Fr. Hans description exactly grips it. ..”all that self-serving nonsense that merely justifies a preoccupation with the novel, freakish and other contrivances used to escape meaninglessness and boredom” The manner of the ‘escape’ is attention-craving, the would-be artist gives up on the effort required to generate positive attention, and chooses the quick easy cheap path to generate negative attention: leveraging the effort and history referenced in the abused symbol. These ‘artists’ are not so different from the ‘news editors’ complicit in showing clips in a tight TV close up of “a vast crowd” shown burning a flag– because a ‘wide shot’ would reveal 5 involved nuts, 10 hangers-on, and mostly otherwise disinterested passers-by.

These same ‘newsmen’ and ‘art-critic columnists’ talk about the ‘shock art’ for the same reasons — trying to get eyes on their pages otherwise so uninteresting no business is willing to purchase advertising that runs nearby. Really this is exploiting the lack of detail in the ‘readership’ or ‘viewership’ numbers, the idea that ‘all attention is good attention’. I think that’s false, but proving that is not in the interest of firms supported by advertising.

Serrano tried (much more successfully) to reinvest the trivialized, miniature dime-store plastic crucifix with its original mystery and sorrow.

Let me see if I understand this. The meaning of the crucifix has been trivialized because people have made dime-store plastic crucifixes and so forth. Submersing the crucifix in a jar of urine exposes the trivialization and this didactic function gives the piece its value. Is that how it works?

But doesn’t Serrano’s submersing of the crucifix in urine trivialize (desacrilize) the crucifix in the same way you say he decries? Of course it does. If he understood the sacred power of the symbol, he never would have desecrated it by submersing it in urine.

You argue that Serrano’s desecration is self-redemptive or self-validating, but if your point was true it would required that Serrano sees the symbol as sacred. Submersing the crucifix in urine proves that he doesn’t.

The piece then only functions to shock, despite your attempt to derive meaning by imputing virtues that are not there. And that shock value exists only because the cultural memory of the sacred dimension of the symbol still exists. The piece then is parasitic; it depends on the power of the symbol it desecrates to give it meaning.

The same happens with Ofili as I explained in my essay. These symbols have a definite meaning and power. If the purpose is to recontextualize them for whatever reason, then why did one artist chose urine and the other elephant feces? Do you really believe that using the two basest elements of bodily excretion was not a deliberate choice calculated to shock?

Maybe this is just tawdry marketing — two Howard Sterns or Jerry Springers of the art world. More likely it is just what I described.

Tell you what. If Serrano’s piece really has the meaning you think it has, pee in a jar, stick a crucifix in it, and display it on your mantle for all your guests to see. Tell them it shows how plastic crucifixes trivialize the meaning of the symbol. Then have someone report back to you what they really say when you are not around.

The rest of your post is just tiresome — the idealization of mainstream art, the mythology of the establishment artist as social rebel, the moral superiority of the mainstream critic, all that self-serving nonsense that merely justifies a preoccupation with the novel, freakish and other contrivances used to escape meaninglessness and boredom.

Breaking taboos has become pedestrian. It was shocking in the 1920s, now it’s big business. Look at the Madonna money machine. Do you really believe Serrano and Ofili are any different?

Sorry, Fr. Johan, I respectfully disagree with your article’s premise. Serrano and Offili were not panderin gto base instincts and not working to offend. I personally saw Offili’s piece in Brooklyn and it cannot be called offensive in the way you caricature it. It’s a rather unimpressive artifact deriving from the artist’s native South African sensibilities and neither terribly gross nor the lease bit pornographic. Nor was Serrano aiming to insult. He’s a Catholic Philipino and is sincere. His image is neither gross nor offensive.
The fallacy of your argument is in conflating artwork with brutal violence of the atheistic Bolshevik type. Just saying so doesn’t make it a fact. By juxtaposing controversial artworks dealing in religious imagery with overt anti-religious violence, you hope to equate artmaking with Bolshevism as a putsch against faith.
Sorry, Father, but I disagree with your premise– not on some vague foundation of ‘free speech’ but by the basis of intent: such artmaking is not mere derogation aimed at depriving me of access to the sacred, but instead confronts me with sacred images of Christ and His Ever-Virgin Mother complexified through the lens of a society which largely rejects their sacred intent and content. Offili tried (lamely, IMHO) to emphasize the earthliness of the Holy Virgin Mary’s motherhood and feminity, and Serrano tried (much more successfully) to reinvest the trivialized, miniature dime-store plastic crucifix with its original mystery and sorrow. I am sad that you missed the overwhelming point he made.
The fact that politicians of dubious faith and spirituality made such hey railing against Serrano and Offili – and Mapplethorpe too – speaks more to your point about religion as a weapon for powerful men to grasp and wield to their own benefit, than to art as a political weapon against ‘conservative’ faith. Art is not a religion like atheism. Its workers manipulate images in order to enter a fresh, innocent dialog with them in the context of society – often when society wishes they would shut up. Serrano touched a nerve in a time of political backlash against liberal mores and his work alludes to persecution and paranoia. A good piece of art, like his Crucifixis irreduceable, as the complexity it brings to the viewer cannot be fully resolved through any other media than the image he presents. It remains ambiguous, and I think that is what continues to offend.

Never meant anything offensive? Are you sure it’s all so benign? Here’s an essay I wrote on it at the time.

The Artist as Vandal: Culture and the desecration of religious symbols

They told me that if I voted for a Right-wing religious fanatic like Sarah Palin that the government would imposed censorship on people for making movies –and they were right!