Attack on 'blasphemous' art work fires debate on role of religion in France

From the UK Guardian courtesy of AlterNet:

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 Helms 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.

More here.

Oh man, there are so many directions to go commenting on this--I mean, fundamentalist Christians in godless communist France?!? And Piss Christ is something of an old friend to me: the image featured prominently in a political satire theatrical review called A Thousand Points of Light with which I was involved for the Vortex Repertory Company back in 1989, the era of art-controversy mentioned in the excerpt above. I'm also vaguely disturbed by the concept of destroying art, which I consider to be nearly sacred, even when it's not very good.

But I'll keep this short and simple.

The problem here is that religion occupies a weird space in Western civilization. On the one hand, religion is culture, and ought to be respected as such, if only because culture, in all its many varieties, is something that is essentially human, something that makes us human beings while at the same time verifying our humanity. You can agree or disagree with any or all religious points of view, but you are an asshole if you don't acknowledge that many people devote their lives to their religion, build relationships around it, find deep meaning within it.

On the other hand, religion is also a set of values and principles for how human beings ought to live their lives. Generally, that's just fine if you're not seeking to make everybody adhere to your religious views, but in the West, most of us are Christian, if anything at all, and Christianity has a mandate to "go ye therefore unto all nations." That is, a central mandate for Christianity is to convert the entire world to Christianity. Some Christians are fairly mellow about this; others are downright aggressive. And Christian fundamentalists are the most aggressive of all, often wanting to force their values onto the population at large, usually by way of government. In short, Christianity is a player in the marketplace of ideas, right alongside atheism, agnosticism, hedonism, capitalism, and on and on.

Consequently, it is fair game to criticize the church, and if you don't like it, that's just too fucking bad. I mean, I'm of the opinion that such criticism should be respectful, but it doesn't have to be. As small "d" democratic Westerners, free speech, which includes all art, is part and parcel of democracy itself. To deny free speech is to deny democracy, to deny our heritage, to deny who we are as Americans and Westerners.

You are free, of course, to dislike works such as Piss Christ if you want. You are also free to create your own art, or your own political statement, condemning such work. You're a Nazi asshole freak, however, if you fucking destroy art with which you disagree. And you also stand against everything the West has stood for since the Enlightenment.

That this would happen in such a culturally conscious nation as France is disturbing, indeed.


Immersion (Piss Christ)

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