Body fluids in art

An occasional trend in contemporary art is to use body fluids as a medium in art. Examples include:

Artist	Title	Year	Description	Feces	Urine	Blood	Vomit	Semen	Other
Piero Manzoni	Artist's Shit (Italian: "Merda d'artista")	1961	Canned and sold 90 cans of his own excrement to be sold for their weight in gold
Keith Arnatt	Artist's Piss	1970	Photographs of the artist's urine on the ground
Andy Warhol	Oxidations series	1977	Invited friends to urinate onto a canvas of metallic copper pigments, so that the uric acid would oxidize into abstract patterns.
Elito Circa	Love and Life artwork series, A Thousand and One Lives and Pacquiao Hearted Fist	1982	He incorporates some strands of his hairs in his painting and signing his drawing using his own blood to authenticate the artworks and later explore and experiment it as a medium in paintings.						Human Hair
Andres Serrano	Piss Christ and various other works	1987	Piss Christ, a controversial photograph of a crucifix submerged in urine Various other photos featuring the use of urine, feces, blood, semen and human milk						Human milk
Marc Quinn	Self	1991, recast 1996	A frozen cast of the artist's head made entirely of his own blood
Noritoshi Hirakawa	The Home-Coming of Navel Strings	2004	An installation for the 2004 London Frieze Art Fair, which consisted of a young woman who read a novel by Philip Pullman and defecated next to her chair every morning
Helen Chadwick	Piss Flowers	1991–92	Twelve white-enameled bronzes cast from cavities made by urinating in snow (though this might not be characterized as the use of bodily fluids in art, just their use in preparation)
Lennie Lee		1990	Performances involving feces, blood and vomit
Chris Ofili	Various paintings	1992	Paintings using of elephant dung
Hermann Nitsch	Das Orgien Mysterien Theater	1962–1998	Uses urine, feces, blood and more in their ritual performances
Franko B		1990	Blood letting performances
James R Ford	Bogey Ball	2002–2004							Dried nasal mucus
Phil Hansen	The Value of Blood	2006	Using 500 millilitres (18 imp fl oz; 17 US fl oz) of his own blood, Hansen to draw a portrait of Kim Jong-il on 6,000 bandages
Jordan Eagles			Exhibiting in New York City and Chicago galleries, the artists encases cow blood in clear layers of synthetic resin for a few years
Fox Bronte		2012	Made videos using feces, blood, vomit and semen to make art. In 2012, he asked his audience to send him their pubic hairs, where he made a portrait of Canadian singer Justin Bieber. He avoids censorship by using humour in his work.						pubic hair
Pete Doherty			Painted with blood.
Marcel Duchamp	Paysage fautif ("Faulty Landscape")	1946
Millie Brown (Artist)	Vomit Artist	2004–present	Vomits onto canvas' after drinking food colored soya milk

Criticism and difficulties

Depicting objects of popular respect (religious subjects, flags, etc.) in art which includes body fluids can trigger public protests due to such material's historic association with dirtiness. The outcry about the Piss Christ photo is an example.

In addition to the obvious difficulties of preserving perishable material, there can be regulations complicating transport by rail, truck, or aircraft of liquid body fluids due to the fluids' possible classification as dangerous goods. Postal or transportation-security authorities might consider blood, spittle, excrement, etc., to be bio-hazardous substances.

The sale of blood art via eBay is prohibited as eBay prohibits the sale of body parts, and classifies blood art as falling under this heading.

See also

• New materials in 20th-century art