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Artist responsible for "Piss Christ" guest of Pope in Vatican This week the Pope welcomed artists to the Sistierne Chapel, reminding them that true beauty inspires the desire for God, and renders glory to Him, for the 50th anniversary of the inauguration of the Vatican Museums’ Collection of Modern Art by Pope St. Paul VI.One of them was Andres Serrano. There is nothing beautiful about his work.He is notorious for "Piss Christ", a photo of a crucifix submerged in his own urine which was destroyed by protestors in 2012, only for the a restored/or replaced version to be sold at...

Piss Christ? Piss Koran! by Matthew Bracken Part One: Dark Till DawnMike Dolan came out of the subway, hit the sidewalk and set out down the west side of 6th Avenue with a purposeful stride. Midtown Manhattan never truly sleeps, particularly just before a Monday morning, but compared to what it would be like in a couple of hours, it was geared way down. No tourists yet, mostly delivery trucks and vans. All lanes were northbound, because it was 6th Avenue.Mike was showered and clean shaven, every item on him and in his possession carefully considered. The white hard hat...

Have you hugged a Jihadist today? Everybody else has. Have you trashed Pamela Geller this morning? Welcome to the club. Pamela Geller made a mistake. She tested the First Amendment and the First Amendment lost.

The Associated Press removed a photo of an art piece called "Piss Christ" from its website Wednesday after a journalist pointed out the company's double standard. AP has refused to publish the Charlie Hebdo cartoons mocking Muhammad that led to Hebdo's murder due to its policy of not publishing "deliberately provocative images." French magazine Charlie Hebdo's September cover is seen in this image. (Photo: Twitter)French magazine Charlie Hebdo's September cover is seen in this image. In a Wednesday interview with The Daily Beast, an AP spokesperson explained why the company did not publish, or cropped, images of Charlie Hebdo cartoons....

The Associated Press is among the numerous news outlets that have been self-censoring images of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons that may have provoked Wednesday's deadly Paris attack. In a statement, the news organization said that such censorship is standard policy: None of the images distributed by AP showed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. It’s been our policy for years that we refrain from moving deliberately provocative images. The conservative Washington Examiner publication then pointed out that the AP nonetheless continued to carry an image of Andres Serrano's 1987 "Piss Christ" photograph—which is certainly provocative, having been the subject of massive...

Editor: The Feds questioned the creator of the anti-Muslim film. He has been arrested. Did they do the same to the painter who created the cow dung painting of the Virgin Mary? Bill Maher (who donated $5 million to Obama) made a comedy/documentary called "Religulous" that mercilessly mocked Christianity. "Jesus Christ: Superstar" was a hit on Broadway and continues to be presented on other stages to this day. "P*** Christ," once branded as a "deplorable, despicable display of vulgarity," was displayed at the Edward Tyler Nahem Gallery in Manhattan on September 27th. The artwork features a "photograph of the crucifix...

The controversial "Piss Christ" photograph by Andres Serrano that is going on view at a Midtown gallery tomorrow has really been bothering Catholic League president Bill Donohue. He told Fox News last week, "It seems like we have a protected class for Muslims as well as some other segments of our population. But when it comes to Christians, it's an all-out war." So now Donohue has created a video showing off his answer: An Obama bobblehead in a jar with feces. Okay, so the "feces" are actually just brown Play-Doh, while the piss in Serrano's photograph is actually Serrano's urine...

Twenty-five years later, and an artwork's power to enflame is undiminished.Beginning on the 27th of this month, the Edward Tyler Nahem Gallery in Manhattan will open an exhibit titled Body and Spirit: Andres Serrano 1987-2012. The exhibit, which runs for a month, features a range of works from the controversial artist, including the infamous Piss Christ (1987), a work that consists of a photograph of a plastic crucifix submerged in what is supposedly a jar of the artist's own urine. The gallery's press release describes the work in the following terms: Piss Christ is a potent work that engages the...

Over the past couple of weeks, most of the drive-by media's attention has been focused on events in Libya and the American responses to it. For a quick recap -- Christopher Stevens, an American diplomat assigned to Libya, and some others in the consulate were violently attacked without warning and ended up dead...on 9/11. Ignoring the significance of the date, the Obama administration acted curiously: denying any possible connection to terror, and stonewalling with a pre-programmed chorus of disgust over a low-budget film (I've only just seen snippets on YouTube, and it made the movies spoofed on Mystery Science Theater...

The controversial “Piss Christ” artwork Sen. Alfonse D’Amato once branded as a “deplorable, despicable display of vulgarity,” is coming to New York, and security is being heavily ramped- up at the gallery that will show the piece. Andres Serrano’s work — a “photograph of the crucifix submerged in the artist’s urine” — first ignited controversy in 1989 when D’Amato complained to the US Senate that it was an “outrage,” an “indignity” and a “piece of trash” that had been funded by taxpayers. Serrano had won a $15,000 prize for his work, backed in part by the National Endowment for the...

Obama not condemning anti-Christian art display...

I thought that this topic might make for a lively debate in the comments. Artist Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" photo has caused more anguish, more anger that just about any piece of art in American history. Yesterday, while on display in France, it was destroyed by a fundamentalist Christian group: Controversy has followed the work ever since, but reached an unprecedented peak on Palm Sunday when it was attacked with hammers and destroyed after an "anti-blasphemy" campaign by French Catholic fundamentalists in the southern city of Avignon.The violent slashing of the picture, and another Serrano photograph of a meditating nun,...

A female truck driver was arrested after she allegedly ripped up a lithograph at a Colorado museum that purportedly shows Jesus having sex. Kathleen Folden, 56, of Kalispell, Mont., spent the night in the Larimer County jail after being arrested at the Loveland Museum Gallery, The Coloradoan of Fort Collins reported. Police said she used a crowbar to break through the plexiglass protecting the lithograph and then shredded it.

Here are just a few: "The Holy Koran is sacred, just like the Bible is to Christians," Dr. Mohamed Elsanousi, director of community outreach for the Islamic Society of North America, said in an interview. "Desecration of this book is something people will not tolerate." "Hardball" host Chris Matthews, who called Jones' plans to burn the Islamic holy book "a terrible idea" and warned that it "could cause trouble and even death" when televised in Muslim countries, asked, "What do you think the reaction will be as this goes on international television? What will be the consequence?" "It's obviously intolerant...

Comedy Central might censor every image of the Prophet Muhammad on "South Park," yet the network is developing a whole animated series around Jesus Christ. Jesus-south-park As part of the network's upfront presentation to advertisers (full slate here), the network is set to announce "JC," a half-hour show about Christ wanting to escape the shadow of his "powerful but apathetic father" and live a regular life in New York City. In the show, God is preoccupied with playing video games while Christ, "the ultimate fish out of water," tries to adjust to life in the big city. "In general,...

On August 25th 2009, Big Hollywood’s Patrick Courrielche broke the story of a conference call he attended with other “rising artist and art community luminaries”: On Thursday August 6th, I was invited by the National Endowment for the Arts to attend a conference call scheduled for Monday August 10th hosted by the NEA, the White House Office of Public Engagement, and United We Serve. The call would include “a group of artists, producers, promoters, organizers, influencers, marketers, taste-makers, leaders or just plain cool people to join together and work together to promote a more civically engaged America and celebrate how...

As NewsBuster Dan Gainor has noted, Playboy Mexico thought it could make some pesos by peddling an issue with a scantily-clad Virgin Mary on the cover—just in time for Christmas. Today's Los Angeles Times contains an editorial denouncing the tasteless stunt. All well and good. But it set me to wondering. Did the LAT protest similar outrages against religous symbols when they appeared in the US? The infamous "Piss Christ" comes to mind. Even more on point is the portrait of the Virgin Mary, surrounded by lacquered elephant dung and cutouts from pornographic magazines, that the Brooklyn Museum found worthy...

Restroom art gallery opens in Ohio village By JAMES HANNAH, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 1 minute ago YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio - Call it Chagall in the stall, Picasso in the powder room. Anyone who uses the public restrooms inside a replica of the 1880 train station in this southwest Ohio village will be treated to a display of original paintings on the walls. Dubbed the ChamberPot Gallery, the exhibition that opened in mid-June is the brainchild of two local artists hoping to draw attention to this artist-oriented community and to lure into the village out-of-town hikers, bikers and joggers...

Until now the Pellicano wiretapping case has seemed the kind of down-and-dirty imbroglio that could only happen in Hollywood, where a private eye's underworld patois could impress movie people familiar with noir clichés, allured by real physical danger and accustomed to getting whatever they want. But confidential F.B.I. records show that the scandal's tentacles have extended beyond show-business figures to reach people prominent in the rarified worlds of fine art and classical music. Among the government's most important witnesses, the F.B.I. records suggest, are Adam D. Sender, a prominent collector of contemporary art and a wealthy hedge-fund manager..........hired Anthony Pellicano,...

Piss Christ vs. Cartoon Jihad By Rocco DiPippo FrontPageMagazine.com | February 6, 2006 Back in 1988, Andres Serrano submerged a crucifix in a vat of his urine, photographed the result and called it “art.” Naturally, many of the world's two billion Christians were bothered by his antics. Members of the U.S. Congress called for a hard look at the National Endowment for the Arts, which had helped fund Serrano. Public outcry against Serrano was vocal and widespread. As the uproar grew, numerous editorials in defense of Piss Christ, Serrano's controversial creation, were printed in U.S. and European newspapers and the...