Andres Serrano (b. 1950) is an American photographer. He is most noted for his controversial piece "Piss Christ", a red-tinged photograph of a crucifix, viewed through a liquid that the artist attests was his own urine.
Life
Serrano is of a half Honduran, half Afro-Cuban background and was raised a strict Roman Catholic. The New-York-born artist studied 1967-1969 at the Brooklyn Museum and Art School, and lives and works in New York.
His work has shown in locations as varied and prestigious as the Episcopal Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City and the Barbican Arts Centre in London.
Overview of Serrano's work
Serrano's work as a photographer tends toward relatively large prints (in th neighborhood of 20 by 30 inches), which are (produced by conventional photographic techniques, (as against digital manipulation). He has shot a vast array of subject matter including portraits of Klansmen, morgue photos, and pictures of burn victims, as well as some rather tender but occasionally decidedly kinky portraits of couples. One of these last shows what The Guardian described as "a young couple, she with a strap-on dildo, he with a mildly expectant expression." [1]
On a simply visual level, Serrano's works could not be considered "challenging" art. They fall well within what would generally be considered a technically well-made and well composed photograph. However, as can be seen from the list just given, his subject matter often draws from the potentially controversial, perhaps the willfully provacative.
The "Piss Christ" Controversy
"Piss Christ" belongs to a major series of Serrano's works, in which he has immersed objects in bodily fluids and photographed them. The piece caused a scandal when it was exhibited in 1987, with detractors accusing Serrano of blasphemy and others raising this as a major issue of artistic freedom. The controversy eventually reached the floor of the United States Senate, largely with reference to Serrano having received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The piece itself, without the artist's assertion about the materials used, could be seen as a somewhat mystical but rather conventional piece of religious art.
(Numerous reproductions of "Piss Christ", of varying quality, can be found on line with any good search engine.)