Art and Religion: The Line Between the Sacred and the Blasphemous
In 1987, American photographer Andres Serrano created a series of pieces that depicted the image of Jesus Christ on the cross submerged in various substances. The most popular one, which happened to be the most controversial, was entitled Immersion (Piss Christ) and featured the crucified Jesus floating within a glass of Serrano’s urine. This photograph, which was originally shown in Australia, was received with heavy criticism and threats against Serrano, and the exhibit eventually closed down because of its shocking subject matter (Nakajima 2011). More recently, the piece was physically attacked while on display in Avignon, France and now features giant crack fissures across its surface. Serrano’s Piss Christ reveals an interesting limit between what is considered sacred and what is considered offensive in the religious art world. The piece depicts one of the most famous Christian images, the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, in the form of a small statuette. However, because the statuette is associated with urine, a bodily waste product, the image is instantly converted into an ungodly image. Images like Piss Christ, while depicting sacred iconography, are considered odious due to their humanization of sacred elements, their use of repulsive materials such as urine, and the “call to arms” effect they invoke within the faithful.
Serrano’s Piss Christ is an interesting example of elaboration between the sacred and the mundane. Jesus, as accepted within the cultural realm that defines Christianity, is seen as an almost paradoxical figure. While Jesus is obviously a man, he is also the physical embodiment of the Christian God. He displays a duality that gives him power; he is seen as fully human, as well as fully divine within the Christian literature. Clifford Geertz has elaborated on the connection between art and culture; he supports the idea that art will reflect the culture the produces said piece of artwork (1974). Utilizing Geertz’s idea, the artwork of Jesus Christ should reflect the power he has from being divine while remaining human. One of the defining characteristics of art like Piss Christ that paints it as blasphemous is that it humanizes Jesus in a way that is non-conforming to Christian canon. The humanization of Jesus Christ ends up “bring[ing] together two elements that should remain apart [and] in their hybridity, refusing what might be termed the ordinary integrity of things,’ (Verrips 2008:210). By embracing the humanness of Jesus, his divinity is refused; this is unacceptable to Christian dogma and is thus marked as offensive. Jesus is held in the minds of Christians as being pure and untainted; he is like us in all respects, except he lacks sin (Rambuss 2004:513). Depicting Jesus as a simple man who “bled, ejaculated, shat, wept, bled under Pontius Pilate… [and] voided himself on the cross [as] blood and urine smeared his legs” (Rambuss 2004:514) presents the faithful with a Jesus that is ‘too human’ for the them to accept. They reject this shockingly human Jesus and they label artwork that depicts him as being less than fully divine as sacrilegious.
Another characteristic of Serrano’s Piss Christ that converts it from the sacred to the blasphemous is the fact that Serrano used a material that most would consider disgusting: Serrano’s urine. The urine in and of itself is a bodily fluid, which connects back to the idea that Piss Christ humanizes Jesus to a level that the unfaithful do not agree with. The use of urine in the image is also a contributing factor to the image’s categorization as blasphemous because urine is a substance that most people do not enjoy or associate with being holy. If Serrano had submerged the crucifix in a different substance, such as blood, there would probably be little controversy. Blood is still a bodily substance; however, it is one that the faithful are much more used to. The faithful “are used to seeing crucifixes running in blood and the wounds of Christ spurting blood,” (Williamson 2004:116). It is the fact that Serrano is associating the image of Jesus Christ with a bodily waste product such as urine that characterizes the image as blasphemous. Another famous example of this idea is Chris Ofili’s Holy Virgin Mary in which the Virgin Mary’s exposed breast is actually made up of a chunk of elephant dung (Rumbass 2004; Williamson 2004). In both the Ofili and Serrano pieces, it is the use of a bodily waste product that makes the image so shockingly offensive to the religious. By using a waste product, it ‘dirties’ the purity of the sacred ideal, and thus, the religious react unfavorably to the piece.
A third major factor influencing Piss Christ’s fall into blasphemy is the fact that it produces a “call to arms” effect within the faithful. As David Morgan elaborates, “belief happens in and through things and what people do with them… the deity sees what the believer does,” (2005:8). This ‘belief as action’ idea produces an interesting quandary for the believer. They obviously do not agree with the image; they do not believe in Serrano’s portrayal of Jesus Christ, but refusing to do anything about the image is also unsettling. The believer will see their “silence [as] a symbolic ratification of the insult” and that they have “a duty to respond violently to a certain class of insults, whether [they] want to or not,” (Coleman 2011:73). Because of this idea, Serrano’s piece has to be considered offensive by the followers of Christianity. If they refuse to acknowledge Piss Christ’s degradation of their divine Jesus, they see it as a betrayal of their ideals and religion. The deity is watching them; they must defend their deity’s honor if they are to be considered ‘true’ believers. This “call to arms” effect is characteristic of those images that the religious community sees as blasphemous. If Serrano’s piece depicted a crucifix submerged in blood, there mostly likely wouldn’t be a “call to arms” effect. The religious community would see the image as staying true to their dogma and doctrine and the deity’s honor or divinity would remain pure. Another idea that supports the “call to arms” effect utilizes Morgan’s idea about the function of images; Morgan stresses the point that one of the functions of religious iconography is that it will embody the forms of communion with the divine (2005:55). The communion between the faithful and the divine is one of the most revered unions; it is considered sacred and holy, and images like Piss Christ blatantly attack this communion. The Jesus in Serrano’s piece isn’t holy and divine; he is man and dirty and nowhere near the ideal of Jesus for the faithful. When the faithful imagine their communion in some Christian traditions, they imagine the body of Christ on their tongue in the form of a piece of bread. Serrano’s image replaces the bread with rancid urine, and the faithful violently react from the whiplash of the humanization of Jesus. This ties into the idea that their deity is watching them (Morgan 2005) and thus, they rise up against these images and deem them as sacrilegious.
Ultimately, Serrano’s Piss Christ did more than present the topic of how taxpayer money should be utilized within the fine arts; it brought forth the delicate line between the sacred and blasphemous. Images like Piss Christ force the religious to evaluate what is truly holy and sacred and what pushes the edge too far. For Serrano, the submersion of the crucified Jesus into a vat of urine humanized Jesus in a way that was antiparallel to the ideas of Christian dogma, featured a substance that was too ‘dirty’ to be associated with Jesus’s purity, and produced such a strong response effect that the religious community united together to attack and criticize his piece. In the end, Serrano’s image was so detested that it was condemned, showing that the blasphemous is almost as powerful as the sacred.
References:
Coleman, Elizabeth Burns. 2011. “The Offenses of Blasphemy: Messages in and through Art.” Journal of Value Inquiry, 45(1):67-84
Geertz, Clifford. 1974. “Art as a Cultural System.” Modern Language Notes, 91:(1473-1483).
Morgan, David. 2005. The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice. Berkeley: University of California Press
Nakajima, Makiko. 2011. “Contemporary Art and Censorship: The Australian Museum Context.” The International Journal of the Inclusive Museum. 3(4):129-146.
Rambuss, Richard. 2004. “Sacred Subjects and the Aversive Metaphysical Conceit: Crashaw, Serrano, Ofili.” ELH: English Literary History, 71(2):497-530
Verrips, Jojada. 2008. “Offending Art and the Sense of Touch.” Material Religion, 4(2):204-225
Williamson, Beth. 2004. Christian Art: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press.
