Will Lady Gaga's Blood & Semen Fragrance Cause Vatican Censure?

If you search the term “blood+semen” today, you will undoubtedly learn that Lady Gaga is working on her first fragrance. The pop star has requested that her 2012-release signature scent in development with Coty,  “smell of blood and semen.”

Before we go gaga over the brilliance of the pop star’s thinking, bloggers write that designer Rad Hourani has already created a fragrance for Six Scents with semen as a key ingredient. The six fragrances are promoted as an intersection of art, socially responsible design and smell.

The image above is from an installation at New York’s New Museum. The Six Scents website has a global list of stores selling their fragrances. Here is America’s.

Andres Serrano | ‘Blood and Semen 1’Andres Serrano’s Blood and Semen Series

It’s likely that Lady Gaga is familiar with the work of Andres Serrano, an American photographer and artist who is notorious — although not to me — for his photos of corpses, as well as his controversial work “Piss Christ”, in which a red-tinged photograph of a crucifix is submerged in what is purported to be the artist’s own urine.

His work has been exhibited at the Episcopal Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York, although I can’t say the controversial image was among those on show. The work “Piss Christ”, created in 1987, sold for $162,000 in December 1999 in London, after an auction estimate of $20,000-30,000.

Andres Serrano | ‘Blood and Semen 2’Serrano’s pictures frequently involve bodily fluids — blood, menstrual blood, and semen. Mettalica used ‘Blood and Semen III” as the cover for the heavy metal band’s ‘Load”.

Andres Serrano | ‘Blood and Semen 3’GQ interviewed Andres Serrano in summer 2010, and the artist explains his interest in photographing guns, and religious inspirations, as well as bodily fluids and dead people. I don’t have the names of these works.

Andres Serrano artistSimmering in the pot of Lady Gaga possibilities is that her new fragrance will make a kind of political statement that includes violence and religion. I’m just following my investigative nose here.

Gaga caused a lot of controversy last summer, releasing Steven Klein’s ‘Alejandro’ video, with its classic Klein imagery of homoeroticism, violence, religion and the strong women.

Klein told MTV that the video wasn’t meant to “denote anything negative, but represents the character’s battle between the dark forces of this world and the spiritual salvation of the Soul. She chooses to be a nun, and the reason her mouth and eyes disappear is because she is withdrawing her senses from the world of evil and going inward toward prayer and contemplation.” via FOX News

Lady Gaga | Alejandro

Coty’s Bernd Beetz told press in November 2010:

“Lady Gaga’s universal appeal makes her a subject of fascination. A force like no other, Lady Gaga is explosive, provocative and sexy, three traits which pave the way for an extraordinary fragrance experience for consumers.”

“We welcome Lady Gaga to the Coty family and look forward to breaking boundaries that will allow people to experience beauty in a different and unique way.”

Lady Gaga’s new scent could be a supremely interesting product launch. It would not surprise me for one moment if it riles holy hell among Catholics and perhaps a censure from the Vatican. Lady Gaga may indeed be playing for blood this time.  Anne