Madonna and Child

Among the most controversial of Andres Serrano's photograghs is his series of religious icons inmersed in blood and urine, including the infamous "Piss Christ" of 1987. The juxtaposition of this "vulgar" bodily fluid with "divine" subjects, the confrontation of the repulsive and the beautiful, is characteristic of the artist's work to the present day - from the religious motifs of the early 1980s and the "Nomads", "Klan" and "Morgue" series of the early 1990s to the more recent group of pornographic images titled "A History of Sex". By confronting the viewer with such uncomfortable imagery, Serrano forces them to reevaluate their views and opinions on a number of difficult and, in some cases socially unnacceptable, subjects.
Discussing his works with urine, Serrano argues: "It's waste, and I think it's seen as something repugnant, but I think this aversion to piss probably has more to do with the aversion that we have to our own bodies than it actually has to do with piss - because it's very difficult to me, personally, to think of putting a value system on these fluids and saying that they're either good or bad." (Quoted in: "Andres Serrano. Fotografiska arbeten/Works 1983-1993", Malmö 1996, p. 39.)