Monday 18 April 2011

Andres Serrano's Piss Christ destroyed by Christian protesters

Piss Christ by Andres Serrano after it was attacked by Christian protesters in Avignon. Photograph: Boris Horvat/AFP/Getty Images
The controversial work Piss Christ by the New York photographer Andres Serrano has been destroyed at a gallery in France after weeks of protests.
The photograph, which shows a small crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist's urine, outraged the US religious right in 1987, when it was first shown, with Serrano denounced in the Senate by the Republican Jesse Helms. It was later vandalised in Australia, and neo-Nazis ransacked a show by the artist in Sweden in 2007.
The work has previously been shown without incident in France, but for the past two weeks Catholic groups have campaigned against it, culminating in hundreds of people marching through Avignon on Saturday in protest.
Just after 11am on Sunday, four people in sunglasses entered the gallery where the exhibition was being held. One took a hammer from his sock and threatened security staff. A guard restrained one man but the remaining members of the group managed to smash an acrylic screen and slash the photograph with what police believe was a screwdriver or ice pick. They then destroyed another photograph, of nuns' hands in prayer.
Piss Christ is part of a series by Serrano showing religious objects submerged in fluid such as blood and milk. It was being shown in an exhibition to mark 10 years of the art dealer Yvon Lambert's personal collection in his 18th-century mansion.
Last week the gallery complained of "extremist harassment" by Christians who wanted the image banned. The archbishop of Vaucluse, Jean-Pierre Cattenoz, called the work "odious" and said he wanted "this trash" taken off the gallery walls. Saturday's street protest against the work gained the support of the far-right National Front, which has recently done well in local elections.
Lambert had complained he was being "persecuted" by religious extremists who had sent him tens of thousands of emails. He likened the atmosphere to a return to the middle ages. The gallery stepped up protection, putting Plexiglass in front of Piss Christ and assigning two gallery guards to stand in front of it.
The culture minister, Frédéric Mitterrand, condemned the vandalism as an attack on the fundamental freedoms of creation and expression. A police complaint has been filed by the gallery and the guards.
The gallery's director, Eric Mézil, says he will keep the exhibition open to the public with the destroyed work on show "so people can see what barbarians can do".
The I Believe in Miracles exhibition opened in December and will run until May.
Angelique Chrisafis @'The Guardian'

Fugn christians!!!

3 comments:

  1. I just watched an episode in The L-Word where exactly the same sort of thing happens, and to some extent, you wouldn't expect the same sort of intolerant behaviour in France. Then again, Le Pen has shown that you can hijack the national agenda while dissociating yourself from intolerance, making the whole political machine an expression of your backward positions.

    You almost hope for some kamikaze artist spreading his body fluids on some christian relics as retaliation. The Sixtine chapel, somebody?

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  2. There is a certain hypocrisy here in seeing Christian targets as fair game for what might be termed 'artistic vandalism'. Don't get me wrong; I'm in favour of freedom of expression, even if on occasion it offends this or that group. But there seems to be a great reluctance to target anything Islamic these days (except for that nutcase, Koran-burning US pastor, and his act was hardly an artistic one---just damn foolish). I would be a much keener champion of freedom of expression in the art world if artists took off their Islamic blinkers. You can count on the fingers of one hand the occasions when freedom of expression tampers with anything Islamic. Why is that, I wonder? I challenge Serrano to trump his photograph of Christ on the cross with one of Mohammed, perhaps upside down in a jar of pig's blood. Go on, Andres. Be a devil!

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  3. 2Anon/
    You run into difficulties right from the word go as if you check out Islamic art there is no representation of anything living permitted...
    Regards/

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