"I think if the Vatican is smart, someday they'll collect my work"
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Serrano’s line lands like a deadpan dare: the Vatican, that master archivist of images, ought to one day canonize the guy best known for rubbing Catholic iconography against the grain of contemporary art. “If the Vatican is smart” is the needle. It frames the Church not as a spiritual authority but as a savvy cultural institution with a brand to manage, a collection to curate, a future audience to win. The provocation isn’t just theological; it’s administrative.
The subtext is a tug-of-war over ownership of the sacred image. Serrano’s work has often been treated as desecration by critics who want the Church to function as a boundary-setter: this is reverent, that is blasphemous. He flips that script. If the Vatican is truly confident in its visual tradition, it can absorb critique, controversy, even impurity, and still come out looking timeless. Collecting Serrano becomes a flex: proof that the institution can metabolize modernity instead of merely condemning it.
There’s also a sly reversal of penance. Rather than Serrano seeking absolution from the Church, he imagines the Church seeking relevance from him. In an era when museums arbitrate cultural memory as much as cathedrals do, the line implies that scandal is not an accidental byproduct of his practice but part of its intended afterlife: today’s outrage as tomorrow’s acquisition. It’s ambition wearing a smirk, and it works because it treats controversy not as a wound, but as a currency both art and religion already understand.
The subtext is a tug-of-war over ownership of the sacred image. Serrano’s work has often been treated as desecration by critics who want the Church to function as a boundary-setter: this is reverent, that is blasphemous. He flips that script. If the Vatican is truly confident in its visual tradition, it can absorb critique, controversy, even impurity, and still come out looking timeless. Collecting Serrano becomes a flex: proof that the institution can metabolize modernity instead of merely condemning it.
There’s also a sly reversal of penance. Rather than Serrano seeking absolution from the Church, he imagines the Church seeking relevance from him. In an era when museums arbitrate cultural memory as much as cathedrals do, the line implies that scandal is not an accidental byproduct of his practice but part of its intended afterlife: today’s outrage as tomorrow’s acquisition. It’s ambition wearing a smirk, and it works because it treats controversy not as a wound, but as a currency both art and religion already understand.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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