American view – Sword of controversy

‘I’ve refused to become a prisoner of “Piss Christ”,’ said the photographer Andres Serrano, referring to his 1987 photograph of a crucifix submerged in a glass filled with urine.

‘I’ve refused to become a prisoner of “Piss Christ”,’ said the photographer Andres Serrano, referring to his 1987 photograph of a crucifix submerged in a glass filled with urine. But the fact remains that he has become a very wealthy prisoner of that work. The picture, created while he was the recipient of a $15,000 grant from the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, which itself had received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1987–88, drew fiery condemnation from religious groups around the United States and members of Congress. Coming at the same time as a controversy over the indirectly government-sponsored exhibition of the work of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, the outcry came close to abolishing the federal arts agency.