It is supposedly against the law for American governments to fund or even freely accept art like this:
Instead, our taxes are used to pay for "Piss Christ" and works resembling this:
I am offended that the "art" I helped pay for was destroyed! /s
Posted on 04/18/2011 8:27:59 AM PDT by markomalley
Paris - A group of Christian fundamentalists armed with hammers and screwdrivers destroyed two artworks in an exhibition in the southern French city of Avignon at the weekend, one of which depicted a crucifix immersed in urine, French media reported Monday.
The attack on the photographs of US artist Andres Serrano, which were being shown as part the I Believe in Miracles exhibition of contemporary art followed calls by the local Catholic archbishop for the 'Piss Christ' photograph to be taken down.
The photograph, taken by Serrano in 1987, shows a plastic crucifix wallowing in a glass of the artist's urine. The Christ figure appears to glow in the image, which caused a scandal when it was first exhibited in 1989 and which has since toured the world.
Civitas, a lobby group which says it aims to 're-Christianize France,' called the piece 'sacrilege vis-a-vis God and Catholics' and launched a petition for it to be removed from the exhibition at the residence housing the Yvon Lambert collection.
On Saturday a group of around 500 people shouting Christian slogans demonstrated outside the building, Liberation reported.
The following day four youths wearing sunglasses entered the building and surrounded two security guards stationed in front of the artwork, while others began hacking at it and another of Serrano's photographs, showing a nun meditating.
Culture Minister Frederic Mitterand denounced the incident as an 'attack on the freedom of creation.'
While 'recognizing that the (Piss Christ) artwork could shock certain audiences,' Mitterand said 'any act of violence, destruction and intolerance is unacceptable.'
The attack is not the first involving the artwork. A copy of Piss Christ was vandalized at the National Gallery of Victoria in the Australian city of Melbourne in 1997, during a Serrano retrospective.
The Melbourne gallery later cancelled the show.
Eric Mezil, the director of the Lambert collection, said he would leave the shattered artworks hanging so that the public could 'appreciate the barbarity committed by extremists.'
Note: DPA, a German news agency, probably had another meaning for "fundamentalist" than what we Americans would call "fundamentalist."
You are speaking from an American perspective. Traditional Catholics are often called “fundamentalist” in Europe, especially by liberal-modernist detractors. In America, traditionalists are sometimes pejoratively labeled “the Catholic Taliban.”
Are you suggesting that the Catholic Church is relativist? And here I thought BXVI was against the dictatorship of relatism...
Thanks for the translation... twas... interesting.
*twirls mustachios*
Any liberal of whatever confession is a relativists, but Pope St. Pius X infallibly (and therefore irreversibly) defined liberalism as a sin.
So, what the culturati do is to deny the status of "artist" to anyone who refuses to pimp for the Progressive Goddess or otherwise make their work serve political ends. Those who insist on creating media whose explicit qualities reflect upon reality or essential truth - are treated as heretics or worse- no matter how beautiful their use of form, imagery, color, light or texture. To the contrary: their preference is for the ugly and the obscene, the dissonant and the discordant, offered not as a celebration of Man, but as an affront to the reasoning mind that God gave him.
Not destroyed.
Deconstructed.
They could argue that it’s not vandalism at all. It’s just performance art.
How about, “They ‘deconstructed’ it.”
Bien. Bien. Merci.
It is supposedly against the law for American governments to fund or even freely accept art like this:
Instead, our taxes are used to pay for "Piss Christ" and works resembling this:
I am offended that the "art" I helped pay for was destroyed! /s
It is sad, though. Timeless art that celebrates humanity or our Divine spark is no longer recognized as such by the sort of mind that conceived this:
Not only is it derivative of Chagall, Picasso and Dali, it is a (a-hem) "piss-poor" quality rip-off, at that.
They were Catholics. I guess the word “fundamentalist” is considered a smear therefore placed as a preface. The AP/CBS/Reuters were vicious liars in their attack but must of the EU newspapers were reasonable and HONEST.
Great—The French are showing us what to do. This should have happened in the USA. Nice to see that a few Christians are left in France. I am sick of bending over for Mooslems —They are less than 2% of the American people, but demand so much. I do admire the fact they don’t let people mock their faith! They believe in their cockeyed religion and will go violent if anyone does something seen as a put down. Christians should do the same.
Actually, a Muslim country would have sentenced the artist to death for blasphemy, then "accidentally" let an incensed mob get to him and rend him limb from limb.
Excellent!!! It should have been destroyed the day it was put up.
So, do you call for the destruction of everything that offends you? Your faith must be very weak if a low-rent work of “art” threatens you.
Vive la France!
With due respect, I see it as extreme disrespect. How would you like it if someone put the flag in a jar of his urine? Or something that you respect put in urine? It’s just meant to shock and to insult Christianity. It’s not even a comedy or a joke like a South Park episode, but this was meant to insult.
Catholic Ping
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