Andres Serrano
Encyclopedia
Andres Serrano is an American
photographer and artist
who has become notorious through his photos of corpses and his use of feces and bodily fluids in his work, notably his controversial work "Piss Christ
", a red-tinged photograph of a crucifix
submerged in a glass container of what was purported to be the artist's own urine
.
Serrano is from a half Honduran
, half Afro-Cuban
background, and was raised a strict Roman Catholic
. He studied from 1967 to 1969 at the Brooklyn Museum and Art School
. He worked as an assistant art director at an advertising firm, before creating his first works in 1983. Serrano is represented in New York, where he lives and works, and Paris, by Yvon Lambert Gallery
.
His work has been exhibited in diverse locations around the world including the Episcopal Cathedral of Saint John the Divine
in New York City
, World without end (2001), and a retrospective at the Barbican Arts Centre in London
, Body and soul (2001).
His exhibitions have often inspired angry reactions. On October 5, 2007, several of his works were vandalized at an art gallery in Lund
, Sweden
by people who were believed to be part of a neo-Nazi group. On April 16, 2011, after two weeks of protests and a campaign of hate mail and abusive phone calls to an art gallery displaying his work, orchestrated by groups of French Catholic fundamentalists, approximately a thousand people marched through the streets of Avignon
, to protest outside the gallery. On April 17, 2011, two of his works, Piss Christ and The Church, were vandalized. The gallery director plans to reopen the museum with the damaged works on show "so people can see what barbarians can do".
Serrano's work as a photographer tends toward relatively large prints of about 20 by, which are produced by conventional photographic techniques (as opposed to digital manipulation). He has shot a vast array of subject matter including portraits of Klansmen
, morgue photos, and pictures of burn victims. He went into the New York subways with lights and photographic background paper to portray the bedraggled homeless as art objects, as well as producing some rather tender but sometimes decidedly kinky portraits of couples. One of these last shows what Adrian Searle of The Guardian
described as "a young couple, she with a strap-on dildo, he with a mildly expectant expression."
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Many of Serrano's pictures involve bodily fluids in some way—depicting, for example, blood
(sometimes menstrual
blood), semen
(for example, "Blood and Semen II" (1990)) or human female milk
. Within this series are a number of works in which objects are submerged in bodily fluids. Most famous of these is "Piss Christ
" (1987), a photograph of a plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist's own urine. This caused great controversy when first exhibited. The work was sold for $162,000 in December 1999 in London, which was far beyond the estimated $20,000 - $30,000. Serrano, alongside other artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe
, became a figure whom Senator Jesse Helms, and Senator Alphonse D'Amato, as well as other cultural conservatives, attacked for producing offensive art while others, including The New York Times
, defended him in the name of artistic freedom
. (See the American "culture war
s" of the 1990s).
Serrano's series "Objects of Desire" from the early 1990s features close-ups of firearms, photographed at the Slidell
, Louisiana
home of artist Blake Nelson Boyd
. The best known is the shot, against a glowing orange background, down the barrel of a loaded .45
revolver
(belonging to Boyd's grandfather) and was used by Jonas Mekas for the cover of the April-May-June 2007 Anthology Film Archives catalog.
The most famous and notorious of Serrano's work plays on the relationship between beautiful imagery and vulgar materials, his subject matter often drawing from the potentially controversial and, perhaps, the willfully provocative. Guardian art critic Adrian Searle was not impressed in 2001: he found that Serrano's photos were "far more about being lurid than anything else... In the end, the show is all surface, and looking for hidden depths does no good." More recent work of his uses feces as a medium.
Serrano's work "Blood and Semen III" is used as the cover of heavy metal band Metallica
's Load
, while "Piss and Blood" is used on ReLoad
. Serrano also directed a video for industrial metal
group Godflesh
, "Crush My Soul".
In 2008, Serrano's piece "The Interpretation of Dreams (White Nigger)" was selected to participate in The Renaissance Society's group exhibit, "Black Is, Black Ain't".
Andres Serrano adopted the alter ego "Brutus Faust" to create the full length album Vengeance Is Mine in July 2010. The album contains covers of classic songs from the 1960s, and original compositions including four songs written by Serrano’s wife Irina Movmyga as well as one song co-written by Serrano, Thad DeBrock, and album producer Steve Messina of New York based band Blow Up Hollywood
. Coinciding with the release of the album are the videos Goo Goo Gaga, Love Letters, and Bad Moon Rising. Goo Goo Gaga consists mostly of black and white footage from the 1940s, which makes parallels between the Depression and the present day, with the images of "Brutus" shot by Francesco Carrozzini. Love Letters is footage taken from cult director Joe Sarno’s Flesh and Lace. Bad Moon Rising consists entirely of footage Serrano compiled from several short films by John Santerineross. All of these short films were edited by New York film editor Vincent V.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
photographer and artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
who has become notorious through his photos of corpses and his use of feces and bodily fluids in his work, notably his controversial work "Piss Christ
Piss Christ
Piss Christ is a 1987 photograph by artist and photographer Andres Serrano. It depicts a small plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist's urine...
", a red-tinged photograph of a crucifix
Crucifix
A crucifix is an independent image of Jesus on the cross with a representation of Jesus' body, referred to in English as the corpus , as distinct from a cross with no body....
submerged in a glass container of what was purported to be the artist's own urine
Urine
Urine is a typically sterile liquid by-product of the body that is secreted by the kidneys through a process called urination and excreted through the urethra. Cellular metabolism generates numerous by-products, many rich in nitrogen, that require elimination from the bloodstream...
.
Life
Serrano is from a half Honduran
Honduras
Honduras is a republic in Central America. It was previously known as Spanish Honduras to differentiate it from British Honduras, which became the modern-day state of Belize...
, half Afro-Cuban
Afro-Cuban
The term Afro-Cuban refers to Cubans of Sub Saharan African ancestry, and to historical or cultural elements in Cuba thought to emanate from this community...
background, and was raised a strict Roman Catholic
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
. He studied from 1967 to 1969 at the Brooklyn Museum and Art School
Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is an encyclopedia art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At 560,000 square feet, the museum holds New York City's second largest art collection with roughly 1.5 million works....
. He worked as an assistant art director at an advertising firm, before creating his first works in 1983. Serrano is represented in New York, where he lives and works, and Paris, by Yvon Lambert Gallery
Yvon Lambert Gallery
Yvon Lambert Gallery is a contemporary art gallery founded by Yvon Lambert in 1966. There are two locations; one in Paris and the second in New York City.-History:...
.
His work has been exhibited in diverse locations around the world including the Episcopal Cathedral of Saint John the Divine
Cathedral of Saint John the Divine
The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, officially the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine in the City and Diocese of New York, is the cathedral of the Episcopal Diocese of New York...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, World without end (2001), and a retrospective at the Barbican Arts Centre in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, Body and soul (2001).
His exhibitions have often inspired angry reactions. On October 5, 2007, several of his works were vandalized at an art gallery in Lund
Lund
-Main sights:During the 12th and 13th centuries, when the town was the seat of the archbishop, many churches and monasteries were built. At its peak, Lund had 27 churches, but most of them were demolished as result of the Reformation in 1536. Several medieval buildings remain, including Lund...
, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
by people who were believed to be part of a neo-Nazi group. On April 16, 2011, after two weeks of protests and a campaign of hate mail and abusive phone calls to an art gallery displaying his work, orchestrated by groups of French Catholic fundamentalists, approximately a thousand people marched through the streets of Avignon
Avignon
Avignon is a French commune in southeastern France in the départment of the Vaucluse bordered by the left bank of the Rhône river. Of the 94,787 inhabitants of the city on 1 January 2010, 12 000 live in the ancient town centre surrounded by its medieval ramparts.Often referred to as the...
, to protest outside the gallery. On April 17, 2011, two of his works, Piss Christ and The Church, were vandalized. The gallery director plans to reopen the museum with the damaged works on show "so people can see what barbarians can do".
Work
Serrano's work as a photographer tends toward relatively large prints of about 20 by, which are produced by conventional photographic techniques (as opposed to digital manipulation). He has shot a vast array of subject matter including portraits of Klansmen
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
, morgue photos, and pictures of burn victims. He went into the New York subways with lights and photographic background paper to portray the bedraggled homeless as art objects, as well as producing some rather tender but sometimes decidedly kinky portraits of couples. One of these last shows what Adrian Searle of The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
described as "a young couple, she with a strap-on dildo, he with a mildly expectant expression."
Blood
Blood is a specialized bodily fluid in animals that delivers necessary substances such as nutrients and oxygen to the cells and transports metabolic waste products away from those same cells....
(sometimes menstrual
Menstrual cycle
The menstrual cycle is the scientific term for the physiological changes that can occur in fertile women for the purpose of sexual reproduction. This article focuses on the human menstrual cycle....
blood), semen
Semen
Semen is an organic fluid, also known as seminal fluid, that may contain spermatozoa. It is secreted by the gonads and other sexual organs of male or hermaphroditic animals and can fertilize female ova...
(for example, "Blood and Semen II" (1990)) or human female milk
Milk
Milk is a white liquid produced by the mammary glands of mammals. It is the primary source of nutrition for young mammals before they are able to digest other types of food. Early-lactation milk contains colostrum, which carries the mother's antibodies to the baby and can reduce the risk of many...
. Within this series are a number of works in which objects are submerged in bodily fluids. Most famous of these is "Piss Christ
Piss Christ
Piss Christ is a 1987 photograph by artist and photographer Andres Serrano. It depicts a small plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist's urine...
" (1987), a photograph of a plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist's own urine. This caused great controversy when first exhibited. The work was sold for $162,000 in December 1999 in London, which was far beyond the estimated $20,000 - $30,000. Serrano, alongside other artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpe was an American photographer, known for his large-scale, highly stylized black and white portraits, photos of flowers and nude men...
, became a figure whom Senator Jesse Helms, and Senator Alphonse D'Amato, as well as other cultural conservatives, attacked for producing offensive art while others, including The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, defended him in the name of artistic freedom
Freedom of speech
Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used...
. (See the American "culture war
Culture war
The culture war in American usage is a metaphor used to claim that political conflict is based on sets of conflicting cultural values. The term frequently implies a conflict between those values considered traditionalist or conservative and those considered progressive or liberal...
s" of the 1990s).
Serrano's series "Objects of Desire" from the early 1990s features close-ups of firearms, photographed at the Slidell
Slidell, Louisiana
Slidell is a city situated on the northeast shore of Lake Pontchartrain in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, United States. The population was 25,695 at the 2000 census. The Greater Slidell Community has a population of about 90,000...
, Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
home of artist Blake Nelson Boyd
Blake Nelson Boyd
Blake Nelson Boyd is an American film actor, comedian, and visual artist who lives and works in New Orleans, Louisiana and London. Boyd was mentored by Andres Serrano and Andy Warhol Factory manager Billy Name in the 1990s...
. The best known is the shot, against a glowing orange background, down the barrel of a loaded .45
.45
.45 may refer to:* .45 ACP, a cartridge designed by John Browning in 1904, for use in his prototype Colt semi-automatic .45 pistol and eventually the M1911 pistol adopted by the United States Army in 1911* .45-70, a cartridge developed at the U.S...
revolver
Revolver
A revolver is a repeating firearm that has a cylinder containing multiple chambers and at least one barrel for firing. The first revolver ever made was built by Elisha Collier in 1818. The percussion cap revolver was invented by Samuel Colt in 1836. This weapon became known as the Colt Paterson...
(belonging to Boyd's grandfather) and was used by Jonas Mekas for the cover of the April-May-June 2007 Anthology Film Archives catalog.
The most famous and notorious of Serrano's work plays on the relationship between beautiful imagery and vulgar materials, his subject matter often drawing from the potentially controversial and, perhaps, the willfully provocative. Guardian art critic Adrian Searle was not impressed in 2001: he found that Serrano's photos were "far more about being lurid than anything else... In the end, the show is all surface, and looking for hidden depths does no good." More recent work of his uses feces as a medium.
Serrano's work "Blood and Semen III" is used as the cover of heavy metal band Metallica
Metallica
Metallica is an American heavy metal band from Los Angeles, California. Formed in 1981 when James Hetfield responded to an advertisement that drummer Lars Ulrich had posted in a local newspaper. The current line-up features long-time lead guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Robert Trujillo ...
's Load
Load (album)
Load is the sixth studio album by the American heavy metal band Metallica. Released on June 4, 1996 through Elektra Records, it sold 680,000 units in its first week and debuted at #1 on Billboard 200. The album has sold over 5 million copies worldwide and is certified 5x platinum by the RIAA...
, while "Piss and Blood" is used on ReLoad
ReLoad
ReLoad is the seventh studio album by the American heavy metal band Metallica. It was released on November 18, 1997 through Elektra Records. The album is a sequel or counterpart to the band's previous album, Load. It debuted number 1 on the Billboard 200, selling 417,000 copies in its first week....
. Serrano also directed a video for industrial metal
Industrial metal
Industrial metal is a musical genre that draws from industrial music and many different types of heavy metal, using repeating metal guitar riffs, sampling, synthesizer or sequencer lines, and distorted vocals. Founding industrial metal acts include Ministry, Godflesh, and KMFDM.Industrial metal's...
group Godflesh
Godflesh
Godflesh are an English industrial metal band from Birmingham, England. Originally known as Fall of Because, they formed in 1988 by Justin K. Broadrick and G.C. Green and disbanded in 2002. Godflesh's innovative music is widely regarded as a foundational influence on industrial metal and post-metal...
, "Crush My Soul".
In 2008, Serrano's piece "The Interpretation of Dreams (White Nigger)" was selected to participate in The Renaissance Society's group exhibit, "Black Is, Black Ain't".
Andres Serrano adopted the alter ego "Brutus Faust" to create the full length album Vengeance Is Mine in July 2010. The album contains covers of classic songs from the 1960s, and original compositions including four songs written by Serrano’s wife Irina Movmyga as well as one song co-written by Serrano, Thad DeBrock, and album producer Steve Messina of New York based band Blow Up Hollywood
Blow Up Hollywood
Blow Up Hollywood is an underground American rock band. Their eclectic sound, built over a decade of recording, incorporates many different styles, diverse as progressive rock, post-rock, experimental, pop, classical, jazz and ambient soundscapes...
. Coinciding with the release of the album are the videos Goo Goo Gaga, Love Letters, and Bad Moon Rising. Goo Goo Gaga consists mostly of black and white footage from the 1940s, which makes parallels between the Depression and the present day, with the images of "Brutus" shot by Francesco Carrozzini. Love Letters is footage taken from cult director Joe Sarno’s Flesh and Lace. Bad Moon Rising consists entirely of footage Serrano compiled from several short films by John Santerineross. All of these short films were edited by New York film editor Vincent V.