# Piss Christ Controversy (1989) The spark of the [[NEA Culture Wars]]. In 1987 [[Andres Serrano]] — a Catholic artist working on a series about bodily fluids and religious imagery — photographed a plastic crucifix submerged in his own urine. *Piss Christ* won a $15,000 Award in the Visual Arts from the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA), a program partly underwritten by a [[National Endowment for the Arts]] grant. For nearly two years, nobody objected. In early 1989 [[Donald Wildmon]]'s [[American Family Association]] found it, and the direct-mail machine did the rest: reproductions and denunciations mailed to every member of Congress and the AFA's mass list, framing the piece as taxpayer-funded blasphemy. On **May 18, 1989**, Senator [[Alfonse D'Amato]] tore a reproduction of the exhibition catalog to pieces on the Senate floor; [[Jesse Helms]] rose to declare Serrano "not an artist" but "a jerk." More than 100 members of Congress signed letters demanding the NEA explain itself. The manufactured scandal — a two-year-old artwork, a sub-sub-grant of $15,000, a total NEA exposure of $45,000 including the Mapplethorpe tour — supplied the template for everything that followed: pick an image that summarizes itself, strip its context (Serrano's stated subject was the cheapening of religious iconography), route outrage through the mailing lists, and convert it into legislative leverage. Within a month the [[Corcoran Mapplethorpe Cancellation]] proved the chilling effect worked; within three, the Helms Amendment converted it into statute. ## See Also - [[NEA Culture Wars]] — the full map - [[Andres Serrano]] · [[Donald Wildmon]]