offending art and the

sense of touch
jojada verrips

university of amsterdam
 ABSTRACT
This article deals with artistic imagery characterized by an
unconventional use of conventional Christian representations
of the holy and the sacred and tries to answer the question
as to why so many believers feel hurt by this kind of art. It is
argued that one can better understand this reaction if one is
prepared to accept that all sensorial sensations are variations
of touch and that religion is an embodied phenomenon.

Keywords: art and religion, blasphemy, embodiment, sense

of touch

Jojada Verrips is Emeritus Professor of European

Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. He has
written and edited a number of books in Dutch and
is currently working on a book titled The Wild (in the)
West. His main interests are anthropology and religion,
anthropology and (abject) art, aisthesis or aesthetics
as an embodied and embedded phenomenon,
anthropology of the senses, blasphemy, cannibalism in
the Western world, maritime anthropology, vandalism Material Religion volume 4, issue 2, pp. 204–225
and violence. DOI: 10.2752/175183408X328316
 . . . sight does not stand alone, for people relate to the world
through a single sense organ, the body, in which all the senses
are united. (James 2004: 525)

Introduction
When Chris Ofili’s painting The Holy Virgin Mary was shown in
the Brooklyn Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1999 as
part of the exhibition of British art Sensation, Mayor Giuliani
threatened to withdraw a seven-million-dollar subsidy to the
museum, if this “obscene” and “blasphemous” work was not
removed. He even went to court in order to make an end
to the exhibition in general and to the “sick (making)” and
“blasphemous” painting (which he considered to be an insult
to the Roman Catholic Church) in particular, but to his great
dismay he lost his case. The reason for Giuliani’s anger, as
well as that of alarmed members of the Catholic League, was
the fact that the artist had applied the chemically treated feces

Offending Art and the

of an elephant and clippings from pornographic magazines
in his representation of Jesus’ mother. Due to the extensive

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Jojada Verrips
treatment of the affair in the media, the interest in visiting
the exhibition was enormous. In order to avoid court cases
by visitors who might have suffered from feeling (physically)
uncomfortable while viewing the exhibition, the museum
distributed folders in which the public was warned that the
content of the works shown might lead to shock, vomiting,
confusion, panic, euphoria, and anxiety (see also Greenberg
2002: 89). If one suffered from high blood pressure, a nervous
disorder, or palpitations, one was advised to consult a
doctor.1 Although Sensation also caused heated debates and
protests in England, where it was shown for the first time, the
commotion there concentrated less on Ofili’s painting than on
the portrait of the child molester and murderess Myra Hindley.
Of course, this was absolutely not the first time that works of
art had been considered to be obscene, blasphemous, and
below all moral standards, and had caused a scandal. Ever
since (so-called) modern art came into being in the nineteenth
century there have been similar kinds of vehement protest
against “arresting images” (Dubin 1999; Julius 2002). If one
delves deeper into this matter, one is struck by the fact that
the twentieth century, especially the second half, seems to
show an intriguing increase in both the number of artists who
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produce “shock art,” “abject art,” or “taboo breaking art,” on

Issue 2

206 the one hand, and the number of scandals and campaigns
triggered by them on the other. A striking characteristic of this
type of art, for instance, is the portrayal and/or use of all kinds
of bodily matter and fluids in paintings and photographs.
This is particularly true for performance art, which came into
existence after World War II, and in which the use of the body
as an artistic medium is central and blood, saliva, feces,
sperm, sweat, tears, and urine play an important role.2
In this article I will call your attention to a particular type of
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“shock art,” that is, art that uses not only classical elements
Jojada Verrips

of Christian iconography, but also classical means to present

them in unexpected and therefore disturbing ways, certainly
for staunch believers. I will do this by first presenting a few
 examples of artistic work in which this iconography and
these means crop up in a striking way in order to familiarize
you with the kind of material I want to put center stage. My
goal in doing this is to make clear what might be at stake
with regard to what is considered to be sacred by both the
artists and the public that considers their work as shockingly
sacrilegious. Furthermore, I want to highlight the role of the
senses in consuming this type of artistic work, in particular the
multifaceted and complex ways in which the public is bodily
touched and therefore moved by it in one way or another:
that is, aversion or acceptance. Finally, I will try to outline
a more bodily based approach of religious experiences, in
particular with regard to that what is labeled sacred, whether
concerning rules, acts, imagery, or objects.

Offending Art
Let me start then with presenting some empirical material.
Since art and religion experienced a kind of divorce in the
nineteenth century there have been a large number of
artists who have made works of art in which they played
with elements of the established Christian iconography,
characterized by a rather heavy emphasis on Jesus’
biography, in particular his immaculate conception and birth,
and his Last Supper and death on the cross.3 The crucifixion
particularly has for centuries been painted (sometimes
in a gruesomely realistic manner) with the intention of
strengthening believers’ faith with images based on the
scriptures or the (written and spoken) word (Merback 1999).
From the second half of the nineteenth century artists started
to represent the Last Supper and the crucifixion regularly
in what many people considered a blasphemous fashion.
A recent example of an artistic representation of the Last
Supper that caused an uproar is Renee Cox’s photograph
showing a naked black woman as Jesus. Shortly after he tried
to forbid Sensation in the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Mayor
Giuliani revolted against showing this “insulting” picture at a
photography exhibition in the same museum.4
The substitution of Jesus with a (naked) woman in
crucifixion scenes started as early as the second half of the
nineteenth century. Felicien Rops was, for instance, one of the
first to do so in his drawing The Temptation of Saint Anthony
(1878), which vividly shows how the devil in the shape of a
207 horned monk replaces Jesus with a voluptuous, naked young
woman. According to Rops he had no intention whatsoever
of representing a sacred scene, but just used it to draw a
sexually attractive girl (Vrouwen 2003: 114–15). Ever since,
artists have made such representations (Perez 2003: 71ff).
In 1913, for instance, František Drtikol came up with a whole
series of photographs showing crucified females (Doležal et
al. 1998: I/11, 12, 13, 14). In 1998 a scandal followed the
publication of I.N.R.I, a sort of photographic novel on the life
of Jesus by Bettina Reims and Serge Bramley, the cover of
which showed a photograph of a half-naked woman on a
cross. Roman Catholics vehemently protested against the
publication of this work intended to familiarize young people
 with the New Testament, because they deemed it to be utterly
shocking and blasphemous.5
However, the classical crucifixion scene has lately been
represented by artists in still other deviant or distorted ways.
A very famous example of a work that caused a great scandal
in the United States in the late 1980s is Andres Serrano’s
photograph of a crucifix immersed in a glass container of his
own urine (Figure 1). The image itself has a particular beauty,
but it is the title of the picture—Piss Christ (1987)—that, for
many people, especially Christians, suddenly turns it into
a creepy and disturbing representation of something they
consider to be a kind of sacred object that should never be
brought into contact with such a fluid as urine.6 With the
work of other artists, such as Mapplethorpe, this creation by
Serrano led to efforts by a few politicians, for instance senator
Jesse Helms, to stop subsidizing the National Endowment
for the Arts (NEA), because it used government money to

Offending Art and the

support the makers of obscene and sacrilegious art (or what
the Nazis once called Entartete Kunst). In the same period

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Jojada Verrips
in which he made Piss Christ, Serrano also produced other
shocking works, for example, the photograph Milk, Blood, in

FIG 1
Andres Serrano, Piss Christ 1987,
© A. Serrano. Courtesy of the artist and the
Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.

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208
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Jojada Verrips
 which he brought two fluids together that according to the
Jewish food rules should always be kept strictly separated.
Another photographer who has made shocking crucifixion
pictures is Joel-Peter Witkin. Like Serrano, he was also a
target of the anger of Christian church officials and politicians
who felt hurt, insulted, and offended by his repulsive
representations of what they considered to be sacred. Witkin,
who believes in reincarnation and claims to have witnessed
the crucifixion in one of his former lives, replaced Jesus at the
cross, for instance, with an ape (Savior of the Primates [1982]
in Celant 1995; see also Penitente [1982] in Celant 1995) and
a dead horse (Crucified Horse [1998] in Borhan 2000).7 With
regard to the last picture (which was inspired by F. Holland
Day’s photograph of a crucifixion shot in 1898) he remarked:

When I decided to use a horse to represent Christian sacrifice, I

was thinking of Dante who believed that animals and vegetation
alike, possessed primitive souls and were surrogates of God.
It was important to me that the horse be suspended against
something that would help detach The Passion from western
traditions . . . I wanted a sacrifice of such magnitude to be seen
as global. My crucified horse is an atrocity, an allegory of human
tragedy. (cited in Borhan 2000: 107)

It is striking that Witkin, whose work is experienced as

highly blasphemous by Christian believers, himself considers
it to be sacred: “My art is sacred work, since what I make
are my prayers” (cited in Celant 1995: 10). He has repeatedly
emphasized that he considers it his mission to make the
invisible visible.

In order to know if I were truly alive, I’d make the invisible

visible! Photography would be the means to bring God down to
earth—to exist for me in the photographic images I would create.
I believe that all my photographs are incarnations, representing
the form and substance of what my mind sees and attempts to
understand. (cited in Celant 1995: 17)

Other artists who have recently presented special

crucifixes as works of art are the young British artists Sarah
Lucas and Damien Hirst.8 The former created an image of
Jesus covered with cigarette butts (Christ, you know it ain’t
easy, 2003) and the latter produced almost at the same
209 time a photograph of a cross with cigarette butts glued to it,
representing the Twelfth Station, Jesus Dies on the Cross.9
Hirst’s photographs of the other Stations of the Cross are as
sensational. Apart from his representation of the Son of God
as alternate (naked) male and female, that of the three falls
of Jesus is spectacular and shocking, certainly for people
raised with a more classical imagery of the Stations. The
first fall shows the severed head of a slaughtered cow with a
bloody skull next to it, the second a naked woman covered
with blood and this head between her legs, and the third the
same woman but now with the skull on her mons veneris.
Hirst, like so many artists, plays here with important elements
from the approved Christian iconography, by combining them
 with and substituting them for new and unexpected other
elements. It here concerns one of the four characteristic traits
that according to Julius are shared by all transgressive or
taboo-breaking works of art: they “bring together elements
that should remain apart, in their hybridity refusing what
might be termed the ordinary integrity of things” (Julius 2002:
145). The other characteristics according to him are that they
“address pain, death and dismemberment from a detached,
speculative perspective,” “disturb the tacit relations between
taboos, legal rules and moral principles” and “are recent
works, instances of what is perceived to be a new genre,
‘shock art’ (or cognate to that genre)” (Julius 2002: 145).
An artist who also plays with religious elements in his
work in a surprising and flabbergasting way is the Belgian
Wim Delvoye, who constructed the feces-producing machine
Cloaca, which is exhibited in galleries and museums all
over the world. The first time one could see this ingeniously

Offending Art and the

constructed machine working in a museum was in Antwerp
in the fall of 2000, where it was fed twice a day as if it were a

Sense of Touch
Jojada Verrips
human being. The feces produced there was first conserved
and then put in glass bottles, which one could buy together
with the food fed to Cloaca for US$1,000 apiece. In the
early 1990s Delvoye started to use X-rays and stained glass
for artistic ends, an interesting combination of a scientific
technique to show the inside of the body10 and a classical
medium to make, for example, the life of Christ and of the
saints more transparent. Since he was not only interested in
the skeletons of humans and animals, especially pigs, but
also in the softer parts of their bodies, he used radio-opaque
media, so that one at least got an image of their outlines.
Together with a specialist he made a whole series of X-rays
of people making love in different ways. These photos made
visible what otherwise remains totally invisible, for example,
the position of a penis inside a vagina or a mouth.11 In this
respect there is a great family resemblance between Delvoye
and Witkin, who wants to do the same, albeit in a different
manner. At the end of the 1990s the former began to make
a whole series of church windows, one for each month of
the year, in which he used what one might call “eros-and-
thanatos-X-rays,” since as well as bones and skeletons
reminding one of death they showed the organs and place of
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human reproduction.12
210
A first example of the series, Transparity, was to be seen in the
Norbertijnerkapel, Ghent, in 2000. The rosette at the top, where
ecclesiastical tradition would have led us to expect the Dove
of the Holy Spirit, is an X-ray of a mobile telephone. The rest of
the window is made up of fragmentary X-ray images of couples
having sex. (Bexte 2002: 16)13

Though it would be tempting to deal with all the imagery of

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all the stained-glass windows Delvoye made, I just want to

Jojada Verrips

say a few words about one of them: May. This window is

particularly interesting, for it shows three Madonnas with child
in combination with three X-rays of fellatio scenes (Figure 2).14
 It is striking that one of the Madonnas is represented with an
X-rayed skull instead of a normal face.15 The window is a very
nice example of bringing together or mixing up in a touching
and confusing way, and within a very specific frame, the
sacred and the profane, or perhaps better: the sacred in its
pure as well as its impure manifestation.16 In this connection
the following observation by Sterckx is very pertinent:
“Sacred transparency and medical transparency, the religious
iconography of death and the clichés of eroticism: all this
connects in a single diagram, a single sheet of film. All four
layers of reading have been invested with a powerful charge
of light, of sign content and of bodily presence” (Sterckx
2002: 23).17
So far I have dealt with the taboo-breaking work of a
few American and European photographers and painters,
who—intentionally or otherwise—have shocked people in one
way or another with pieces of art in which they play with what
according to certain religious traditions should be treated with
respect and be kept apart, because it is considered to be
numinous, holy, divine, or sacred, by representing it in unusual
ways and combinations as well as with deviant materials.
However, as well as their artistic products, which are in the
first place consumed through the eyes (this does not imply
that the other sensorial modes are not involved, as I will
argue below), there is also another genre that is sometimes
experienced by certain categories as blasphemous: that is,
performance art as it came into existence after World War
II. In this volatile art form the body, its (gendered) nature and
functioning as well as bodily fluids and matter, played (and still
plays) a dominant and crucial role.
The Wiener Aktionisten were ground breaking in this
respect. Hermann Nitsch was a prominent member of this
group, which in the 1960s and early 1970s was involved
in scandal after scandal and created turmoil (in particular
FIG 2
Wim Delvoye, “The Chapel Series – ‘May’,” 2001. among Catholics) in Austrian society, because their
Courtesy of Studio Wim Delvoye, Gentbrugge. Aktionen or performances were experienced as the height
of decadence.18 Nitsch is an artist with a long-standing and
controversial reputation as a provocative player with the main
ingredients of the Christian religion, the rules presented in
the Old Testament regarding sacrifices, and classical Greek
Dionysian mythology. As a young man Nitsch had already
thought of organizing an immense orgiastic festival that would
211 last, just like the creation of the world, six days followed by
a seventh day for resting. In an early waxwork of 1960, full
of references to the sacrificial law of the Old Testament, he
called this project Orgies Mysteries Theatre. He has been
working ever since on this great performative project, which,
having found its definitive form, should be repeated at
certain intervals, preferably annually. All his creative energy
and artistic activities or Aktionen were directed towards the
realization of this ambitious goal. Having managed in 1971
to find the right place for his orgiastic happening, Prinzendorf
Castle near Vienna, and to establish a foundation that would
help finance his revolutionary plans, he started in 1975 with
a rather modest series of Aktionen lasting only a day and
 Offending Art and the
Sense of Touch
Jojada Verrips
FIG 3
Hermann Nitsch, “Aktion,” Prinzenhof
1975. Courtesy of Atelier Hermann Nitsch,
a night (Figure 3).These were followed by several similar
Prinzendorf.
happenings of a longer duration, until he was able in 1999 to
organize an event lasting six days. Although it was intended
to be a public event, a right wing politician who felt seriously
offended by Nitsch’s blasphemous Dionysian festival and who
knew that he had enough support in the country succeeded
in transforming it into a members-only event. Since the
scenario for this event involves more than 1,500 pages and
the participation of hundreds of actors and volunteers, it is
impossible to describe it in detail. However, the main elements
consist of slaughtering animals, removing their entrails and
letting their blood and all kinds of other fluids drip lavishly over
naked males and females tied to or lying on wooden crosses,
while musicians play deafening music and the spectators
drink wine. In short, Nitsch’s theater really has the character
of a classical orgy, in which the participants aim to reach
ecstasy19 and is designed as a total experience for “the whole
human body, the whole psychophysical organization: all the
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senses are mobilized for a way of life that goes beyond the
212 normal one determined by the rules of civilization” (Nitsch in
De Jonge 1983: 5; transl. JV).
Both the Aktionen that Nitsch organized in the
introductory period and the ones that he staged in
Prinzendorf were extensively recorded. The photographs
and films of these bloody and shocking happenings were,
like the artworks that resulted from the Aktionen, exhibited
in galleries and museums. Many of these artworks are
characterized by an intriguing mixture of blood-soaked
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Jojada Verrips

religious paraphernalia such as chasubles, choir vestments,

and imagery of saints and Jesus. Nitsch’s creations look very
much like the relics and reliquaries as they are exhibited and
worshiped in Catholic churches.20 Some of them he even
 called Reliktmontage. It is probably precisely this great family
resemblance that one has to take into consideration if one
wants to understand why many Catholics consider his work
to be pure blasphemy and utterly disgusting.
To conclude my series of examples of artistic work that
upsets because it seemingly plays disrespectfully with what is
experienced to be sacred,21 I want to mention the altar built
by the Dutch tattoo master Henk Schiffmacher in a former
Roman Catholic chapel in Harderwijk, the Netherlands. It
shows a heavily tattooed Jesus on a cross, with a skeleton
at his feet surrounded by skulls and bones, and a cigarette-
smoking monkey in the foreground making an obscene
gesture. Though Schiffmacher, of course, denied that his
unconventional altar is blasphemous, believers thought
otherwise and felt seriously hurt by his installation.22

Offending Art and Tactility

In her seminal work The Colour of Angels the anthropologist
Constance Classen (1998) deals with three art movements:
Symbolism, Futurism, and Surrealism, and the ways in which
they tried to bring all the sensory sensations back on stage
again, though with differences in their emphasis on particular
sensory experiences. She shows in great detail how the
artists belonging to these movements took position against
the rather rational sensory orientation of modern science with
its heavy accentuation of sight and hearing and how they
instead propagated a multisensory aestheticism in which the
neglected so-called lower senses of smell, taste, and touch
would regain their proper place again. Each in their own
way, the symbolists, the futurists, and the surrealists tried to
produce artworks that did justice to all sensory experiences
and therefore appealed to all the senses of the public. In
short: Classen sketches the multisensory cosmologies of the
three art movements and the struggles to realize them in all
kinds of artworks, from painting to poetry. Her approach is
fascinating and can serve as a fruitful starting point to better
understand the kind of taboo-breaking art movement in which
I am interested. However, if one wants to get a deeper insight
into its often shocking and confusing impact on different
groups, especially Christian ones, her approach needs to be
expanded.
Let me first try to establish to what extent the shock
213 artists I deal with are as explicit in emphasizing the role of
all the senses for and in their work as the artists on which
Classen focused. As a matter of fact, I have not come across
many sources in which this topic is explicitly mentioned by
the artists themselves. However, one exception is Hermann
Nitsch, who comments:

a feast of the senses is celebrated. The stars and the universe

reverberate in the sensorial splendor of the liturgy of life, soaked
with sound and music. Life is transfigured into a life-feast.
Eating and drinking, intoxication by wine are crucial parts of the
play. Experiences of taste and smell are split up in motifs and
reassembled. Synaesthetic connections are enjoyed. (Nitsch in
De Jonge 1983: 6; transl. JV)
 Whereas Nitsch’s Aktionen, like so many performances and
installations—often not dealing with the religious at all—of
other taboo-breaking artists, are explicitly designed as
multisensory events, this often does not pertain to the work
of transgressive artists working in more conventional genres,
such as painting and photography.23 One might even get
the impression that the latter somehow lack a specific kind
of sensory cosmology or at least do not feel an urgent need
to make it explicit. The issue here is whether the presence
or absence of such a cosmology is of crucial importance
for understanding the impact of their artistic works on the
beholders. I do not think so, for several reasons.
First, I want to point out that whatever the sensorial
cosmology or ideology of artists may be, having one does
not mean that they will be (always) successful in concretizing
it in their work, except perhaps in the case of performance
artists who use their body and/or those of others to express

Offending Art and the

their artistic goals. Although Classen’s work brings us near
to the culturally colored sensorial ideologies of artists and

Sense of Touch
Jojada Verrips
artistic movements, it fails to bring us near to the sensorial
experiences of the public who are confronted with their efforts
to concretize what they propagate in an immensely varied
series of artworks.
Second, I think that a concentration on the specific nature
of sensorial cosmologies leads toward underemphasizing,
or even neglecting, the fact that the production and
consumption of art always implies the (in)direct mobilization
of all the sensorial modes that human beings have at their
disposal. It would be naïve to assume that this would not
be the case; the point is to find out how this happens. An
impressive and inspiring example of the kind of study I have
in mind is the multisensory approach to understanding the
aesthetic experience of individuals consuming art in museums
as developed by Joy and Sherry (2003). Combining the
theoretical ideas of Merleau-Ponty on the synaesthetic nature
of perception, Lakoff and Johnson on embodied metaphors,
and Fauconnier and Turner on conceptual blending, they tried
to understand how the body not only experiences art but also
informs the logic of thinking about art (Joy and Sherry 2003;
see also Irving 2006: 92).
Third, I believe that in order to better understand the
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sensorial impact of, for instance, art in general and taboo-

214 breaking art in particular, it is useful to approach in a radically
different way the fivefold, hierarchical classification of the
senses we have learned to accept in the West, with vision at
the top and the touch at the bottom.
Elsewhere (Verrips 2006) I have argued that our
understanding of the ways in which humans relate to humans,
other animals, and things, such as screens and artistic work,
can gain greatly from returning to Aristotle’s idea that touch
is the fundamental sensorial mode. I suggest that the other
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Jojada Verrips

modes we have learned to distinguish, put into a specific

hierarchical order, and associate with the body (emotions)
and the mind (rational thinking) are just particular variations
of tactility (Chidester 2005: 72–5; Mackendrick 2004: 61–2;
 Verrips 2002: 39) and therefore a specific constellation or
undividable whole. My point is well captured by the Finnish
architect Juhani Pallasmaa, who states:

All the senses, including vision, are extensions of the tactile

sense; the senses are specializations of skin tissue, and all
sensory experiences are modes of touching and thus related to
tactility. Our contact with the world takes place at the boundary
line of the self through specialized parts of our enveloping
membrane . . . Touch is the sensory mode that integrates our
experience of the world with that of ourselves. (2006: 28)24

If we are prepared to accept this, we can direct a more

balanced attention towards all our corporeal sensorial
sensations in daily life as triggered by a host of sensational
forms,25 such as, for instance, works of art. This would imply
a break with our ocular-centrism and our heavy emphasis
on the role of the mind, reason, and rationality, and would
bring back an interest in our haptic somatic experience of
reality.26 We would then focus on such difficult-to-understand
phenomena as deeply felt emotions and desires as well as
the irrational, the fantastic, and the sacred. That is to say,
phenomena on the basis of which human beings tend also
to develop a particular kind of knowledge of the world that
is not easy to capture in words, but nevertheless forms
an undeniable guide for their conduct, as much as the
knowledge developed on the basis of their capacity to think
and reason.27
What strikes me with regard to the consumption of taboo-
breaking art is the rather tactile and corporeal language its
opponents use in order to “ex-press” their “im-pressions” of it.
They often state that they feel attacked, shocked, confused,
disgusted, nauseated, hurt, wounded, sick, wretched,
rotten,28 whereas they sometimes qualify the artworks (as
well as their makers) that upset them as “sick-making” and
“polluting shit” (Hadolt 1999). The leaflet distributed at the
Sensation exhibition in New York in 1999 warning about
unwelcome physical reactions underlines the fact that going
to a museum implies not only an intellectual, but also a
particular sensorial or somatic experience (Joy and Sherry
2003; see also Yi-Fu Tuan 2005: 77).
How can we better understand this disrupting effect
when staunch believers are confronted with unconventional
215 representations of what they believe in, what they consider
and feel to be sacred or holy? Since I am not the first to
phrase this question, I think that it is pertinent here to dwell
briefly upon what W. J. T. Mitchell, the great expert on the role
of images in our world, recently put forward about offending
art in his thought-provoking book What Do Pictures Want?
The Lives and Loves of Images (2005a). According to him it
is necessary to realize that particular ways of representing
the sacred, especially deviant ones, can offend people in
such a way that they turn into censors or even iconoclasts,
because they experience the deviant images with which they
are confronted by eye and/or ear not so much as objects tout
court any more, but instead as animated objects, specific
 “subjects” or pseudo-persons that seem to look at and speak
to them in a violent, shocking, hurtful and even sick-making
manner.29 On closer inspection this offensive “speaking” of
images to the persons confronted with them turns out to
be nothing less than the outcome of anthropomorphizing
and mere projection. According to Mitchell one can best
compare the situation with that of a ventriloquist and his
dummy: “When we are offended by what an image ‘says,’
we are like the ventriloquist insulted by his own dummy. One
could decode the dummy’s rebellious voice as the discourse
of the unconscious, a kind of Tourette’s syndrome projected
into a wooden object” (Mitchell 2005a: 140). On the basis
of this perspective he calls the stir caused by the exhibition
Sensation “a relatively benign outbreak of a very old malady
we might call the ‘iconophobia syndrome’” (2005a: 141). As a
remedy he even suggests organizing “a blockbuster exhibition
called Offending Images” that “would explore the very nature

Offending Art and the

of offensiveness, of the shock, trauma, or injury which images
can produce . . .” (2005a: 142–3, italics JV). Though I like

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Jojada Verrips
Mitchell’s approach very much (see Verrips 1994), I think
it is a bit too shallow, for it turns out to be a particular kind
of psychological projection theory that ignores the hurting
or traumatic sensorial and somatic experiences involved in
the confrontation of individuals with images perceived as
“pseudo-persons.” Another weakness is that Mitchell seems
to forget that the “speaking” image is not only a ventriloquist’s
dummy, but also functions as a pars pro toto, the totum being
the person who produced the image in the first place. In other
words it also “speaks” on behalf of its maker.30
I do not believe that we will ever be able to understand
adequately what spectators of taboo-breaking art experience
if we keep trying to make sense of it without taking the
body seriously. The first thing one should realize is that our
perception and experience of the world we live in cannot be
understood, if we continue to neglect the groundedness of
our knowledge-cum-affective-experience in the human body
or more particularly the brain. If we, moreover, can accept
that our sensorial experiences are of a tactile nature, then, I
think, we might end up with a less spiritualistic and rational
and more materialistic and therefore realistic interpretation
of the “re-actions” of spectators to what they experience as
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Issue 2

disgusting and unsettling art.31 In this connection it might

216 be useful if we paid more attention to what has lately been
brought forward by cognitive scientists, who try to develop
more insights into the role of embodiment in obtaining and
using religious knowledge (cf. Barsalou et al. 2005; Kovach
2002; Livingstone 2005; see also Pennartz 2003).32 For these
scholars, humans are involved in a continuous process of
storing, retrieving, and re-combining knowledge, sensations,
and feelings in the body. Their approach can help not only
to better understand the gut reactions discussed here, but
Material Religion
Jojada Verrips

also how reading a text, seeing a stained-glass window,

watching a film (and looking at a performance) can generate
an impressive multisensorial (or aisthetic) experience of a
positive or negative type.33 In this connection it is important to
 realize that one does not always need to be exteroceptively
touched by a sight, sound, smell, or taste in order to see,
hear, smell, or taste something, for this might also happen via
an interoceptive touch.

Toward a More Corporeally Grounded Approach

On this basis we are in a better position to understand the
aggressive reactions to artistic imagery34 characterized
by an unconventional use of the conventional Christian
representations of the holy and the sacred. The latter
representations are not only present in that they are
hanging, for example, in churches, in the form of icons or
crucifixes, but are also incorporated or embodied with all the
accompanying knowledge and feelings. In this connection the
following statement by Pentcheva on what happens between
an individual standing before an icon is particularly pertinent:

The viewer’s gaze seeks the tactility of the icon’s textures. The
active eye sends off rays that touch the surfaces of objects. At
the same time, the glitter of light emanating from the gold surface
visualizes the rays that the “animated” image itself sends off to
touch and in a sense capture the viewer. The space between
icon and beholder becomes activated through the exchange
of gaze and touch . . . The body of the worshipper is thus fully
engaged in the spectacle of the icon’s performance . . . (2006:
639–40; see also James 2004)

Representations (such as, for instance, crosses and

crucifixes) together with the spoken word have cognitively and
emotionally constituted, folded, formed, patterned, structured,
or tuned the religious subjects as bodily entities and continue
to do so as long as they remain within the religious contexts
in which they feel at home. Thus, believers carry the holy and
the sacred all the time with them in a particular corporeal
format. It is both outside and inside their bodies. It is a kind
of corporeal yardstick each and every religious subject uses
to measure everything he or she is touched by through the
senses. The literally incorporated and embodied sensational
forms “invoke and perpetuate shared experiences, emotions
and affects that are anchored in a taken-for-granted sense
of self and community, indeed a common sense that is rarely
subject to questioning exactly because it is grounded in
perceptions and sensations” (Meyer 2006:19). However, when
217 confronted with taboo-breaking art there is an enormous
clash or mismatch of an unsettling sort.35 The spectators
express this collision at a deep corporeal level, this disturbing
process in the body in a particular language that should
be taken seriously by everybody who wants to grasp what
is really the matter. When they use such expressions as “it
hurts me” or “it is so disgusting that it makes me vomit” this
is not just metaphorical language, but language that hints at
fundamental experiences in the flesh36 as a consequence of
being touched by imagery outside the body that is entirely
in opposition to imagery stored inside their bodies.37 What
probably sharpens the impact of the encounter between
the two is that taboo-breaking artists (a) put within frames
 unconventional combinations and substitutions of Christian
iconographic elements, often technically produced with (b)
rather unusual materials, for example, feces, blood, and
urine. In using these bodily materials “out of place” (Douglas
1966) they show the sacred within these frames not so
much from its pure, but more from its impure, therefore
disgusting, and abject side. Wim Delvoye’s stained-glass
windows are an excellent illustration of this, especially the
ones showing the intestines of humans and pigs.38 Kristeva
once described the abject as follows: “an extremely strong
feeling which is at once somatic and symbolic, and which is
above all a revolt of the person against an external menace
from which one wants to keep oneself at a distance, but of
which one has the impression that it is not only an external
menace but that it may menace us from the inside” (Kristeva
in Plohman 1999). It seems high time that we paid more
attention to this inside. This might lead towards a more

Offending Art and the

corporeally grounded understanding of the contemporary
consternation and outright aggression displayed all over the

Sense of Touch
Jojada Verrips
world when believers are confronted with images and texts
that are directly inspired by, yet significantly and deliberately
deviate from the religious representations they have learned to
embody and perceive as sacred. That the reactions on what
is denounced as blasphemy are often so fanatic and violent
appears to be immediately related to the fact that offending
works of art trigger a fundamental physical disturbance
or—in other words—a violation of the physical integrity of a
person or persons. We are confronted here with what Morgan
recently called “close seeing . . . where vision turns into touch,
where one sees with one’s viscera” or where work and reality
“blur in a way that offends, embarrasses, revolts, horrifies,
even nauseates the viewer” (Morgan 2007: 141–2). Whatever
our position on blasphemy charges may be, we need to be
aware of their bodily dimension through which certain works
of art are experienced as offending.

Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the participants of the workshop “Media
Technologies, Sensory Experiences and the Making of
Religious Subjects” of the Research Centre Religion and
Society, University of Amsterdam, 30 March–1 April 2006 and
Volume 4
Issue 2

Birgit Meyer for their constructive comments.

218

notes and references

Material Religion
Jojada Verrips

1 2
See Fraser (2001) for a good For a good introduction to
overview of what the exhibition and overview of blasphemous
Sensation triggered in the art see Brent Plate (2006).
American public realm. According to him blasphemy “. . . is
 fundamentally about transgression,
about crossing the lines between
the sacred and the profane in
seemingly improper ways” (2006:
40). Although I can in principle
agree with this definition, I think
that it would be wise to speak not
of “the sacred and the profane,”
but rather of: “what certain groups
and individuals have learned to
perceive as sacred and profane.”
3
In this connection the traveling
exhibition 100 Artists See God,
shown for the first time in 2004
at San Francisco’s Contemporary
Jewish Museum, is interesting (see
Thompson 2004). For a lucid and
instructive review of the exhibition
see Morgan (2007: 135–43).
4
Renee Cox was by no means
original in representing Jesus at the
Last Supper as a naked woman,
for the British photographer Sam
Taylor Wood did the same in 1996
(see his photo Wrecked in Perez
2003: 61). For the consternation
the photo of the latter caused in
New Zealand, see Harper (2005);
and for similar consternation with
regard to a clothing advertisement
also based on da Vinci’s painting
of the Last Supper, see www.
senorcafe.com/archives/
advertising/sacre_bleu.html.
5
In 2005 two Dutch TV makers
offended a great number of Dutch
Christians by showing in their
program God Does Not Exist
scenes of a naked black woman at
a cross. This time people also felt
hurt because these scenes were
taken in a Roman Catholic Church
without the owners’ permission.
6
In an interview with sociologist
Dubin, Serrano explained that the
use of urine enabled him to make a
brilliant picture, but that in using it
219 he clearly had other intentions too:
“. . . because the work is intended
to work on more than one level”
(1999: 98). See also Julius (2002:
15–16). In 1999 the exhibition Art
Until Now in the Detroit Institute
of Arts was closed because it
showed a pot containing what was
claimed by the American artist Jef
Bourgeau to be the urine Serrano
used for his Piss Christ (NRC
Handelsblad, November 23, 1999).
7
Witkin was not the first to replace
Jesus with an animal. In 1981
Paulette Nenner’s work Crucified
Coyote: He Died Because of Our
Sins was shown in the exhibition
Animals in the Arsenal in New
York. In order to protect a “captive
audience” her work was removed
(Dubin 1999: 331–2, n.84). In
1989 the Dutch artists Tempi
and Wolf used Mickey Mouse
(Houttuin 1993: 20). Several years
later Ron English did the same.
8
In Poland the artist Dorota
Nieznalska was convicted of
offending the religious feelings
of Catholics with her artwork
Passion: a steel cross with a
penis attached to it and a video
screen showing the tormented
face of a man (Volkskrant, July 25,
2003). See also the Chewing-
gum sculptures by Tempi and
Wolf (Houttuin 1993: 5). In 2007
the Catholic League for Religious
and Civil Rights in the USA
successfully protested against the
exhibition of the work of art My
Sweet Jesus (made of chocolate)
by Cosimo Cavallaro in the Lab
Gallery in New York.
9
The photograph belongs to a
series of pictures representing
and called The Stations of the
Cross, which Hirst made in
2004 in close cooperation with
the photographer David Bailey
and which were exhibited in
2005 in De Hallen, Haarlem (The
Netherlands). What strikes me
about the series is the family
resemblance with the work
of other artists. Compare, for
example, Station 8: Jesus Meets
the Women of Jerusalem with
a work by Drtikol from 1922
(Doležal et al. 1998: I/15).
10
Immediately after the discovery
of how X-rays could be used to
show the inside of the body, the
technique was appropriated by
photographers in order to make
pictures of, for example, people’s
hands, which were kept as
souvenirs or exchanged by lovers
(see Van Dijck 2001: 91).
11
The precursors of this kind of
pictures are, of course, cross
sections of the type already
made by Leonardo da Vinci (see
Weijmar Schultz, van Andel,
Sabelis, and Mooyaart 1999).
 12
Also those of pigs. These
animals play an important role in
Delvoye’s work. He not only made
X-rays of their inside, but he also
tattooed several pigs with imagery
that humans (e.g. Hells Angels)
display on their skin.
13
It is interesting that Delvoye not
only produces art objects that
show a great family resemblance
to a classical monumental art
form applied in churches, but that
he also exhibits them in similar
environments such as chapels and
temples (e.g. in China).
14
A salient detail is that the
Madonnas are lying on X-rayed
ironing boards with irons on them,
for these domestic appliances are
often associated with a man and a
woman having sex.
15
This reminds one of the uncanny
and disturbing representations
of the Madonna with a mutilated
child by the Austrian artist Gottfried
Helnwein, who looks back on his
Catholic education as a disaster
and whose goal is: “to undermine
and destroy the repressive system
based on the hateful intolerance
instilled by the Christian religion,
which he considers the primary
source of fascism” (Borovsky
1998: 20). Helnwein’s Epiphany
series is particularly relevant in this
connection (see Helnwein 1998),
for in this series he presents a
Christ Child as a kind of young
Hitler and the shepherds as SS
men. At The Kilkenny Arts Festival
(Ireland) in 2001 the exhibition of
this work in the open air on a wall
of the castle caused a stir (see
www.helnwein.net/article67.html).
16
Delvoye’s project is not unique,
for the Dutch artists Hans van
220 Houwelingen and Berend Strik
were invited in 1994 to make
twelve stained-glass windows
showing crucial existential themes
for Paradiso, a popular culture
venue situated in an old church
in Amsterdam. Their first window
deals with (the) creation and shows
the first cloned animal Dolly with
its creator. In the middle of 2004
they were looking for somebody
who wanted to commit euthanasia
and was prepared to let himself be
photographed at the moment of
his deadly injection. They defended
their strategy of using images of
real situations and persons by
saying that they wanted to treat
their themes as seriously as the
church. Gilbert and George also
produced stained-glass windows
with eye-catching representations
of Jesus, the so-called Sonafagod
Pictures, Was Jesus heterosexual.
When they were exhibited in
Maastricht (The Netherlands) in
2006, the Bishop of Roermond
denounced their works as
blasphemous.
17
I disagree with Sterckx when
he continues with the following
sentence: “In the face of such
intimate overlaps, let us hear no
more of the Freudian conjunction
Offending Art and the
of Thanatos and Eros” (2002: 23).
Sense of Touch
Jojada Verrips
18
Kristine Stiles succinctly
characterized the Aktionisten
as follows: “Systematically
assaulting repressive sexual
mores, hypocritical religious
values, the overt destruction of
war, and the covert physical and
psychological violence of the
family, they created confrontational,
often sadomasochistic, and
misogynistic, actions aimed at
visualizing pain as a means of
catharsis for healing. Scandalous
in form and content, their art led
repeatedly to arrest, fines and
imprisonment” (cited in Borovsky
1998: 22).
19
Nitsch once described it as
follows: “a creation appears that
devours itself, melts down, in order
to be born again. The event of
diving into the essence, into the
extreme process of change, into
a fundamental ecstatic process,
Volume 4
into a basic excess shows up.
Issue 2
The existential lust of an animal,
the lascivious but secret desire
to kill, the suppressed and
unacknowledged hunting instinct
surfaces due to the catastrophe of
the drama. The built up sensuality
plunges in the abreaction, in the
cruelty, the tooth buries itself in
the flesh of its victim. The eternally
occurring drama, the murder of
the Atrides, the fatherkiller and
Material Religion
incestuous Oedipus gone blind,
Jojada Verrips
Christ at the cross, emerge in
the actions of the o.m. theatre”
(Nitsch in De Jonge 1983: 5; transl.
JV).
 20
Take, for example, the clotted
blood of Saint Januarius that is
kept in a church in Naples and
that each year during a particular
rite has to be shaken by priests in
order to let it become fluid again.
21
It would be easy to come up
with many more examples of
works of art that are considered to
be an insult by different believers,
for they seem to be endless.
A special case is the exhibition
Irreligia in 2001 in a Roman
Catholic church in Jette (Belgium)
showing the work of a number of
Polish artists: for example, a cross
stuffed with a piece of brain and
a reliquary with swastikas painted
on it. The priest who allowed this
exhibition, along with a few other
church dignitaries, was officially
indicted for blasphemy by België
en Christenheid, an organization
that tries to sue anybody
insulting Roman Catholicism.
Also interesting is the decision
of a Greek court in 2005 to ban
a comic book by the Austrian
cartoonist Haderer depicting
Jesus as a naked surfer high on
marijuana and to sentence him
to a six-month jail term. Finally, I
want to mention the enormous
stir in 2006 caused by two
progressive Italian politicians who
put (homosexual) pairings of Kens
and Barbies in a nativity scene at
the Italian parliament in order to
gain attention for the position of
homosexuals in their country.
22
No wonder, for in the Old
Testament the making of tattoos
is strictly forbidden (Lev. 19:28).
Schiffmacher, however, defended
his representation of Christ as a
tattooed person by pointing out
that all the tattoos on his body had
221 a religious background and even
that Jesus probably had some. See
in this connection Mackendrick on
the recent popularity of having a
sacred heart tattoo and inscribing
via this image representing part
of the word that became flesh,
that is, Jesus, into one’s skin,
flesh, body (2004: 115–37). See
also Freckle Series: Adding Lake
Nagawicka, an artwork by the
Jewish artist Kim Schoenstadt
with which she challenges her
own religious tradition: she “has
made a tiny alteration to her body
that technically could prevent her
from being buried in the Jewish
cemetery with her family.” “We
will see if g-d notices” she said
(Thompson 2004: 497).
23
Witkin seems to be an
exception, judging from the first
sentence of a catalog introducing
some of his photographs:
“joël-peter witkin [sic] has never
concealed his intention to affect
the nervous emotionalism of the
spectator in the most violent
manner possible” (Anonymous
1991: 8).
24
Ever since Aristotle launched the
idea that tactility is fundamental
for the sensorial experience of the
world that surrounds us, it has
been attacked and represented
as a more or less untenable
proposition. See, for instance, for
a fascinating seventeenth-century
comedy in which the Aristotelian
claim is ridiculed, Carla Mazzio
(2005). I would like to thank David
Howes for bringing this piece to
my attention and for reminding me
of the tragic fate of one of its main
characters, Tactus, who sided with
Aristotle.
25
Meyer coined the term
sensational forms, meaning
that which induces particular
sensations or feelings. She applies
the notion to rituals as well as
to “the ways in which material
religious objects—such as images,
books, or buildings—address and
involve beholders” (Meyer 2006: 8).
26
Especially after Descartes
presented his cogito ergo sum,
expressing his sharp division
between body and mind, the
aisthetic way of knowing of the
world that Aristotle wrote about,
the knowing through our body,
rapidly lost ground in intellectual
circles. However, see Meyer’s
observation with regard to
Descartes position: “Descartes’s
account of sight had the most
fundamental of implications. If we
think of the senses in terms of
passivity, then the nervous system
is the organ of the sense of touch,
under which Descartes had, in
effect, subsumed vision. . . The
general notion of the body as a
responsive mechanism, and the
centralization of its responses, may
 thus be seen to involve not only
indirectness, but the unification
or reduction of the senses to
touch. The sense of sight itself
has become a kind of touch at
a distance, to be distinguished
from the ‘sight’ of the mind’s eye”
(2003: 22; see also Mitchell 2005b:
263). Baumgarten’s introduction
of the aesthetica in the middle
of the eighteenth century as the
science of sensitive knowing in the
classical sense was a benchmark,
but it did not mean the return to a
more balanced relation between
aisthetic and rational “knowing” of
the world. However, with the rise
of phenomenology, especially as it
was developed by Merleau-Ponty
in his work on perception (2005
[1945]), aesthetic experiences and
knowing reappeared on centre
stage again (see Chidester 2005;
Mackendrick 2004; Marks 2004;
Sobchack 2004). Merleau-Ponty’s
Causeries (2003 [1948]) explicitly
dealt with aesthetic experience
in connection with the rise of
modern art. Artists aimed for
representations of reality that were
more in accord with the fact that
we do not perceive it through our
eyes alone, but all our senses, our
whole body.
27
I realize that my position shows
a great family resemblance with the
symbolist, futurist, and surrealist
sensorial ideologies as outlined
by Classen in the sense that I
also dislike the one-sidedness of
the ocular-centric type. It is no
coincidence that I like the art that
was spawned by them.
28
Interesting in this connection
is the language used by the
lawyer speaking on behalf of the
Roman Catholic Church in the
case of the clothing advertisement
222
mentioned in note 5, for he said
that it concerned: “a gratuitous
and aggressive act of intrusion on
people’s innermost beliefs.”
29
It seems as if we are confronted
here with a sophisticated
elaboration of Freedberg’s
arousal theory regarding images
(Freedberg 1991).
30
Apart from this I think that
Mitchell’s perspective on offending
art could gain much from a linkage
with Riches’ approach to violence
(Riches 1986), more in particular
his triangle of performer(s),
victim(s), and witness(es), for that
might enable one to perceive
“the image as ‘pseudo-person’”
alternatively as the “performer” and
the “victim” of violence.
31
I realize that my plea for paying
more attention to the functioning
of the body is seriously hampered
by what Shaviro, inspired by
Foucault, succinctly phrased as
follows: “Postmodern Western
culture is more traditional, more
Cartesian, than it is willing to admit;
it is still frantically concerned to
deny materiality, to keep thought
separate from the exigencies of the
flesh” (1993: 113).
Offending Art and the
32
In this connection the work of
Root-Bernstein (2002) and Moore
Sense of Touch
Jojada Verrips
(2005) might also be of great
significance. The first deals with
the logics of aesthetic cognition for
which he coined the term synosia,
from the root words synaesthesia
(a combining of senses) and
gnosis to know, and the latter
with a radical redefinition of the
relation between the senses and
intelligence. Furthermore, I think
that Mattijs van de Port’s idea
about the role of implicit knowledge
for a better understanding of what
he calls stubborn otherness (van
de Port 1999) might gain from
elaboration in a bodily direction.
33
I would like to emphasize that
these phenomena not only have
the power to hurt, but also to heal
(cf. Mercier 1997). NB the following
statement made by Susan Kraft,
director of the Art 21 Gallery, Palo
Alto: “You don’t heal a fractured
world with Shock-Art, you heal it
Volume 4
with beauty.”
Issue 2
34
For an interesting hypothesis
with regard to this aggressiveness,
see Geerardyn, who postulates
that it might be directly related
to the fact that works of art
often originate from a specific
aggressiveness of the artist (1998:
100).
35
Talking about the angry reactions
to her photographic investigations
Material Religion
of pain, Diana Thorneycroft, a
Jojada Verrips
Canadian artist who, according
to Nakagawa, is one of the most
provocative image makers of the
past ten years, said something that
 is fully in line with my perspective:
“Some people don’t stay with the
photographs long enough, and I
think they think I’m trying to hurt
them. The other thing, I believe,
is that the photographs arouse
people. I’m not just speaking of
sexual arousal—I think memory
arousal is also something that
takes place, and that’s one thing
that you can’t really control. People
who don’t like to be out of control
get angry and, therefore, express
their rage by writing down nasty
comments in the comment book”
(Nakagawa 2002).
36
Compare this with the
observations of MacDonald and
Leary (2005) regarding the way in
which social exclusion can cause
physical pain.
37
One might speak here, though
many would not be inclined to
do so, of a real wound at a deep
corporeal level or a physiological
and/or neurological trauma. In this
connection Santanu Das’s sharp
observation is much to the point:
“. . . it is important to note that
Freud’s description of trauma as
a ‘break’ in the protective psychic
‘shield,’ ‘membrane’ or ‘envelope’
draws upon the vocabulary of
touch as an index of the intimate,
or the exposed. Yet this perilous
intimacy between touch and
trauma has gone largely unnoticed;
in fact, in some of the most
penetrating theoretical discussions
on the subject, the experience of
the flesh has been sacrificed to the
representational crisis induced by
trauma” (2005: 241).
38
This impure side of the sacred is
enormously important in the orgies
mysteries theatre of Nitsch (See
Nitsch in De Jonge 1983: 6).
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