Robin Schwartz & the Piss Christ

http://robinschwartz.net/
This is a website that you've just got to see. I'm still processing what I've seen in my head. Robin has got a collection of photos on her website where her daughter, Amelia, and various animals just seem to be the same species. Amelia has got an expressionless face, an almost sort of ethereal look in her eyes, and a careless attitude with all the spider monkeys and elephants and baby tigers, who are just drawn to her! Robin says that her goal is to set up this sort of fantasy world, where the focus is not only on the presence of Amelia, but in the whole scene itself, which I find to be very well portrayed, even if the images are shot in a very straightforward no-bullshit organization. I was thinking about what it would be like to live as the daughter of a photographer, where your mother uses you as a subject for photographs. I'm sure the daughter is willing, and that their relationship is full of love and life, but I still think about that catalytic barrier that a camera can often be between two people, both in the moment of the shot and afterwards. Robin says that her daughter is not afraid of the animals, but rather it is the humans, much more destructive creatures, that she should be wary of. There is some truth in that statement.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9pAKdkJh-Y&feature=player_embedded
I was so amused by this article. Being  from Cincinnati, the most Catholic conservative town in the nation, raised up in Catholic grade schools and an all-boys Catholic high school (not as bad as it seems, imagine when you separate maturing boys and girls and then give them an opportunity to get together...), I'm trying to imagine a nun from my sister's school speaking about art in such a sophisticated manner. We often think of those devoting their lives to the church as lame, plain people without any other interest in the world than redemption! savior! my Lord!, but have been certainly proven wrong in this case. The nun is asked about the work of the Piss Christ by Andres Serrano, a work I was not familiar with, but how pieces like this and other such works that are 'vulgar' in construction of composition should be seen by those of faith. She makes two comments that were profound. First, just because some abuse does not mean that we should limit use. The second is the quote below the clip on LPV Magazine's blog.
“I think comforting art is art that is very easy to react to. I might be tempted to say that Serrano’s ‘Piss Christ’ is comforting art, in that everyone knows exactly what they think about it. They’re not challenged in the slightest. Ninety percent of them think its blasphemous and a few like me think, well, it might not be. It might be a rather ham-fisted attempt to preach about the need to reverence the crucifix. Not a very gifted young man, but he’s trying his best. But that’s comforting art, you see, because it’s so easy to have an opinion and a reaction. Everyone thinks they can do it.”
It is the art that is not easy to have an opinion about, and that isn't just the "flavor of the week or flavor of the month" as she puts it, that is really the most profound. It is work that is timeless, than can be seen by a person anywhere in the world at any time and place and react to it, while these individuals' interpretations are not easily foreseen.