Piss Christ has always had a lot of controversy surrounding it, within the first two days of the opening exhibition there were two seperate attacks on the artwork, the director of the gallery subsequently closed the exhibition. Below are the two acounts of the attacks of the art work.
The first incident occurred when 51 year old John Allen Haywood took the photograph from the wall and kicked it. Haywood received a one month suspended jail term. After his court appearance he is quoted as saying "You can go so far with taking the piss, you understand....It riles me, it really gets me very upset."1 And when asked what he would say to the artist who's work he damaged, he eloquently replied "I wouldn't like to say nothing to him. I'd just like to punch him on the nose."2
The next day however, two teenagers, aged 18 and 16, were to have considerably more success in their endevour. In an orchestrated attack it was reported one teenager acted as a decoy, kicking a print on the opposite wall which distracted the guards who rushed to subdue him while the other smashed Piss Christ about 8 times with a hammer. When the guards overpowered the perpetrator the hammer fell and struck a security guard on the knee.
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