In the late 1980s, Serrano became something of a culture-war star after creating his best-known work, a photograph called “Piss Christ.” The image of a crucifix submerged in Serrano’s urine set off an outcry from conservatives, and Republican senator Jesse Helms eventually spearheaded an effort to prevent the National Endowment for the Arts from supporting work that could be considered “obscene.” In recent years, Serrano said, he has been interested in objects with tainted histories. In his 2019 exhibition The Game: All Things Trump, he collected Donald Trump memorabilia, including items from the former president’s businesses: his casinos, hotels, and Trump University. His 2020 show Infamous focused on racist merchandise that he bought and photographed.
“I always say my work is very simple,” Serrano said, “and I usually find the title that fits it best, whether it be ‘Piss Christ,’ or ‘The Morgue,’ or ‘The Klan.’” His most recent project is his first film, titled Insurrection. Serrano worked with the London art production organization a/political to stitch together historical footage and scenes from the January 6 riot into a kaleidoscopic account of the day. (Serrano debuted the film in Washington, D.C., at the arts organization CulturalDC’s theater, but said he’s currently looking for ways to bring it to a larger audience.)
In conversation, Serrano spoke in extended stretches, occasionally asking and answering his own questions. Why did Epstein eventually give up the Madonna? “I think God told Jeffrey Epstein, Listen, you’ve had the Madonna long enough, it’s time for you to give it to him.”
The details of the transaction are more concrete, if somewhat befuddling. After Serrano’s 1995 purchase went awry, he said that he and Epstein began intermittently meeting in the boardroom at Epstein’s Upper East Side townhouse to discuss the sculpture and other art matters. (He also recited a list of places he hadn’t been: any of Epstein’s homes outside Manhattan, parties, dinners, islands, or planes.) At first, Epstein asked if Serrano needed help with his work or any sponsorship. But “as much as I asked for the Madonna, Jeffrey did not want to part with her,” Serrano said. “It was almost like, if I didn’t want it so bad, he wouldn’t care about the statue.”
Epstein’s web across Manhattan society frequently relied on his proclaimed interests in creative and intellectual pursuits, particularly when it came to the arts and science. He served as a board member at the New York Academy of Art from 1987 to 1994. Maria Farmer told the Times in 2019 that she met Epstein at a gallery show for her graduation from the school. Epstein later sexually assaulted Farmer and her younger sister, Annie, who was 16 at the time. A federal jury recently convicted his longtime companion Ghislaine Maxwell on five of the six charges she faced of facilitating Epstein’s abuse, after a trial in which Annie testified. In 2019, shortly after Epstein’s death, Pivar told Mother Jones that Epstein had been his “best pal for decades” but that he ended their friendship after Maria told him about the assaults. Still, Pivar defended Epstein at various points, claiming that Epstein’s victims were “totally complicit.”
As Epstein insinuated himself into such art circles, he used his collection as a way to prop up his reputation. (As The New York Times recently noted, lawyers for his estate have said in court filings that the estate is paying about $15,000 a month to store it in a temperature-controlled warehouse in Long Island City.) Serrano said that Epstein struck him as a dilettante, asking inane questions and ignoring the answers: “He wasn’t a good collector. He had bad work.” But Epstein seemed to enjoy introducing Serrano and whichever other notables he had on hand to one another. The account echoes experiences recounted in recent years by scientists who knew Epstein. “You’re talking about a sociopath who was only interested in advancing himself monetarily, and every component of his existence was at the destruction of other people,” Steven Hoffenberg, Epstein’s former business partner who in 1997 was sentenced to 20 years in prison for running a $460 million Ponzi scheme, told Vanity Fair in December. “His only interest was how to use other people, their wealth, and their access, in order to advance himself.”
Serrano kept pressing Epstein. He was raised Catholic in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg in the 1950s and retained an intense interest in his faith. “They should be together,” Serrano said of the Madonna and St. John. “I was not gonna rest until I got them both.” He said the news of Epstein’s sexual abuse of underage girls that first emerged in the mid-2000s shocked him, but that later, as he and Epstein continued to meet, “as far as I knew, he resolved it.” In 2013, Serrano traveled to Cuba, where his mother grew up, to shoot. He asked Epstein if he knew a publisher who might be interested in the work, and says Epstein had him over for a meeting with Leon Black, the private equity billionaire who had acquired the art-book publisher Phaidon Press the year prior. Nothing came of it. (Black stepped down as CEO and chairman of Apollo Global Management last year after an investigation that the company commissioned found that Black paid Epstein $158 million for what he claimed was financial advice between 2012 and 2017. In September, Vanity Fair reported that a woman identified in court documents as “Jane Doe” had accused Black of assaulting her in Epstein’s townhouse in 2002. Black strenuously denied the allegations. “This claim is complete fiction and has no basis in fact or law,” a Black spokesperson said in a statement at the time. The Jane Doe allegations were submitted for a judge’s approval for potential inclusion as part of a defamation suit brought by former model Guzel Ganieva after Black publicly denied her claims he had harassed and abused her. Black vehemently denied the claims in Ganieva’s suit as well.)