The Assault on Christ

1. The Assault on Christ Various excerpts from e-mails and internet • Videos • "A Fire in My Belly" by artist David Wojnarowicz • The Last Temptation of Christ (film)

2. Art Renée Cox's "Yo Mama's Last Supper" “Yo Mama’s Last Supper” is a 15-foot-tall photograph of a nude African-American woman portraying Jesus, surrounded by 12 black men portraying the disciples. Mayor Giuliani was deeply offended by this work of art as well. He was quoted as saying "If you want to desecrate religion in a disgusting way, if you want to promote racism, if you want to promote anti-Semitism, if you want to promote anti-Catholicism, if you want to promote anti-Islamism, then do it on your own money. Do not use the taxpayers' money to do that." Giuliani appointed a "decency commission" of twenty members, to review the works' moral content, hoping the commission would deem the art as offensive to certain religions.  If they did, the city could withdraw funding.  The committee had a few meetings, but was abolished by new mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2002, and failed to do anything noteworthy.

3. Art Piss Christ is a controversial photograph by U.S. artist Andres Serrano. It shows a small plastic crucifix supporting the body of Jesus Christ submerged in a glass of the artist's urine. Rumour has it that the glass may also contain the artist's blood. The piece was a winner of the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art's "Awards in the Visual Arts" competition. The piece caused a scandal when it was exhibited in 1989, with detractors accusing Serrano of blasphemy and others raising this as a major issue of artistic freedom. On the floor of the United States Senate, Senators Al D'Amato and Jesse Helms expressed outrage that the piece was supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, since it is a federal taxpayer-financed institution. However, art critic and Catholic Nun Sister Wendy Beckett actually approved of  "Piss Christ". Piss Christ is often used as a test-case for the idea of freedom of speech, and was described in the journal Arts & Opinion as "a clash between the interests of artists in freedom of expression on the one hand, and the hurt such artworks may cause to a section of the community on the other." http://www.your3dsource.com/controversial-artwork.html The Holy Virgin Mary, a 1996 collage by Chris Ofili, an award-winning British artist, which incorporates elephant feces