America is a difficult topic all together. The relationship is tumultuous. The feelings extreme: It can be love and at the same time, it can be hatred. America has produced the best and the worst. So how to go about “Portraits of America”? Is the plate full or empty, half-full or half-empty? Musée Maillol gives an answer to this arduous question with a large retrospective of the works of Andres Serrano. Not the simplest of photographers. Some of his pieces have been debated at length in the US Senate as being blasphemy, no less. The “artist with a camera”, as he calls himself, has relentlessly shown us what today’s America is when it comes to religion, sex, death, politics, poverty, violence. The result is provocative, disturbing and straight in your face. From a gallery of large portraits of first-nation Americans to the homeless, to the members of the Ku-Klux-Klan, to Donald Trump himself. We get the full plate! Some of the photographs cannot be shown here. Serrano pushed the envelope to the point where some of his work has been vandalized in previous exhibitions. But isn’t that the role of the artist? to hold a mirror in front of your face and help you think about what it returns? In any case, this exhibit cannot leave you indifferent and the steep contrast with the Maillol sculptures is another topic of discussion.
