Home > Books > Andres Serrano, America and Other Work
Postmodernism & Staged Photography, Individual Photographers & Professionals, Photo Essays, Portrait Photography - General & Miscellaneous, Art of the 1980s and 1990s
Andres Serrano is one of America's most mythologized contemporary artists. To many, he's the man responsible for Piss Christ and a national scandal over government funding of controversial art. For those who look beyond the headlines, he's a highly accomplished and ever-evolving photographic artist showing us the ordinary in extraordinary ways. With his post-Piss Christ series, Nomads, he made studio portraits of New York's ethnic homeless and juxtaposed them with members of the Ku Klux Klan. In the Morgue series he dissected violent death and found the human thread on the coroner's slab, while A History of Sex explored the human mating urge in its infinite variety.
Andres Serrano considers America his greatest achievement. Three years of work produced over one hundred 50-by-60-inch photographic portraits representing the cultural diversity of this immigrant country, as filtered through the critical lens of Serrano. There are celebrities: Arthur Miller, Snoop Dogg, Anna Nicole Smith, B.B. King, Vanessa del Rio; and ordinary citizens: a pimp, a boy scout, a Muslim housewife, a doctor, a Russian Orthodox Bishop. America is intimate, honest, and demanding of response, like all Serrano's work. The second half of this big volume, Other Work, is a retrospective of Serrano's previous photographic series. Together these two impressive halves create the whole of Andres Serrano's artistic oeuvre. In 1989 US Senator Jesse Helms accused Andres Serrano of taunting the American people. America and Other Work is the perfect rebuttal.
Synopsis
Die Fotos von Andres Serrano (* 1950 NY) widmet sich in seinen Hochglanzphotos Themen, die von der Gesellschaft ignoriert oder tabuisiert werden und provoziert damit immer wieder heftige Auseinandersetzungen in der Öffentlichkeit. 1989 wurde Serrano schlagartig berühmt, als sein 1987 entstandenes Werk "Piss Christ" (Darstellung des gekreuzigten Jesus in einem Gefäß mit Urin) einen kulturpolitischen Skandal in Amerika auslöste. Im ersten Teil des neuen Titels zeigt Serrano Porträts, die in den letzten drei Jahren entstanden sind. Der zweite Teil zeigt einen Überblick über das bisherige fotografische Gesamtwerk Serranos. 1995 widmete ihm das Museum of Contemporary Art in New York eine Einzelausstellung, Serrano ist mittlerweile in allen wichtigen Museen der Welt vertreten. Der Künstler lebt und arbeitet in New York.
About the Author, Eleanor Heartney
Ault is an artist, curator, and the co-founder of Group Material, a New York-based artists collaborative that has produced more than fifty exhibitions and public projects exploring relationships between politics and aesthetics.
Dian Hanson is a twenty-five-year veteran of men's magazine publishing. She began her career at Puritan magazine in 1976 and went on to edit a variety of titles, including Partner, Oui, Hooker, Outlaw Biker, and Juggs magazines. In 1987 she took over the '60s title Leg Show and transformed it into the world's best-selling fetish publication. She is also the author of Taschen's Terryworld, Tom of Finland: The Comic Collection, and History of Men's Magazines six-volume set.
Eleanor Heartney is a New York-based cultural critic.
