandals wearing black masks stormed into a space known as the Kulturen Gallery while shouting in Swedish, "We don't support this," plus an expletive. They
pushed visitors aside, entered a darkened room where some of the photographs were displayed and began smashing the glass protecting the photographs and then hacking away at the prints. The bumpy video, evidently shot with a hand-held camera by someone who ran into the gallery with the attackers, intersperses images of the Serrano photographs with lettered commentary in Swedish like "This is art?" before showing the vandals at work. . . . By the time the masked men had finished, half the show - seven 130-by-154centimeter, or 50-by-60-inch, photographs, worth about $200,000 overall had been destroyed. The men left behind leaflets reading, "Against decadence and for a healthier culture." The fliers listed no name or organization.
“Against. . . .” I said that I thought that your work is a “put-on.” It’s shocking, but not shocking enough because you never really follow through, you never really commit. You don’t really mean what you’re doing, or you don’t mean it enough. You hold back, you don’t risk everything for it. You take pictures of things you say are combined with blood, urine, excrement, semen—things we would normally flush away, but you never make us sure it’s really blood, urine, excrement—instead it’s all just artifice. In “The History of Sex” you take pictures of people who pose for you: a naked young woman fondling the engorged penis of a horse, another of woman, hiking up her skirt, urinating into the open mouth of a naked man beneath her, his hair clenched in her fist, a man--costumed as a priest--gagged with a sex toy (at least I think it’s a sex toy, you’re not that clear about the object but you’re clear about the title: “Martyr”)—but we never get any idea that you care about them, or that we should. Velázquez makes us grieve for his dwarves, yours are literal manikins: mini-people, life-like but cold, passionless, dead (maybe that’s why some of your best works are of corpses). Your work is about violation; it’s all “against.” Violating public senses of decency (for an exhibition of a show in Amsterdam you allowed the public poster to be a reproduction of that photograph of the woman urinating in the man’s mouth), lacerating religious convictions by selecting titles that force impieties whenever they are spoken, ridiculing the commercialization of icons of all sorts, contorting relationships of power and sex: yes, it’s all there but in the end it’s all a pose. You pretend to be a provocateur but you’re just a carnival barker, a huckster. Your art fails because you hold back, you don’t really push the envelope, you don’t follow through. And you don’t follow through because you don’t really mean what you’re doing and that lack of utter and complete conviction shows in your art. As Marvin Heiferman wrote in Art Form about some of your pictures in 1997, they seemed “self-conscious, arch, even strangely behind the times.”
But that was in the summer of 1997, before the October attack in Australia and the later attacks in Sweden and now France. Your vandals have saved you. They have saved your art. And I think you know it. After the attack on “The History of Sex” exhibition in Sweden, you wanted the galleries re-opened with the slashed prints on display. “It’s important” you said, “because the damaged works make a statement in and of themselves. It’s a different statement than the original intent of the work, but now the work has been transformed and politicized, and it’s important for people to be able to see the works that they’ve been reading about in the paper.” Thinking that showing the damaged photos would “do a favor for the Nazi people” who destroyed them, the museum curator refused. You were right, she was wrong. The damaged works do make a statement but it’s not a different statement than your prints, it’s the same statement only better. The work that should have been on display in Sweden wasn’t the damaged prints, re-hung on the gallery walls (and for people to gawk at, and chat about, and buy) but instead that video that the vandals shot and edited of their rampage and posted for free on YouTube.
A still from the video of the vandalism in Sweden posted on YouTube
Those vandals completed your violation. They finished your “against.” The one still that is cut from their YouTube piece and remains accessible on the web has more drama and passion and artistic strength than any of “The History of Sex” photographs I’ve seen. Their anger and violence and daring, documented in their film, these things are their completion of an aesthetic you began but could not finish. Violation cannot end until it
itself is violated and the final artistic act of your “The History of Sex” and “Pee-Cee” is done by thieves with hammers. And that’s where it could end. In ruins. And that’s where it would end, in ruins, in corpses, in photographs of women fondling horses and prints of semen mixed with blood that can never bring life—a culture of death, but for a miracle. And there is one. It’s The Incarnation. “Pee-Cee”, now broken, with the head literally now wounded, can be one of the most moving artistic expressions of The Incarnation created, but you need to finish it, and finish it not with the aesthetic of violation but with the aesthetic of life. Give it a new name: “The Man of Sorrows.” Because that’s what it is, the Man of Sorrows, the body now broken for you, for me. And don’t hang it in a gallery. Buy it back from Yvone Lambert and give it to a parish—your parish-- where they will hang it not in a gallery for folks to gawk at but over the high altar where you can kneel, with your brothers and sisters, and receive communion, together. Christian art is Christian art when it becomes part of the life of a worshipping community just as a Christian artist becomes a Christian artist when he or she is a branch of the vine, pruned and fruitful. Ditch the carnival of the galleries and group shows and press conferences and knots of people looking at your pictures as if they are melons on a fruit stand, all the while making aesthetic cluck-clucks about how clever you are. Really finish your photos, taking them past violation—which is the way the vandals finished them--to live in a community where people who love you will kneel beside you in worship and grasp your hand and anoint your forehead as you die. And be a really shocking artist, not with the labels of a sneering seventh grader but with a stroke that slashes through the heart of the whole miserable establishment of art dealers, collectors, politicians, businessmen, clergy: instead of manipulating your market by creating scarcity—instead of that make thousands of copies of your prints, destroy the market and the monster of consumerism; the shrieks of collectors and auction house barkers (and their lawyers) as they howl after their precious cash (“oh my precious”) will drown out all the past complaints of bishops and politicians. The ultimate act of artistic transgression, the final obscenity: make your art free (and yes, for the record, that’s what I do with mine). Christ makes us free because he makes us forgiven, redeemed. And we’re freed from honor and pride and fear and pretense and ambition and shame. As Christian artists that freedom is the bath that surrounds us; instead of piss and blood we swim in liberty and love. Be a Christian artist. You say you are, now be one. Be a miracle.
“The Man of Sorrows”, screen grab from the EURONEWS broadcast
The 18th Century Hôtel de Caumont, owned by the city of Avignon, home to the Collection Lambert since 2000
Serrano/Collection Lambert Avignon Time Line
2007
7 July – 14 October Exhibition of Serrano’s “Portraits de la Comedia Francaises” held at the Collection Lambert, Avignon without incident
2010
12 December
2011
29 March
10th Anniversary of the Lambert Collection in Avignon opens, called “I Believe In Miracles”, showing the works of 110 artists (the list includes Dali, Christo, Matisse, Cezanne, Kiefer). The exhibition is scheduled to run through May 8, 2011. One of the ten prints of Serrano’s “Piss Christ” is included in the exhibition; it is chosen as the work to represent the exhibition on all publicity materials, including a huge banner hung on the Lambert gallery in the center of Avignon and on posters pasted throughout the city. LVMN (the corporation that holds Dior, Moet, and Hennessy) is listed on the promotional materials as a sponsor of the exhibition. The exhibition receives modest notice.
La Salon Beige, a French web site, receives publicity material for the Avignon show in the mail. The site publishes three demands: 1) the removal from exhibition the Serrano Christ photo because of its offensive nature to Christians; 2) the removal and destruction of all publicity material (posters, commemorative markers, brochures) 3) the cessation of public and private funding for this exhibition for ten years.
3 April
The Civitas Institute publishes the Salon Beige’s demands on its own web site as a petition and begins to collect signatures. The next day the web site les in Rocks reports the petition has almost 500 signatures. Within a 10 days, the number has grown to over 50,000 (the petition is still on line, having 92,000 signatures on 1 May). 8 April Jean-Pierre Cattenoz, archbishop of the diocese of Avignon, posts on the diocese’s web page a protest against the photograph, calling the gallery’s display a “provocation” and accuses the government of a double standard, having one set of protections for the sensibilities of Muslims and another for Christians. He compares the civil authorities to Pilate, standing by and washing their hands.
Archbishop Jean-Pierre Cattenoz is interviewed on French television
9 April ca 11 April
Sale of “Piss Christ” at Phillips de Pury & Company in New York
Because of strong political pressure, the city council of Avignon withdraws its support for the exhibition and LVMN requires the Lambert Collection to remove its name from the exhibition’s publicity materials (which LVMN maintains that the Lambert Collection included without its permission). Having received thousands of e-mails of complaint, the Lambert Collection agrees to take down the banner outside the gallery and remove posters distributed in the city. Several days later these materials are back in place. 16 April (Saturday) Le Salon Beige and Civitas sponsor a protest march in Avignon, about 1,000 protesters attend. The march ends at the Plaza of the Popes with speeches and prayers.
The Saturday Protest in Avignon
Protesters sing in front of the Collection Lambert
The protest concludes with speeches in the Plaza of the Popes
17 April (Palm Sunday) Soon after the gallery’s eleven o’clock opening two of Serrano’s photographs are vandalized by two? three? four? young men wearing sun glasses who shout “Vive Dieu!” (Long live God!) as they break the Plexiglas covers of the photographs and damage the surfaces of the prints. They escape on foot, running out the courtyard and down the street. Jean Marc Ferrari, the museum’s director, has his picture taken in front of Serrano’s damaged Christ, arms outstretched, a la crucifixion.
18 April (Monday) The story of the vandalism of Serrano’s photographs becomes international news with almost 200 reports, many of them repeating a claim that blame for the attack lay on Christian “fundamentalists.” The Collection Lambert is closed (it’s always closed Mondays). Stéphane Ibars, head of communications for Lambert, says that the gallery has received five death threats over the phone and the staff is
particularly edgy about their safety (“une situation particulièrement anxiogène”). The Gallery Lambert says the collection will reopen on Tuesday with the damaged art works exhibited.
Web page of the Guardian, typical of the coverage of the vandalism (notice the editorial “destroyed by Christian protesters”)
19 April (Tuesday)
The collection re-opens with increased security (but still without metal detectors at the entrance)
Added security as the gallery re-opens
20 April (Wednesday) The Court of Justice in Avignon hears a request brought by AGRIF (L’Alliance Generale contre le Racisme et pour le respect de l’Identite Francaise et chretienne) to temporarily close the Collection Lambert. AGRIF uses as support of their complaint a judgment on April 11 in Strasbourg of a man who was convicted for “incitement to religious hatred” by making a film and posting it on YouTube the previous October (in the film he tore out pages of a Koran, folded them into airplanes, threw them into two upended boxes--arranged to resemble the Twin Towers—set them on fire and then urinated on it to put it out). He received a 1,000 Euro fine and a three-month suspended sentence. Members of “Pro Freedom of
Expression” protest in support of the Collection Lambert in front of the court. 21 April (Maundy Thursday) The court in Avignon refuses AGRIF’s petition to close the exhibition of the Collection Lambert, rejecting any relationship between the Strasbourg video and Serrano’s photographs and orders AGRIF to pay 5,000 Euros to the gallery for damages and 3,000 Euros to the museum for its legal costs. AGRIF announces that they intend to appeal the decision. 22 April (Good Friday) On the heels of the court’s decision, the mayor of Avignon demands an apology from Bishop Cattenoz. 28 April
8 May
April Yvon Lambert, owner of the Collection Lambert, surprisingly announces his retirement and the closing of his New York gallery in the Chelsea district of Manhattan in a email sent to reporters. The Paris gallery will remain open under Belo Olivier; the fate of the Avignon gallery is unclear. Lambert maintains that the announcement of his retirement so soon after the vandalism in Avignon is merely a coincidence. Even though early reports stated that the men involved in the vandalism on Palm Sunday had been identified in photographs of the crowd protesting in Avignon the day prior, no arrests had yet been made.
i http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/8460351/Piss-Christ-photograph-attacked-with-hammer.html ii http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/18/andres-serrano-piss-christ-destroyed-christian-protesters iii “Une altercation a eu lieu avec les gardiens de salle et le vigile mis en place par la collection ces derniers jours, mais les individus, visiblement aguerris et bien préparés, sont parvenus à s’enfuir et ont quitté le musée aux cris de ‘Vive Dieu !’.” http://www.lesinrocks.com/actualite/actu-article/t/63294/date/2011-04-18/article/la-derniere-destruction-duchrist/
iv http://diocese-avignon.fr/spip/Une-profanation-d-un-Christ-en; Une profanation d’un Christ en Croix dans un musée et sur la voie publique d’Avignon
v http://galliawatch.blogspot.com/2010_11_01_archive.html vi "L'intitulé, 'Piss Christ', ne contient aucune hostilité envers le Christ ou la religion. Il est simplement une description." http://www.lepost.fr/article/2011/04/19/2470699_l-auteur-du-piss-christ-je-suis-chretien-et-je-n-ai-rien-d-unblasphemateur.html