The Limits of Legitimate Regulation: Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ
“You can’t have the sacred without the other side of the coin, the profane. Sometimes it’s hard for me to tell the difference.”
Andres Serrano (Collings, 1991)
Should elective representatives regulate the limitations of artistic expression? Who gets to be the arbiter of taste and enforce principles and punishments concerning the autonomous freedom of creative pursuits?
These questions of moral judgment converge around Andres Serrano’s 1987 photograph Piss Christ, which depicts a crucifix submerged in urine. It has become a touchstone of both moral corruptions inside of government-funded artistic programs and the religious, creative freedoms on which the country was founded.
As abstract as our individual interpretations of attraction and repulsion may be, we can use Richard Shweder’s construct of moral concerns to help us navigate the issue’s different interpretations and identify some common ground (Crone, 2022). These constructs are autonomy, divinity, and community. We will take each in turn.
Moral concerns of autonomy are established to provide societal protections for the individual, and there is often no group more individualized than artists, who embrace liberal notions of legitimate regulation. They believe that people should be able to do as they please so long as they don’t cause harm to others. But who is being harmed here? Conservative elected officials have argued that Serrano’s work is clearly taboo, even though they share the same moral values as artists of freedom of expression, celebration of beauty, and belief in religious diversity. Representative Alfonse D’Amato (R-NY) publicly tore up a reproduction of the work, calling it “a deplorable, despicable display of vulgarity” (Andrews, 2017). Serrano responds “I have been a Christian all my life. My work is not meant to be blasphemous nor offensive” (Andrews, 2017).
The material tradeoff which motivates the disagreement is the limits of which pursuits should be funded by taxpayer dollars. Liberals say Serrano’s work is worth it, and representative of a broader belief in national creative freedom, which is to be encouraged. Conservatives agree, but with the caveat that there are limits of taste and decency which must not transgress into disgust, sin, or perceptions of the profane.
When it comes to navigating these notions of purity, Shweder’s concern of divinity dictates that people shouldn’t do things which are unwholesome or disgusting. That we should seek to protect the soul and adhere to the natural order of things. Serrano uses the long-established symbology of the church but combines it with a material which elicits repulsion. He argues that the use of bodily fluid is no different than the ritual celebration of the body and blood of Christ. Conservatives argue that there is a delineation and hierarchy when it comes to the use of these fluids. Blood and tears are acceptable, but urine and feces are not. Both Serrano and elected Conservatives hold deep religious Christian faith, but where Serrano sees life in his photographs, Conservatives see transgression and a violation of social contract. Serrano seeks to reframe this disgust from taboo to tragic, in connecting it to the legacy of art history and the use of similar iconography over hundreds of years.
Fulfilling one’s obligations to further protection of the interests of one’s community establishes conditions for the respect of hierarchies, tradition, and authority. It describes notions of the obligations which arise from our membership of these social groups. Here the liberal artistic view is that such contributions further the important limits of autonomous expression, whereas Conservatives argue these limits are exactly in place for such protections. The social contract here is that artists have an obligation not to overstep an undisclosed measure of taste, which is a constantly moving target based on our perpetually changing norms.
Moral conflict in concerns of autonomy, divinity and community motivate disagreements over notions of harm, societal protection, and the extent to which we can trade actual investment and regulation against artistic expression. Liberals argue freedoms of artistic pursuit should inherently have few limits. Conservatives agree and hold mutual protected values of freedoms of the individual, religious expression, and appreciation of beauty, but with explicit reservation when it comes to personal preference. In particular, moral concerns of autonomy and divinity collide around notions of taste. The moral conflict concerns differing interpretation of artistic freedom, what’s acceptable, and the extent to which government itself should support this. As Serrano concludes, “I don’t like to be called a photographer, but I’ve been called worse things.” (Serrano, 2020).
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