Piss Artists 3: Andres Serrano (Piss Christ)

Andres Serrano: Immersion (Piss Christ) (1987) 

Cibachrome print photograph (150 x 100 cm) [1]

 

I. 

 

For most British people, a piss artist is one who likes to get drunk, act the fool, produce shoddy work and generally waste time. In other words, one who gets pissed a little too often; pisses around a little too much; and pisses people off more than is deemed acceptable. 

 

However, for some of us, the term also triggers thoughts of Warhol, Chadwick and Serrano and here I would like to discuss a famous work by the third of these piss artists, Andres Serrano ...

 

 

II.

 

It's debatable if Piss Christ (1987), by the American photographer and artist Andres Serrano, is profoundly appropriate for publication on Easter Sunday, or wildly inappropriate. 

 

Either way, the mysteriously beautiful (and award winning) picture of Jesus on the Cross submerged in a small glass tank of urine is his one work that pretty much everybody recognises and it's the work that most fascinates me at the moment.

 

Serrano often likes to use bodily fluids in his work; not just piss, but also blood, semen, and human breast milk. Why that's the case - what his artistic obsession with these things (and other base materials) reveals about him or forces us to face up to in our own lives - I'm not sure. 

 

Having read a fair amount of Bataille, however, I've a pretty good idea: the use of base materials disrupts the opposition of high and low by exposing the fact that whatever is elevated remains dependent on soil, slime, and shit and this dependence means that the purity of the ideal is contaminated or corrupted. 

 

Similarly, by affirming à la Henry Miller everything that flows and showing how bodily fluids very much belong to a libidinal economy - even though such secretions are often subject to severe prohibition and taboo - artists are able to destabilise all fixed and firm foundations. 

 

 

III.

I suspect that Serrano knows all this, so his expressions of surprise that the work should generate huge controversy (mostly because it was thought blasphemous by those on the religious right, rather than deconstructive of metaphysical dualism) are somewhat disingenuous [2].

 

And, as a lifelong Catholic who takes his faith seriously, Serrano probably also knows that the Eucharist contains a dirty little secret; that the bread and wine are not symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ as most people believe, but, rather, of metabolic waste materials (the idea being that the holy spirit is born of excess; that divine energy is a surplus that cannot be absorbed into daily life; that the accursed share is that which makes blessed) [3].          

 

Thus, whilst I may not want to hang a print of Serrano's Piss Christ above my bed, I acknowledge its theo-philosophical importance.

 

And, like Apollinaire, I refuse to be shocked, or scared, or to stand in awe of art and have no qualms about any materials the artist chooses to use. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Piss Christ was one of a series of photographs that Serrano had made that involved classical statuettes submerged in various body fluids.

[2] Although initially Piss Christ was well received, as word got round that Serrano had (at the very least) insulted Christ and all those who regard him as their saviour, he started to lose funding and receive hate mail (including death threats) - which isn't very Christian when you think about it. 

      Serrano, however, denied his work had any overt political content and rejected the accusation that he was attempting to blaspheme. In fact, Serrano suggested that Piss Christ should be regarded as a serious work of Christian art, saying:  "What it symbolizes is the way Christ died: the blood came out of him but so did the piss and the shit. Maybe if Piss Christ upsets you, it's because it gives some sense of what the crucifixion actually was like."   

      And in 2023, even the Pope was prepared to accept this argument, after meeting with the artist in Rome and giving him his blessing. By this date, the value placed on the work by the art market had also risen miraculously; in October 2022, Piss Christ was sold at Sotheby's (London) for £130,000 ($145,162).

      The quote from Serrano is taken from an interview with Jonathan Jones in The Guardian (3 April 2026): click here. 

 

[3] As one commentator on the subject of excrement and religion notes:

      "The perennial intermingling of scatology and religion is so extensive that cataloging it could fill volumes. The conjoining of excrement and divinity may bring about cognitive dissonance in some, or even most, but for many throughout history it has been a harmony that leaps immediately to mind, though to various ends." 

      See Andrew G. Christensen, "'Tis my muse will have it so": Four Dimensions of Scatology in Molloy', Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Summer 2017), pp. 90-104. Lines quoted are on p. 97. This essay can be found (if interested) on JSTOR: click here. 

 

 

To read the first post in this series - on Andy Warhol and his Piss and Oxidation Paintings (1977-1978) - please click here. 

 

To read the second post in this series - on Helen Chadwick and her Piss Flowers (1992) - please click here.