Andres Serrano
What does it feel like to live in a time of outsized consequence?
In August 2025, I interviewed the artist Andres Serrano. After his photograph, Piss Christ, won a federally funded cash prize in the late 1980s, Serrano found himself at the center of a national conversation about the value of art in society and a government’s responsibility to it. But I believe the conversation was, more truthfully, about how to hold onto power once you have it.
I’m collecting interviews that center on this question: What does it feel like to live in a time of outsized consequence? I’m less interested in abstract opinions than I am in hearing specific memories and personal histories. If you’re interested in contributing, take a moment to provide me with some information here.
Below is an excerpt from my interview with Andres Serrano.
There’s a line in a Bob Dylan song that always spoke to me personally, and that is the first line of “Idiot Wind” from Blood on the Tracks and the line is, “Someone’s got it in for me, they’re planting stories in the press / Whoever it is, I wish they’d cut it out quick, but when they will, I can only guess.” That to me, was Piss. Christ. All of a sudden I was being attacked in the press. I didn’t know by whom, but it was coming at me from all directions, and I just wanted it to stop.
Luis Buñel is also very dear to me. I started watching his movies when I was 17. As well as Fellini. And I’ve always felt these guys are religious. They’ve got the Catholic upbringing in them, but they also like to poke at the religious, what they saw as religious hypocrisy or traditions that didn’t make sense. So there’s a love-hate relationship there with religion, particularly with Catholicism.
And so I see myself in the tradition of the old masters, and I was very happy a couple of years ago when I was invited to the Vatican to meet with Pope Francis on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Vatican’s Contemporary Art Collection.
And not only being invited, but also, last year, the Vatican took one of my pieces for the collection. So to me, being received, invited by Pope Francis, was really what I had hoped for all my life. For the Catholic Church in Rome to say, this man is a Christian and we welcome him.
I’m a product of America. I’m an observer. I’m a witness to America. At my age, I’ve seen a lot of America. But also, from an early age, I’ve felt like I belong here and I belong everywhere. I’m not tied to this. I’ve been to Europe hundreds of times for exhibitions, and I’ve always felt like, yes, I am here, but I’m here as an outsider. I’m not one of the group.
But I never like group thinking. And that’s what I found in Dylan. I found he was an outsider. He really spoke to me personally because I understood that he didn’t identify with any particular people or group or way of thinking. He wanted to be just a human being, and that’s important. There are some of us who just want to be human beings and not be confined to one place in our thinking, even if we are in one place.
I’ve been in New York City all my life, and even though I’ve gone to many, many places abroad and around the country for lectures and to do work at great exhibitions, New York is always my home. I always have my home in New York. And so it’s one of those things where you have to understand that not all Americans, not all Christians are the same.
You know, while we’re on the topic of Dylan, there’s one other line from a song that I never really understood, meaning I couldn’t believe the line the first time I heard it and its taken decades for me to realize he was right.
The line is from “It’s all right, Ma, (I’m Only Bleeding)”. “If my thought dreams could be seen / They’d probably put my head in a guillotine.” I thought, that’s ridiculous. This is America. How could any thought, anything you do, anything you think, how can you be persecuted for having thoughts? And, once again, Dylan was ahead of his time.
Did the truth in that line come into focus in the late 80s, after Piss Christ?
Oh no. No no. It came into focus in recent times. It’s happening now.
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Jacob