Daily Inspiration Quote by Andres Serrano

“I like Church furniture” lands with the deadpan simplicity Serrano often uses to disarm you before the complications arrive. Coming from a photographer whose name is still tethered to Piss Christ and the culture-war aftershocks of late-80s and early-90s America, the line reads less like a decorating preference and more like a tactical repositioning. It’s bait for anyone who wants a clean binary: Serrano as devout admirer of Catholic aesthetics or Serrano as professional blasphemer. He refuses the tidy story.

The intent feels twofold. On the surface, it’s an admission of taste: the Catholic Church, like any institution with centuries of money, knows how to stage power. Pew, pulpit, altar rail, confessional: furniture as choreography, directing bodies where to sit, kneel, confess, obey. Serrano’s photography has long been about lighting, surfaces, and the way institutions aestheticize authority. Saying he likes the furniture is a way of praising the craft while keeping his distance from the creed.

The subtext is that beauty and control come bundled. Church furniture isn’t neutral; it’s design as doctrine. By reducing “Church” to “furniture,” he turns sacramental space into an art object, something you can desire without submitting to it. That’s classic Serrano: insisting on the right to look, to be seduced, to be repelled, sometimes simultaneously.

Context matters because Serrano’s work has been read as an attack on religion even when it’s clearly obsessed with religious imagery. This line quietly admits the obsession while denying his critics the moral high ground. It’s not an apology. It’s an aesthetic confession.