I went to Lourdes when I was maybe ten or eleven and was astonished by the sheer volume of crappy stalls and gift shops selling plastic Jesus figurines, ceramic Marys etc. Sometimes I think I imagined it, but apparently that is exactly what it's like.
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Immersion (Piss Christ) is a 1987 photograph by the American artist and photographer Andres Serrano. It depicts a small plastic crucifix submerged in a small glass tank of the artist's urine... Sister Wendy Beckett, an art critic and Catholic nun, stated in a television interview with Bill Moyers that she regarded the work as not blasphemous but a statement on "this is what we are doing to Christ."
It doesn't have quite the same effect though, does it? It's Benjamin's aura. There's a power to a Michelangelo that you don't get from a bargain bin.In some sense it's tacky and there's factories churning out millions of these things but if the icon is just an interface between the sacred and the profane it doesn't really matter if it's not carved of solid marble by Michealangelo