“Piss Christ” isn’t the most sophisticated art work ever made. But it was made by an artist, for artistic reasons.
~ Louis Menand via The New Yorker

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Convinced he had little talent as a painter or a sculptor, Andres Serrano borrowed a friend’s camera and began taking pictures. He insists he isn’t a photographer, and he doesn’t develop his own prints. He thinks of himself as an artist who uses a camera.
~ Louis Menand via The New Yorker

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Robert Mapplethorpe, a student of photographic history, wasn’t conferring dignity on a taboo subculture; he was after great photographs, although he understood that one of the things that can make a photograph great is the charge of the forbidden. What unified his work, across subjects, was what the French call le glacis de la lumière — a polished, technically exacting finish.
~ Louis Menand via The New Yorker

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“Piss Christ” may also nod to Gauguin’s “The Yellow Christ.” Andres Serrano first tried his wife’s urine, then switched to his own, judging it yellower.
~ Louis Menand via The New Yorker

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