Customer Reviews

Andres Serrano America: And Other Work

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There is something irresistibly uplifting about Serrano's "America", which tempted me to buy this book after a single quick perusal. It's a bit like Pierre et Gilles meet Avedon: a technicolor version of "In the American West". People from all walks of life, bums and celebs, priests and porn actresses, are portrayed in close up and in dazzling color; pure eyecandy, and also a brilliant sourcebook for artists. More is not needed to make this book enjoyable and worthwhile, but the parallel with Avedon's classic does show up Serrano's main limitation: superficiality. There is an attempt at deeper implications by the juxtapositions of portraits: the plastic surgeon and the butcher; the high school principal and the high school dropout; Larry Flynt and Bill O'Reilly; the WW2 veteran and the neo_Nazi. But as these examples make clear, the message never rises above the trivial (except perhaps once, inadvertently, where America's Little Yankee Miss 2003 is shown opposite Anna Nicole Smith...).
The second half of the book is dedicated to other series. Unfortunately these hover precariously between banality, vulgarity and sheer tastelessness, regularly lapsing into one or the other. As his infamous "Piss Christ" (also featured) proved, Serrano is one of those artists who cannot quite distinguish shock value from artistic impact. And there sure are some easy shockers here: a toddler dangling from a noose; a menstruating woman spreadeagled in a chair; a man being urinated in the mouth; and most disturbing of all, several images of mutilated or burnt corpses in a morgue. Of course such images have a strong impact; but that has little to do with their artistic qualities, and everything with their subject matter. In that regard the "Bodily Fluids" and "Immersions" series, being more abstract, are in my opinion actually more succesful, even though the idea behind the former again strikes me as too obvious, and the latter as juvenile. But whatever your respons, this book does represent a body of work that has an accepted place in modern photography and deserves to be seen. Serrano could not have wished for a more lavishly produced volume.

Don't recognize the name of artist Andres Serrano? You should he is one of this country's most surveyed modern artists, responsible for such controversies as "Piss Christ", and for a modern movement of controversial art. Serrano enjoys creating extraordinary situations from ordinary daily living, and Andres Serrano, America: And Other Work excels in presenting his greatest achievement: three years of work producing over a hundred 50x60 inch photos representing the melting pot of America as seen through Serrano's art. Anticipate often-startling images of people in striking, full-page displays.