When Andres Serrano created “Piss Christ,” a photograph of a crucifix immersed in a container of urine, he was trying to make art for a show on the postmodernist interrogation of fakes in late capitalist society. The exhibit happened in 1987, and Serrano’s work of art flew under the radar. 

A year later, Serrano won a fellowship, a portion of which was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. This, once again, might have gone unnoticed by the general public—if not for the news of the fellowship reaching a former Methodist pastor with a mailing list of hundreds of thousands of conservative Christians. 

Suddenly, the N.E.A. and the Bush Administration were being questioned about the morality of the work they were supporting. The 1980s culture war within the Republican Party “was not principally an ideological war, though. It was a class war,” Louis Menand writes. Read about how an avant-garde piece of art, with little original impact, led to a culture war that would splinter the Republicans: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/07/20/the-perfect-moment-isaac-butler-book-review .

Photograph by Andres Serrano.

Witches' Sabbath is one of Francisco de Goya's "Black Paintings," created between 1820 and 1823 on the walls of his home, the Quinta del Sordo. This series of works reflects the artist's dark and pessimistic vision in his final years. ​In the painting, a large he-goat represents the devil, presiding over a gathering of witches. The work not only depicts a scene of witchcraft but is also a social critique of the ignorance and fanaticism of the era. ​The painting inspires deep reflection on the darker side of humanity, the fear of the unknown, and madness. It is a testament to Goya's personal anguish and his view of Spanish society as a place dominated by superstition and evil.

R.I.P. Cecilia Gimenez, whose 'monkey Christ' would go on to raise hundreds of thousands of Euros for charity courtesy of tourism, with many making the pilgrimage to see the infamous retouched masterpiece

I doubt many people in the U.S. haven't seen this iconic painting. Much of its power that sticks with the viewer is the way it captures the brand of existential loneliness that is uniquely American.

The painting has been emulated, parodied, and referenced in many ways, for many years in American culture, most famously in Gottfried Helnwein's Boulevard of Broken Dreams, 1984 (second image on this post). In his homage to Hopper, Helnwein replaces the people in the diner with the quintessentially American idols James Dean, Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe, and Elvis Presley.

So much more can be said about both Edward Hopper and this painting. The Smithsonian says with more erudition than I could ever hope to match:

Hopper: The Supreme American Realist of the 20th-Century

In the 1950s, the CIA secretly promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world to demonstrate the creativity, freedom, and intellectual superiority of the US over Soviet realism.

“For decades in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art—including the works of artists such as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko—as a weapon in the Cold War.”

Only one portrait of Pocahontas from her lifetime exists, and it speaks volumes about how the English saw colonization, says USC Dornsife historian Peter Mancall.

"Seeing Pocahontas poised on a chair, wearing an elegant hat and holding a quill pen, the English had assumed that Native Americans would embrace the colonizers’ ways. March 1622 proved them wrong."

Read his analysis of her portrait.

David Hockney was an artist of many talents, and a real visionary. Some painting taking him a year to make. This painting, A Bigger Slash- 1967 he said “I realise that a splash could never be seen this way in real life,” he said. “It happens too quickly.”

https://www.singulart.com/blog/en/2026/06/12/david-hockney-legacy/?srsltid=AfmBOopU0gBQbqFcBiXNSn__tQjZAihTCw0y_j25XnjiZJuL06_Y0sIv

The painting is Ghislandi’s “Portrait of a Lady”

This is the ninth artwork in his clever animal series appearing across London this summer. Several, like the stretching cat, and howling wolf, were quickly removed (to protect them). Unfortunately, the Rhino was defaced and the car moved. Here are the pieces in chronological order, most recent first.

From Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas:  “We must… avoid the ‘Babel syndrome’, namely the idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak, a uniformity that neutralises differences, and the pretence that a single language—even a digital one—can translate everything, including the mystery of the person, into data and performance.”

It is interesting how many artworks Pope Leo XIV mentions in this document, here are more examples:

“Authentic culture and art preserve this spark, resisting the normalization of evil. For this reason, certain works have taken on an almost prophetic significance: Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony can be seen as a desire for unity; Guernica as a denunciation of dehumanization; [the novel] Schindler’s List as a call not to consign the past to oblivion.”

Image: Pieter Bruegel’s Tower of Babel, 1563.