Title ignored, Andres Serrano's most seminal work to date portrays a monumental crucifix emerging majestically from enveloping fields of velvety blacks, heated reds and warm yellows. While the impressive form hovers solemnly over viewers it is also apparent that it is submerged, a fact indicated by tiny air bubbles that cling to Christ's body, a quality that affords the photograph a palpable quiet, like that experienced when under water or when alone with oneself in a hushed place of worship. As such, the work very successfully recalls the profound power of the imagery which has served to call the masses to concerted prayer for hundreds of years and which has been a primary source of artistic inspiration and creation throughout art history. [...]

Piss Christ (1987), the artist has said, was first and foremost a formal exercise, exploring the relationship between color and shape, two-dimensions and three-dimensions, centered about an instantly recognizable, almost Pop, visual icon. Its composition, created by placing a plastic souvenir crucifix in a vat of the artist's urine, was meant to humanize a super-human figure and belief, to explore the idea of religion as an extension of our day-to-day, of our common, base experience.