At this link: N.B. gallery aims to spark debate with photo of urine-soaked crucifix | CBC News
More here: How “Piss Christ” Became a Culture-War Bomb | The New Yorker
Bernard Doucet, executive director of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, says the role of museums is to provide a space for conversation and dialogue. (The Canadian Press/Eli Ridder)
The Beaverbrook Art Gallery, located in Fredericton, is exhibiting American artist Andres Serrano's controversial piece until the end of November.
It marks the first time the Piss Christ (Immersions), on loan from the Rennie Collection in Vancouver, has been shown in Atlantic Canada.
The gallery's executive director Bernard Doucet says he's not shying away from the controversy that surrounds the 1987 piece. It's the role of the Beaverbrook, and other organizations like it, to get people talking, he says.
"Museums are also community infrastructure, with a responsibility to provide the impetus for conversation and dialogue," Doucet said from a meeting room inside the gallery earlier this week.
Doucet said he's displaying the Piss Christ photograph — criticized by some Christians as sacrilegious and degenerate — so the public can have the opportunity to experience the "range of emotions" it creates.
As the Serrano exhibit opened to the public this week, Conservative MP John Williamson criticized the piece as "not great art in any serious sense."
"The Beaverbrook Art Gallery is recycling a controversy that peaked long ago. This is nostalgia for transgression, which is perhaps the most banal category of art programming imaginable," Williamson said in a statement.
The Saint John-St. Croix MP added, "The 1980s called and would like its photo back."
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Saint John, N.B., which serves the Fredericton area, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
For his part, Serrano maintains he is a Christian and has, in several interviews, described Piss Christ and many similar works as personal expressions of faith.
"It's not an attack on God or the Church, but instead a celebration of both," Serrano said in a statement provided to the gallery.
"I not only believe in God, I believe in religious art and the beauty and power of such art."
The Piss Christ photograph is considered among the most controversial artworks of the last few decades.
It triggered a debate in the U.S. over public arts funding, and the agency that funded Serrano's practice had its funding slashed, according to a description by the gallery. In 1997, while on display in Melbourne, Australia, the photograph was attacked with a hammer.
In 2011, Christian protesters used a hammer to smash the Piss Christ while it was on display at the Collection Lambert Avignon in France. The attack shattered the protective glass and an axe was used to damage the print, according to the gallery. After the attack, the French museum decided to keep it up so the public could see the damage.
In 2023, controversy even followed Piss Christ to Santa Barbara, California. There, local media reported that Christian parents and students protested the use of the photograph in course material.
It was later removed.
Sarah Moore Fillmore, CEO at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, says Piss Christ has a "polarizing effect" that's moved it beyond minimalistic showrooms and into the broader public.
"It's kind of entered into a space beyond the art world — but it definitely stands on its own as an artwork," she said by phone.
Moore Fillmore anticipates people will want to see the Piss Christ in person because of the impact it's had on mainstream culture over the years. When they do, they might walk away shocked or curious to learn more, she said.
The Andres Serrano: Incarnate exhibit will also include 1985's Blood Cross (Bodily Fluids) and 1988's Piss Pope, Part I and II (Immersions) — also photographs that mix Christian symbols with human fluids.
Serrano's pieces will be displayed near other religious artwork in an area of the gallery called the Dali Chapel.
The space includes Salvador Dali's 1957 painting Santiago El Grande, a 13-foot-tall canvas depicting Saint James the Great riding a white horse, among other centuries-old religious art.
Doucet said Serrano's modern pieces are a way to engage audiences in the gallery's large religious and ecclesiastical art collection.
"It shows audiences that religious art isn't just from the 18th century, that it exists in a very, very contemporary context," Doucet said.
"And it enables this institution to show the beauty and meaning and relevance of all of the other works, too." "
More here: Beaverbrook Art Gallery
and here: Andres Serrano: Incarnate - Beaverbrook Art Gallery
Andres Serrano: Incarnate
FOCUS SERIES: Andres Serrano: Incarnate
One of the tools artists can use to make an impact is shock, and perhaps no artists wielded that instrument with more glee than the Surrealists, including, of course, Salvador Dalí.
Dalí’s Santiago El Grande has been a centrepiece of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery’s permanent collection since it was given to the gallery by Lady Dunn in 1959. Beloved as an iconic part of New Brunswick’s cultural heritage, its fame can eclipse its complicated artistic legacy.
The painting, and the artist, were not without controversy. Dalí was expelled from Surrealist Group for refusing to take sides during the Spanish Civil War. Santiago El Grande is a celebration of Spain’s patron saint, St. James. It is also a celebration of Spain’s national identity, the resilience of its culture, and the victory of Spain’s Christians over the Moors, Spanish Muslims who ruled Spain for hundreds of years. Its triumphant nationalism has also been read by some as a celebration of Spain’s fascist Franco regime.
To provide further context for the rich legacy of Santiago El Grande the Beaverbrook Art Gallery will be exhibiting contemporary art works in the Dalí Chapel that critically explore religious themes. The first installation in the series, Andres Serrano: Incarnate, includes Seranno’s 1987 work Piss Christ (Immersions), one of the iconic artworks of 1980s postmodernism, and one of the most controversial artworks of the 20th century. Its simple existence was the subject of a Senate inquiry in the US, and the agency that funded Serrano’s practice, the National Endowment of the Arts, had its funding slashed in response to the controversy over this work.
The photo included in this exhibition, on loan from the Rennie Collection, Vancouver, was damaged in an exhibition in France in 2011 when it was attacked by Christian protestors. The artist and the owner jointly decided to leave that damage visible, as a way of highlighting the power of art to provoke a response, and the limits of attempted censorship.
Religious imagery has always been part of Andres Serrano’s practice, and the exhibition includes two other important works from the Rennie Collection: Blood Cross (Bodily Fluids) (1985) and Piss Pope, Part I and II (Immersions) (1988). Serrano is unequivocal in his position: “It’s not an attack on God or the Church, but instead a celebration of both. I not only believe in God, I believe in religious art and the beauty and power of such art.”
THE ARTIST
Andres Serrano was born in New York (USA) in 1950. He graduated from the Brooklyn Museum Art School of New York in 1969 and is one of the most recognized contemporary artists on the international art scene.
His photographs have been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at Musée Maillol, Paris (2024); Forum Groningen, Netherlands (2024); DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague (2023); and Fotografiska, Tallinn (2023). Major institutional presentations include the Whitney Biennial, New York; the Barbican Art Gallery, London; the Helsinki Art Museum; and Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid. His work belongs to over seventy public collections worldwide, among them the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; the Vatican Contemporary Art Collection, Vatican City; the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Vancouver Art Gallery.
He is a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France, 2017) and a National Academician (U.S., 2015). Andres Serrano lives and works in New York.
THE RENNIE COLLECTION
The Rennie Collection is recognized for the calibre of its diverse holdings of contemporary art. Founded by Bob Rennie, the collection's ethos is to acquire, preserve, and exhibit artworks by both established and emerging artists from around the world, and to collaborate with art institutions globally. One of Bob Rennie’s core principles is that “nothing comes into the collection that doesn't speak to the collection.”
Supporting artists working in diverse media that explore and challenge societal, political, and cultural issues of our time, Rennie Collection provides a platform for artists to express their perspectives and ideas. In Bob Rennie’s own words: “…all art must be looked at in the light it was painted in.” The Collection is shared with audiences globally through a robust lending program to numerous institutions and through collaborations with various arts organizations.
This exhibition was made possible thanks to support from The Council for Canadian American Relations.
Image:
Andres Serrano
Piss Christ (Immersions)
1987/printed 2007 (vandalised 2011)
cibachrome print face-mounted to Plexiglas, in artist's frame
framed: 65 7/8 x 45 1/8 in.
© Andres Serrano. Courtesy of the artist and Rennie Collection, Vancouver
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