Body and Soul

Body and Soul by Serrano, Andres. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9781883489113.

Andres Serranos name became a household word on May 18, 1989, when Sen. Alphonse DAmato tore up a picture of the artists Piss Christ on the floor of the U.S. Senate. That act launched the so-called Culture Wars, a national debate over free expression and federal funding of the arts. But, while Serranos Piss Christ became widely known, the rest of his photographic work received scant attention. This monograph reproduces for the first time a comprehensive selection of Serranos photographs. The sixty-eight images, made between 1983 and the present, document his ongoing thematic investigation of the religious spirit and the material body, and show that Piss Christ was no mere avant-garde stunt. From Serranos earliest images, still lifes of butchered meat, he has been obsessed with a need to comprehend the nature of contemporary spirituality. No artist of his generation is so thoroughly invested in deciphering the meaning of religious dogma.