Monday, January 28, 2008

Not for the easily offended

This semester I enrolled into Visual Arts & Culture. So far it's been an interesting debate about art in general. This past week we discussed : Chris Ofilis The Holy Virgin Mary & Andres Serranos Piss Christ. Don't click on the link just yet...
Chris Ofilis The Holy Virgin Mary
Andres Serranos Piss Christ
The discussion started based off the image alone. Without going into detail as to how the image was created and/or the artist intent we were asked if we viewed it as sacred or profane. It was interesting to hear various observations & after knowing how each image was created some views were retracted. I'd love to hear (before reading each article) how you view each image.


Assigned for this weeks homework we were asked to created an art piece (any visual of our choice) to display what we found to be profane & sacred about ourselves. I took (cell phone) pictures from beginning to start of my own piece. I have to admit as the project came along I changed my visual more than twice. A better picture with my digital camera will be posted shortly but as an exercise for myself I'd like to expose my creation before explaining my intentions.

4 comments:

Robyn said...

I love stuff like this! It reminds me how much I miss being in art classes. Maybe I should work on my masters. Ok back to the artwork. At first by just viewing the images I didn't find them to be profane or sacred as I didn't know the medium that the artists were using. After reading up on Piss on Christ I felt it was almost sacred. Everyone views the meaning of art in different ways and I almost agree with the catholic nun Wendy Beckett and that society in a way has pissed on Christ.

Awesome post!

Brenda said...

Very deep Brandy! I love it :)

Leslie said...

I haven't read the articles yet, but I tend to think that both works are sacred in their intent. That said, it's highly doubtful that I actually know what the artists intended to convey with their artwork (besides the obvious religious imagery), so this could be just me projecting my thoughts onto their artwork - which opens a whole new can of worms.

Very cool. Thanks for sharing.

Anonymous said...

Ok so my first impressions of them dont strike me as profane. Im not fond of the distorted image of Mary, but I would not call it sacrilege. I would not call it sacred either. The second one the image itself doesnt seem profane but the title does. I have to be honest, if I were to see it and not question what I were seeing, I would think well piss you! But now I will read the articles.... (its Julia Lalalala)