Lucy Lippard in Art in America, April 1990:

Like the [American Family Association], Serrano is obsessed with the flesh and bone of belief, but unlike them he deconstructs and destroys his own faith. Organized religion gives him a lot of trouble, though he remains a believer. He left the church at age 13—"There must be some conflict between Catholicism and puberty"—but like many lapsed Catholics, Serrano finds childhood experiences and conditioning hard to exorcise. He says his work is informed by "unresolved feelings about my own Catholic upbringing which help me redefine and personalize my relationship with God. For me, art is a moral and spiritual obligation that cuts across all manner of pretense and speaks directly to the soul."

Serrano produces objects of great and seductive beauty which address some of the weightiest subject matter available to Western artists. He does so in the oblique—abstract and conceptual—terms of current art practice, while maintaining a uniquely high emotional temperature. Piss Christ—the object of censorial furor—is a darkly beautiful photographic image which would have raised no hackles had the title not given away the process of its making. The small wood-and-plastic crucifix becomes virtually monumental as it floats, photographically enlarged, in a deep golden, rosy glow that is both ominous and glorious. The bubbles wafting across the surface suggest a nebula. Yet the work's title, which is crucial to the enterprise, transforms the easily digestible cultural icon into a sign of rebellion or an object of disgust simply by changing the context in which it is seen....

Since late 1986 Serrano's art has literally been made from body fluids—"life's vital fluids"—which he sees as "visually and symbolically charged with meaning." Many of his recent works are entirely abstract, but in different "styles"—minimalist, geometric, monochromatic or "expressionist." The looming Blood Cross (blood in a cross-shaped Plexiglas container, made on Good Friday to symbolize "what the crucifixion and Christianity are all about—sacrifice") also mixes references to the healing power of the Red Cross and to the brutal history of Catholicism in this hemisphere. Its companion, Milk Cross, refers to the beneficent, maternal side of the Church or to the contained and lily-white "purity" of Western religious institutions. Two Hearts (1986)—large calves' hearts in a Plexiglas tank half filled with blood—was a transitional work in which the liquid tides began to rise.

Milk, Blood (1986), the first wholly abstract work, was influenced as much by "art symbolism" (Mondrian, Malevich) as by religious symbolism. It first appears to be a painting divided equally into red and white rectangles. It is in fact, as indicated by the title, a photo of two Plexiglas tanks holding red and white fluids. There is a perceptible tension between the "hard" flatness of the photographic object and the "soft" liquid presence of the subjects. This work was followed in 1987 by two monochromes—Blood and Milk—and the geometric Circle of Blood.

In 1988, Serrano decided that he needed a new color in his palette. "Piss was the natural choice." It offered a peculiarly dense luminosity, and being less "acceptable" than blood and milk, raised the ante on content. Blood poured into a tankful of urine (the "Piss and Blood" series of 1988) produced gorgeous sunsetlike veils. Other pouring experiments produced apocalyptic "landscapes" and even shadowy figures. Winged Victory (1988) represents an accidental and transient shape produced not by the classic sculpture but by a broken crucifix minus head and torso. The pouring of milk into blood, blood into milk, and juxtaposition of blood against milk, blend [sic] ideas of nourishment and pain in a single image.

Scale is Serrano's particular genius. The forms in his photographs exist in a vast, ambiguous space. Backlighting is judiciously used to enlarge them, pushing the objects photographed to the front of the picture plane. He minimizes quantity while emphasizing quality of detail, bypasses the anecdotal element inherent in his subject and achieves a monumental simplicity. The power of his photographs has several sources: formal clarity, an aura of understated but nightmarish unfamiliarity, a subdued but important connection to his multiracial, multicultural background and always the ambivalence about Catholicism as a symbol of authority which is (literally) the crux of the matter....

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