Posted on 04/18/2011 7:40:33 PM PDT by csvset
When New York artist Andres Serrano plunged a plastic crucifix into a glass of his own urine and photographed it in 1987 under the title Piss Christ, he said he was making a statement on the misuse of religion.
Controversy has followed the work ever since, but reached an unprecedented peak on Palm Sunday when it was attacked with hammers and destroyed after an "anti-blasphemy" campaign by French Catholic fundamentalists in the southern city of Avignon.
The violent slashing of the picture, and another Serrano photograph of a meditating nun, has plunged secular France into soul-searching about Christian fundamentalism and Nicolas Sarkozy's use of religious populism in his bid for re-election next year.
It also marks a return to an old standoff between Serrano and the religious right that dates back more than 20 years, to Reagan-era Republicanism in the US.
The photograph, full title Immersion (Piss Christ), was made in 1987 as part of Serrano's series showing religious objects submerged in fluids such as blood and milk.
In 1989, rightwing Christian senators' criticism of Piss Christ led to a heated US debate on public arts funding. Republican Jesse James told the senate Serrano was "not an artist. He's a jerk." Serrano defended his photograph as a criticism of the "billion-dollar Christ-for-profit industry" and a "condemnation of those who abuse the teachings of Christ for their own ignoble ends".
It was vandalised in Australia, and neo-Nazis ransacked a Serrano show in Sweden in 2007. The photograph had been shown in France several times without incident. For four months, it has hung in the exhibition I Believe in Miracles, to mark 10 years of art-dealer Yvon Lambert's personal collection in his 18th-century mansion gallery in Avignon.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Sounds good to me.
“Fundamentalism” ... is now defending the Catholic Faith against blasphemous images , etc... Note that unlike Islamic “fundamentalism,” Catholics destroy the “thing” — not the person.
But we all knew this was coming, where moral relativism is used to push a godless secular totalitarian “culture,” under the pretense of “tolerance.”
I hope the Catholic French will rise up, as they did at the Vendee during the Reign of Terror. It is time that Catholic France restore their nation back to the Church.
Frankly Serrano is not a real artist. What he's doing is running a con where the rubes who who imagine themselves to be intellectuals fork over the cash to be insulted and mortified.
I have no idea if "Catholic Fundamentalists" exist ~ maybe the Pope and a dozen or so other guys at the top, but I don't think they're at that age where they'd go bust up a piece of trash like this.
And "right wing"? Why is it the Leftwingtards ascribe all the talent at properly evaluating art to the "right wing"? Don't they have somebody over there who passed Art History 101 or something?
Well, maybe not.
I don't think so.
>> Translation: I wanted to be especially blasphemous because I thought it would be cool and edgy.
Exactly.
Of all the strange crimes that humanity has legislated out of nothing, blasphemy is the most amazing - with obscenity and indecent exposure fighting it out for second and third place. [Robert Heinlein, Notebooks of Lazarus Long]
Run that one up the flag pole again... You lost me.
They never pick Islam to do this with — and live.
One may debate how far a government ought to go when presented with such situations, but only the willfully ignorant defend what amounts to fighting words.
Funny... muslims are always given a pass when they do this sort of thing.
Yes, we must all beware the Christian fundamentalists with their words while Islam is chopping off heads and crap.
These freaks sure have selective blindness bad.
I will certainly defend someone's right to commit blasphemy. Burning a Qur'an is blasphemous from the point of view of Islam...and you have every right to do it, just as you have every right to commit blasphemy in the eyes of Christianity, Hinduism, etc.
Needless to say, such acts shouldn't be supported by the government in the form of art grants...but neither should they be prohibited in any way.
(Of course, the government shouldn't be supporting the arts at taxpayer expense in the first place, but that's another subject)
I don’t know your gender, but if someone waved a Photoshop of your spouse appearing in a jar of pee in your face, wouldn’t you take that as fighting language?
snot is a french word?
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