Shock art

Fountain(1917), byMarcel Duchamp,a "shock art pioneer."

Shock artiscontemporary artthat incorporates disturbing imagery, sound or scents to create a shocking experience. It is a way to disturb "smug, complacent and hypocritical" people.While the art form's proponents argue that it is "imbedded with social commentary" and critics dismiss it as "cultural pollution", it is an increasingly marketable art, described by one art critic in 2001 as "the safest kind of art that an artist can go into the business of making today".But while shock art may attract curators and make headlines,Reasonmagazine's 2007 review ofThe Art Newspapersuggested that traditional art shows continue to have more popular appeal.

History

While the movement has become increasingly mainstream, the roots of shock art run deep into art history;Royal AcademycuratorNorman Rosenthalnoted in the catalog for the "shock art" exhibitionSensationin 1997 that artists have always been in the business of conquering "territory that hitherto has been taboo".In China, which experienced an active "shock art" movement following theTiananmen Square protests of 1989,encroachment on the taboo has led theMinistry of Cultureto attempt a crackdown on the artform,banning the use of corpses or body parts in art.

Similarly, philosopherStephen Hicksdescribes shock art as the inevitable conclusion of trends initiated in the late 19th-centurymodernist art movement.Traditionally, art was usually intended to be a representation of reality and a celebration of human or natural beauty, but by the late 1800s modernists began questioning the boundaries of what constituted art. "[T]he first modernists of the late 1800s set themselves systematically to the project of isolating all the elements of art and eliminating them or flying in the face of them," often by portraying the world as "fractured, decaying, horrifying, depressing, empty, and ultimately unintelligible." The "grand-daddy" of this trend wasMarcel Duchampwith his 1916 workFountain,aurinalhe signed and submitted to an art show. Similar works that broke with past aesthetic traditions includedEdvard Munch'sThe Scream(1893) orPablo Picasso'sLes Demoiselles d'Avignon(1907). A parallel trend was "reductionism": emphasizing the basic elements of art such as colors or shapes, often in a manner that minimizes the need for artistic skill. Hicks citesWhite on White(1918) byKazimir Malevich.A subsequent trend was using art as ironic or kitschy commentary: "if traditionally the art object is a special and unique artifact, then we can eliminate the art object's special status by making art works that are reproductions of excruciatingly ordinary objects", as withAndy Warhol's factory producedsilk screensof consumer products. With a shift to post-modernist art in the 1970s and '80s, a preoccupation with politics, sex and scatology appears as withPiss Christ(1987) byAndres Serrano,and the performance art/punk rock musicianGG Allinwho became notorious for defecating on stage. "[W]e have reached a dead end: From Duchamp'sPiss on artat the beginning of the century to Allin'sShit on you at the end—that is not a significant development over the course of a century. "

In 1998, John Windsor inThe Independentsaid that the work of theYoung British Artistsseemed tame compared with that of the "shock art" of the 1970s, including "kinky outrages" at theNicholas TreadwellGallery, amongst which were a "hanging, anatomically detailed leather straitjacket, complete with genitals", titledPink Crucifixion,by Mandy Havers.

In the United States in 2008, a court case went to trial to determine whether thefetishfilms ofIra Isaacsconstitute shock art, as the director claims, orunlawful obscenity.

Select notable examples

• Fountain,aurinalplaced on exhibit byMarcel Duchamp,a pioneer of the form, in 1917.In 2004,Fountainwas selected in a survey of 500 artists and critics as "the most influential work of modern art".
• Artist's Shit,a 1961 artwork byPiero Manzoni,consists of 90 tin cans, each reportedly filled with 30 grams (1.1 oz) of Manzoni's faeces. A tin was sold for€124,000 atSotheby'son May 23, 2007,and tin 54 was sold at Christies for £182,500 on October 16, 2015.
• Orgies of Mystery Theatre,byHermann Nitsch,a display of music and dance in the midst of "dismembered animal corpses", at 1966'sDestruction in Art Symposium.
• Shoot,a 1971 performance piece byChris Burdenin which a friend shot him in the arm with a.22 calibre gun from a distance of 3.5 metres (11 ft).
• The Dinner Party,a 1979 exhibit byJudy Chicagoin which table place settings are set as for a dinner party of famous women. The piece was controversial and labeled shock art because of its inclusion of iconic "butterflies" at each setting representative of thevulva.
• Piss Christ,1987, byAndres Serranoa photograph of a crucifix submerged in the artist's own urine.
• ArtistRick Gibsonmade a pair ofearringswith freeze-dried humanfetuses(Human Earrings,1987),and ate a humantesticle(A Cannibal in Vancouver,1989)and proposed to make a diptych with a squashed rat (Sniffy the Rat,1990).
• The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living(1991), a deadtiger sharkpreserved in a glass and steel tank offormaldehydebyDamien Hirsthas been grouped in the category of shock art,but also criticised as an unoriginal product of "shock tactics" and not "real art".
• 12 Square Meters,a 1994performance artdisplay byZhang HuaninBeijingwherein Huan "lathered his nude body in honey and fish oil" and exposed himself to "swarming flies and insects".
• In 1996,Gottfried Helnweinpainted theAdoration of the Magiwith Adolf Hitler as Baby Jesus,which was displayed at the StateRussian MuseumSaint Petersburg, theLegion of Honor,Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco,Denver Art Museum,Museum Ludwigand others.
• Myra(1995), a portrait of murdererMyra Hindleyconstructed of children's handprints, byMarcus Harvey.
• The Holy Virgin Mary,a blackVirgin Mary,with elephant dung, before a background of pornography, byChris Ofili.
• My Bed,a 1998 work byTracey Eminconsisting of the artist's bed covered with soiled bedsheets and surrounded by debris including menstrual-stained underwear.
• Helena:The Goldfish Blender,a 2000 display of live goldfish in blenders which viewers were invited to turn on, byMarco Evaristti.
• Fucking Hell,a 2008 sculpture byJake and Dinos Chapmanfeaturing nine nightmarish landscapes displaying thousands of hand-painted castminiature figuresofNazis.
• In 2007,Mark McGowanate acorgiin London to protestfox huntingbyPrince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
• In 2008, during the elections for the US presidency, the artist Apollo Braun put on display in his then art gallery in New York City a t-shirt bearing the slogan "Who killed Obama?" and later on, a t-shirt bearing the slogan "Obama is my slave". The two of them shocked the public and brought death threats to the artist.
• Forget Me Knot: In 2012,Sruli Rechtdocumented a one off surgery/performance during which a plastic surgeon removed a 110mm x 10mm strip of skin from his abdomen while he was awake. The piece of skin with the hair still attached was tanned and mounted to a 24kt gold ring.

See also

• New Gothic
• Shock rock
• Transgressive art
• Viennese Actionism
• Violence in art

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• Günter Brus
• Joan Cornellà
• Rick Gibson
• Mary Kelly
• Robert Mapplethorpe
• Jonathan Meese
• Neck Face
• Raymond Pettibon
• Pierre Pinoncelli
• Dash Snow
• Tal R
• Abdul Vas
• Kara Walker
• Joel-Peter Witkin

External links

• Shock art show opens.BBC.
• Shock of the nude: the artistic license to offendPartial Observer
• In Flagrante: Shock Art and Dirty Politics"American Repertory Theater"
• Shock art with horror for all to enjoyThe Guardian
• Bloodied but unbowedThe Sunday Times
• "Artists have rights, and so do taxpayers"byMargaret O'Brien Steinfels,The New York Times,25 September 1999
• "Shock Art: Round Up the Usual Defenses"byJudith Shulevitz,The New York Times,23 March 2003