Piss Sunday

By AM Tuesday, August 23, 2011

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The following article and a follow up have been lying around for a while but never made it to the Quill due to other pieces pushing through.

As a former Catholic, and as someone who even today is not opposed to being called a Christian, I felt I had every right to use the symbols of the Church and resented being told not to - Andres Serrano

When on Palm Sunday in April intolerant French Catholics attacked Andres Serrano's Piss Christ photograph in Avignon, France, they placed themselves on a par with their fellow bigots in Islam who used violence in a bid to suppress cartoons of their prophet Mohammed, sketched for a Danish newspaper a few years ago. Mohammed’s men also wanted the cartoonists killed. What fate may might have befallen Serrano had the French men of god stumbled across him on their mission of Christian love is anybody’s guess. Would they have waited until he reached hell before having him burnt?

The general Serrano controversy long predated the particularity of the Avignon incident. In 1987 he placed a plastic crucifix in a glass of his own piss in New York ostensibly to highlight the misuse that religion is often put to: the ‘billion-dollar Christ-for-profit industry’ and as ‘condemnation of those who abuse the teachings of Christ for their own ignoble ends.’  Even in recessions there is always work for those who want to turn a dollar in the religion business. Perhaps that genuinely was Serrano’s motivation although it looks pretty much as if he wanted to take the piss out of Catholics who on Palm Sunday in turn took their Christ out of the piss as part of an anti-Blasphemy campaign.

Wind up or not, it is hard to fathom that there is such a thing as the medieval concept of blasphemy. Religious people still want their opinions privileged through enshrining anti-blasphemy in law so that their reason-defying beliefs can be protected from free inquiry. They can then scream ‘you offend me’ and have you officially gagged or jailed, in some cases even killed. In Ireland they actually have a blasphemy law in place, it being slower than other parts of the world in shaking off religious infringement on civil liberties. Not that the Irish blasphemy law works too well as a deterrent, with people all too willing to challenge the myths and superstitions propagated by the practitioners of priestcraft. 

When Serrano first launched his work in the US, the violence-endorsing right wing Christian bigot Senator Jesse Helms was infuriated, ranting that Serrano was not an artist but a jerk. Yet, for all its jerk attributes Piss Christ won the South Eastern Center for Contemporary Art's "Awards in the Visual Arts" competition. Not that the quality of the competition was beyond question if something as unimaginative as Piss Christ won. That aside, it provoked a heated debate about arts funding. Award winning maybe, but it is hard to assert with any measure of plausibility that a great deal of imaginative input resulted in Serrano’s creative output.

That however is a secondary consideration. Despite its questionable artistic merit it threatened only sensibilities not human life. For all his self righteous posturing, Jesse the Jerk for Jesus supported right wing Christian death squad leaders such as El Salvador’s Roberto ‘Major Bob’ D’Aubisson, whom he described as a very religious man.  No querying it, D’Aubisson was religious although it never prevented him from murdering other religious men such as Archbishop Oscar Romero. In fact it might have ignited his murderous instincts. It is a tale as old as religious men themselves and highlights what religious men have long done, kill supposedly because they love god. Maybe killing is just religious art and should be funded accordingly.  Kill a commie for Christ, parade his body in the street, title it Christian justice and have 12000 evangelical idiots go hungry just so that they can fill the artistic collection bucket.

Avignon was not the first time Serrano’s work provoked violent reaction, it having earlier been the target of physical attack in both Sweden and Australia. Sweden of all places was the more disappointing, where only low levels of religious contamination seem to register.  In Australia, where the god industry seems to flourish more, the archbishop of Melbourne unsuccessfully sought to have the painting banned from public display. Not enough for him to simply ignore it, he wanted to prevent others viewing it and making up their own minds on the demerits of its artistry. He saw it as his job to think and decide for others, many of whom would want little to do with him. Always the same with some religious types: they convince themselves that by shouting ‘gawd’ they can force everyone else to run for cover. Old god can always be relied on to provide the muscle for a bit of Christian bullying.

All sort of looks crazy but it is the type of antic that religious zealots get up to and then seek to make others cough up for.  They pray, societies pay. Their behaviour might be easy to laugh at but as Mencken observed when covering the Scopes Monkey Trial ‘their buffooneries were mistaken for humour. Now the clowns turn out to be armed, and have begun to shoot.’

Christians are often very violent people while all the time professing peace and love. Their lip licking contemplation of the violence of hell for their enemies gives the game away. When they make threatening noises over Piss Christ the response should be Piss Off.