For the second time in less than a month, I’m asking myself this question. The first time, it was because there actually was piss in the gallery (see my review of REMAINS @ Red Head). The second time was because I was reminded of something my good friend used to say to me about conceptual art on the regular. 

For context, she was a physics major with an apparent disdain and appreciation for the visual arts. Her mum was an abstract painter, so I can imagine she got a good bit of art-schooling at home. Living with two physics students in my final year of undergrad meant that I didn’t really talk about my work or what I was doing in class. I heard a lot of complaints about computational physics and whatever-other mechanics they were studying. Truthfully, I don’t remember much, but at the time I was fine with listening in on physics department gossip. 

I think my favorite thing about this person is her sense of humor. As always, she’d take it to the extreme by saying, “sO iF I tOoK a ShIT iN a gALleRY, tHaT wOuLd CoUNt aS aRT riIGHttt???” In the exact way you’re reading it she would say it like that. And we’d both know that it was a joke but I’d try to make a case for the validity of conceptual art anyway and then of course the conversation would devolve into haha no I know, I’m just kidding. 

And because of the fact that I’m mostly surrounded by artsy people now who don’t say stupid shit like that, I don’t think I ever really fleshed out that debate fully. So I’m gonna debate it now…with myself ig. 

So, does piss belong in a gallery? 

The art world is no stranger to bodily fluids being integrated into artworks for viewing. Not just urine but saliva, period blood, & ejaculate too. The artist Andy Warhol apparently has a series of “Piss paintings” in which the artist would invite various visitors to the Factory (his studio) to piss onto primed canvases. 

Warhol’s Oxidation series developed out of his experiments with piss paintings. He’d coat canvases in copper or gold paint so the piss would cause the metal to oxidize and change colours. [1] (Warhol also made another series of Cum paintings, tho I think it’s rather self-explanatory how those worked.) 

For Warhol, these paintings served several gestures. In an interview published in I’ll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews (2004), Warhol (facetiously?) insisted on the technical and artistic skill necessary to create good designs for the Oxidation paintings. 

The gesture of pissing onto the canvas was really all about creating a spectacle. 

A /definitely/ voyeuristic kind of spectacle. 

It was also an attempt to (forgive me) take the piss out of Jackson Pollock’s notoriety and acclaimed genius, as this was during a time of his immense popularity. 

Urination as performance or spectacle pops up in a lot of other artists’ work such as Vincent Leow’s 1992 performance, Coffee Talk, (during which the artist famously drank his own urine); Regina José Galindo’s performance Piedra (2013), (in which the artist, covered with coal dust, allows herself to be urinated on by two male actors and one female actor); and Itziar Okariz’s site specific photography & performance series To Pee in Public and Private Spaces (2000-2004), (in which the artist urinates in various locations—often illegally—while standing up as though she were a man). 

[Video and installation artist Nam June Paik also explored pissing as performance/spectacle during his time with the notable Fluxus group and created scores for two “events” which are documented in the Fluxus
Performance Workbook, published in 2002 by Performance Research. [2]]

Leow, Galindo, and Okariz use piss to explore different ideas, (Leow as a way of humorously commenting on the circular nature of artistic production and consumption; Galindo as a critique of the violence often inflicted on the female body, especially within the context of Galindo’s home country of Guatemala [3]; and Okariz as a mode of underscoring the impact of social conventions within private & public spaces), however I’d argue that whenever piss enters into art as medium or method, it inevitably implicates the work (at least in some respect) as engaging in a kind of performance, even if the performance does not appear to be explicit. 

In other words, there’s still an aspect of performance even if the work itself is not performance art. Let me give another example. 

While Jia Chan’s photographic series Standing Up Peeing (2006) and Charles Demuth’s watercolor painting Three Sailors Urinating (c. 1930) narrate the act of urinating (and thus more easily lend themselves to the “piss as performance” argument), I would be remiss (and kind of a disgrace to my profession) if I went without mention of the controversial Piss Christ (1987) by artist/photographer Andres Serrano— the penultimate example of a work of art about (or using) piss. 

I’ve included an image of Piss Christ at the beginning of this text, which depicts a small plastic crucifix submerged in a tank of the artist’s urine. (Serrano also used blood and ejaculate in other artworks, specifically for his Immersion series!) 

In defense of Piss Christ, Serrano has stated that his work (on the whole) is essentially open to interpretation, and that he did not intend Piss Christ to be offensive or sacrilegious. However, his gesture of situating a well-known religious icon in a jar of his own piss suggests that his objective was to establish a state of incongruency in order for the work to operate. The message of Piss Christ itself is not really my concern here, but the method Serrano used to carry out the project is.

The steps in the creation process are implied, (but were also clearly explained by the artist at the time of the controversy), in the description of the artwork: a small plastic crucifix submerged in a tank of the artist’s urine. The act of pissing into a tank or collecting one’s own urine is not at the forefront of this work but it is undoubtedly part of it. Rather than, (say for instance), using a yellow filter over the camera lens, or concocting a mixture of liquids which would give the same color, Serrano used his own piss as a symbolic representation of something base or ”profane.” 

The juxtaposition of these elements (the sacred and the profane; i.e. the title, Piss Christ) clarifies that the function of piss in this artwork (on the level of affect) is to shock, surprise, or startle. Similarly to Nam Jun Paik and his work with Fluxus, the goal is clearly to shock viewers. [4]

So, based on this discussion, what might be implied about the role of piss in modern and/or contemporary artwork? (I will acknowledge that this survey isn’t extensive. However, that just goes to show how varied artistic expressions of pissing can be.)

We return now (in a way) to the question I posed at the beginning of this essay– “does piss belong in a gallery?”

Tbh, I’m not totally convinced that piss amounts to anything more than a flimsy gimmick. 

Can piss serve a critical function? Sure, why not. Just look at Cassils’ critique of discriminatory bathroom policies during the Trump presidency in PISSED (2017). But to me, the majority of the uses of piss I’ve seen feel as gratuitous as those irrelevant sex scenes in the movies. Not really something that drives the plot, but something to stare at. 

It’s like fan service but the whole point is for you to stop and notice, to pay attention.

And maybe that’s fine. Maybe I’m expecting too much out of piss. Maybe it’s just Not That Serious. 

Piss is funny(?). Kinda. 

…Maybe it’s nothing more than a joke!

But it doesn’t feel like a joke or like it’s supposed to be one. Art has to be intentional, so it’s no mistake the piss is in there. It’s a tricky line to draw in any case, as there are precedents for it. 

I’m not sure what to think. Is piss enough on its own or does it need to have some other justification? 

I’m thinking about Warhol’s piss paintings again. There was a time in the mid 20th century, (which we characterize with the emergence of abstract expressionist art), where paint was just paint. It wasn’t meant to represent anything else or look like anything else. A painting should look like a painting— that is, a 2D surface with colors on it—not imitate the illusion of reality as seen in a photograph. 

Maybe Warhol was doing that same thing but with piss. Piss ought not to look like anything other than what it is! 

Paint, piss…maybe the medium is the end in and of itself. Can the medium alone be art? Abstract expressionism says yes. I say…I reserve the right to remain skeptical—especially when it comes to pee.

____________________________________________________________________________________________ 

[1] https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-5074062 

[2] In Fluxus Champion Contest (1962), participants enact a literal pissing contest. As the score dictates, “Performers gather around a large tub or bucket on stage. All piss into the bucket. As each pisses, he sings his national anthem. When any contestant stops pissing, he stops singing. The last performer left singing is the champion.” While in Fluxus Hero or Heroine [For Frank Trowbridge] (date unknown), performers “piss on the subway tracks and thus stop the train.” To Pee in Public and Private Spaces seems to echo this approach of intervening in the public sphere with socially transgressive actions.

[3] This in addition to a reflection on “the detrimental effects of coal mining on the environment, the predicament of exploited female laborers, and the pervasive structural violence against women that economic exploitation perpetuates.” Though, simultaneously and conversely, Galindo underscores the resilience of the female body and spirit, writing, “Cuerpos frágiles solamente en apariencia”—(“bodies are fragile only in appearance”). 

[4] This shock factor also appears in other examples of Paik’s work. See https://www.artforum.com/columns/nam-june-paik-2-173790/.

Works Cited (in no particular order) 

https://www.artspace.com/magazine/art_101/book_report/andy-warhol-made-abstract-art-a-look-at-his-piss-oxidation-and-cum-paintings-55610 

https://artrkl.com/blogs/news/body-fluids-in-art-urine 

https://criticismism.com/urine-a-survey/ 

https://www.flaunt.com/blog/art-cassils-witness-protection 

https://www.reddit.com/r/ContemporaryArt/comments/a7hmj1/helpmy_art_teacher_asked_me_to_do_a_research_on/ 

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/18/arts/18iht-leow.html 

https://bulegoa.org/en/to-pee-in-public-and-private-spaces-with-chus-martinez-and-itziar-okariz/ 

https://desingel.be/en/programme/architecture/curating-the-campus-itziar-okariz-to-pee-in-public-or-private-spaces 

https://magazine.artland.com/immersion-piss-christ-stories-of-iconic-artworks/ 

https://www.naimamorelli.com/singapore-series%E2%80%8A-%E2%80%8Achapter-14/ 

https://www.reginajosegalindo.com/en/piedra-2/ 

https://hemisphericinstitute.org/en/emisferica-102/10-2-review-essays/piedra.html 

https://www.sfmoma.org/essay/nam-june-paik/ 

https://www.macba.cat/en/obra/r5749-mear-en-espacios-publicos-o-privados/ 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxus#Fluxus_art

https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/andres-serrano-provocative-work-lucy-lippard-1234652353/

https://smarthistory.org/andres-serrano-piss-christ/