Andres Serrano, Piss Christ, 1987
Introduction
In October 1997, a Serrano retrospective exhibition was planned to show in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. However, before opening the exhibition, Archbishop George Pell on behalf of Australian Catholics requested for cancelling the Serrano’s Piss Christ as it was suspected blasphemy and desecration. Furthermore, during days of the Supreme Court action, a 51-year-old man cracked the work and a teenager attacked it the next day which caused huge damage (Hunt 2013). A series of debates finally resulted in a mandatory close of Serrano show by the National Gallery of Victoria. Although this case has passed for a long time, whether the Gallery has the right of stopping a scheduled exhibition that contains uncertain blasphemous elements is always been widely discussed. Christian and Catholic groups strongly believe that the photograph Piss Christ was not only offending sacredness but also belonging to blasphemous libel and the ban of this exhibition was absolutely right, while Serrano’s supporters argued that the behaviour of the cancellation is disrespectful to the artist and also reflect a retrogression in art development. This article will discuss the arguments for and against the action of stopping the Serrano exhibition in 1997 by the National Gallery of Victoria from both legal and ethical aspects. It will mainly focus on discussing “blasphemy” from a legal perspective and analysing the inclusiveness of contemporary art as well as the public impact of this exhibition from a moral level.
Blasphemy law in Australia
The main point of George Pell in this case for his appeal was that showing the photograph Piss Christ would amount to blasphemy or alternatively was indecent under the common law. According to section 17(1)(b) of Summary Offences Act 1966:
(1) Any person who in or near a public place or within the view or hearing of any person being or passing therein or thereon—
(b) writes or draws exhibits or displays an indecent or obscene word figure or representation—shall be guilty of an offence.
In this section, there are two important things of offending blasphemy. The first one is scurrilous abuse Christians and their beliefs which have gone beyond of the universal acceptance range, the other thing is the announcement of that insult (Casey et al. 2000). It is obvious that Serrano’s photograph has insulted to Christians and is beyond the bounds of general acceptance when expressing a different opinion. But the intention of both the artist and the gallery to show this work is still uncertain so that the second element of this clause cannot be identified simply. Dr. Pell claimed that the photograph Piss Christ was shown in the public and the image was the crucifix immersed in urine, thus either the title of this artwork or the figure had offended the sacred objects and this exhibition was supposed to be closed. However, this indistinct law of blasphemy was successfully enforced in Australia in 1871 last time and there is no legitimate basis for the court to stop the exhibition. Justice David Harper argued that: “not only has Victoria never recognised an established church, but now section 116 of the Australian Constitution forbids the Commonwealth making any law for establishing religion.” It suggests that although some artworks may arouse the anger of believers, the court have no right to intervene in the issue. Moreover, since section 469AA was introduced into the Criminal Law of 1958, the Victorian Parliament recognized the existence or at least the possibility of the blasphemy in this case. To further illustrate Harper J's comments, section 469AA of the Crimes Act 1958 cited by his Honour, which has a section explaining that:
(1) Upon the conviction of any person for—
(a) publishing a blasphemous libel; or
(b) publishing a seditious libel—the Court by which such conviction is recorded may order the seizure and destruction of any documents proved to exist and to contain any such libel or to have been written, printed or published in breach of the said section.
This indicates that from some legal academics’ perspective blasphemy has the probability to be regarded as an offence to some extent. The Supreme Court action ended in failure because Australia law would not protect believers’ faith by banning a public exhibition. But the result was indeed satisficed the Australian Catholics as the National Gallery of Victoria ultimately announced to close the Serrano exhibition. Casey et al. (2000) state that the critical thing from the law’s perspective is the public impact of this photo in this law case which means the law is to give some reference rather than determination when addressing a case. Therefore, the final decision is not only depending on provisions of law but also other influence factors such as ethical effects.
Ethics
On the one hand, there are numbers of arguments supporting the closing of the exhibition. Christians emphasized that the title and the presentation of Piss Christ is a sense of offensiveness to a holy object. Ethically speaking, what had led to a court case is the idea of soaking the sacred crucifix in “excrement” which seriously violated the faith of believers and resulted in the offence pled of “blasphemous libel” (Gregory 1997). The point of Christians is no matter what the artist in fact intended to express in this photograph, the image can easily make viewers link the figures with a set of insulting behaviours to believers. In addition, the artwork had been attacked by some of the religious extremists for several times during the judgment of Supreme Court which prompted the gallery to cancel the exhibition from the schedule. All these vandalizing incidents in the series had not only caused huge economic losses but also meant a potential secure risk to the public. If the exhibition was on schedule, the artworks may suffer more serious damage and may even cause riots in the public places. Therefore, in order to avoid the recurrence of similar sabotage and protect public security, closing the Serrano exhibition timely was a wise choice for the National Gallery of Victoria. However, some philosophers such as Feinberg (1985) believes that unless actions have adversely affected some individuals’ interests, either harm them or at least causing serious crimes, otherwise these acts are never morally wrong. On the basis of Feinberg’s theory, what serrano had done cannot constitute a moral error.
On the other hand, Serrano’s supporters also have some valid arguments against the cancelling action. First, it is disrespectful to the artist as well as his artworks. Piss Christ was physically attacked for the first time in the Melbourne event, and after been attacked the Serrano exhibition also be cancelled the first time in the history. The media at that time also trended towards disseminating negative statements of Serrano which put Serrano and his exhibition in an awkward position in Melbourne. The media works as a powerful propaganda weapon had led the public opinion to a more extreme cognition toward Piss Christ. Second, supporters of Serrano such as Damien Casey who represented interests of the artist draw more attention to the ‘originality’ and ‘personalization’ of Serrano’s artwork (Casey et al. 2000). They argue that the artwork is only a form of expression of an artist himself and Piss Christ is the redefining of serrano’s own relations with God. Creations should be separated from religious belief as it is simply the expression of the artist’s own ideas. Last, some also claim that the closing of an exhibition is a sign of art backward. Tofts (1998) criticizes that Christian fanatics have gone astray with their moral outrage and the stopping of the exhibition has promoted Melbourne into the stagnant water of the South. Only if this society treats artworks in an inclusive manner, contemporary art may have a development. Circumstances of prohibiting artistic expressions in the public due to moral reasons is not an exception, for example, the National Gallery of Australia had cancelled the exhibition Sensation in 1999 because one of the paintings in this exhibition was “Catholic-bashing” and an “aggressive attack” on religion. Besides exhibitions, other presentation of artworks including films also can be banned from cinemas. Two films named Pasolini's Salo and the documentary SickThe life and death of Bob Flanagan—Supermasochist in 1998 were banned, while in 1999 the movie Lolita also be banned from Australian cinemas. The above examples all have strengthened backward sides of society (Nichols & Philips 1999). This indicates that restrictions on showing the works of art may have adverse effects on society and therefore lead to a more intolerant society. Thus, banning Serrano’s exhibition is the manifestation of supporting the religious narrow mind.
Conclusion
As for Serrano affair, there are important arguments both for and against the case of closing the exhibition in light of legal and moral issues. Although the law can be used as a measure of the standard of right and wrong, ethical issues are necessary to be considered when making decisions. But in the case of Serrano exhibition cancellation, it is difficult to judge if the National Gallery of Victoria has the right to close an exhibition because of the controversial religious conflicts. In the case of this event, it appears that the positive points outweigh the downsides of the gallery’s decision due to greater potential risks on both the public and economy of the exhibition. However, once there is a disputable exhibition, the gallery appears to temporarily cancel it from the schedule. This sort of response is not a long-term solution. It is, therefore, recommended that the Censorship Act need to add more detailed focusing on the previous review of a new art exhibition and consider more about the possible impacts on the public. Apart from a more complete censorship, the gallery, as well as the media, should play a positive role in guiding the public to help promoting a more tolerant art environment. By making these efforts, chaos like the serrano affair can be maximally avoided in the future showing of morally controversial artworks, and hence the art ecology of Australia can become healthier.
Reference
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Feinberg, J 1985, Offence to Others, Oxford University Press Oxford.
Gregory, P 1997, ‘Court hears of blasphemy. God and urine’, The Age, p. A4.
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Tofts, D 1998, ‘A passion play: Serrano in Melbourne’, Photofile, no. 53, pp. 4-7.