Untitled VII (Ejaculate in Trajectory)

Andres Serrano's works are known for their provocation and ethereal beauty. His subjects have included many that mesh the corporeal with the spiritual, including animal carcasses, bodily fluids, the homeless, the Catholic Church, the Ku Klux Klan, dead bodies in morgues, and sexual practices. Clearly meant to evoke a profound emotional response in the viewer, his subjects take up hot-button issues of race, religion, and sex in an overtly aesthetic manner. In 1989-the year of Untitled VII- Serrano's works, and specifically his Piss Christ (an image of Christ seen submerged through a glowing gold haze of urine), attracted the ire of the US Senate and, along with works by photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, were the focus of a debate on federal funding of the arts.

The AMAM photograph-one of three by the artist in the museum's collection- seems at first glance perhaps to be an extruded metal bar; it is in fact the artist's semen, taken with the use of a motor drive and a black background while the artist masturbated. Although his works tend to put the lie to the idea of bodily fluids as repellent and dangerous, Serrano acknowledged in 1989 that in his semen series, the works "in the age of AIDS could and do refer to sexuality and AIDS," but stated that they were autoerotic, as opposed to homoerotic: "The only possible reference to homoeroticism, I think, is that in the age of AIDS, male sexuality is thought of in homosexual terms."