[Billthedrill]

No argument there. But for the life of me I cannot imagine what Serrano really was trying to communicate with Piss Christ other than inchoate blasphemy. Never did accept the proposition "the purpose of art is to shock" because it seems impossibly presumptuous - the first presumption being that the artist is some sort of superior being who must shock the rest of us out of our complacency so that we can see the world in a new light, a second presumption being that there's something wrong or incomplete about the old light. Only a very rare human being is up to that in any field - most artists I've met are, quite frankly, second-rate intellects with first-order egos.

But there are exceptions, and sometimes they occur in the oddest places. I saw a guy in Japan do simply astonishing things with only his hands and colored sand. Then before he left he'd wipe them slick. I asked him why he didn't preserve his stuff (my Japanese was worse than his English, which wasn't very good) and if I understand what he was trying to say correctly it was on the order of "you can't, and if you could you'd miss the point." Somebody told me he was a rice farmer.

[Smokin' Joe]

Never did accept the proposition "the purpose of art is to shock" because it seems impossibly presumptuous - the first presumption being that the artist is some sort of superior being who must shock the rest of us out of our complacency so that we can see the world in a new light, a second presumption being that there's something wrong or incomplete about the old light.

Condescencion and smug self-righteousness have long been liberal disorders, as well as the foremost of their weapons.