from Salon.com

The endless, idiotic outrage about “Piss Christ”

A French gallery displays the now-vandalized work — and shows what real blasphemy looks like

BY MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS

The endless, idiotic outrage about
Credit: Wikipedia

The French really know how to get worked up about art. They’ll riot over a ballet; they’ll get whipped into a frenzy over impressionism. And this past Palm Sunday a group of Catholic protesters stormed a gallery in Avignon and defaced Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ.”

The notorious photograph of a crucifix immersed in the artist’s urine has been inciting outrage ever since Serrano unveiled it back in 1987. Thanks to Serrano’s modest NEA grant, Jesse Helms was able to use the work as an excuse to froth over public funding for the arts, and it’s reliably been trotted out as a shining example of all that’s sacrilegious and wicked in art ever since.

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