Art is a form of expression that evokes emotions, emotions that are often hard to express through words. Art often appeals to the human mind and soul, but some take a different stand. Art doesn’t appear appealing and aesthetic but now has become a means to start a necessary dialogue beyond linguistic boundaries. Testing the freedom of creativity and expression, specific artworks that are radical and thought-provoking have met with public disdain and censorship, which ironically boosted their popularity in the world. The following artworks discussed would be some controversial pieces, each dealing with and eliciting emotions that often reflect the artists’ perspective and the society they view. Well, what is art without some criticism to glorify it?
Fountain – Marcel Duchamp | Controversial Artwork
Often considered as the piece that started the Dadaism movement, the Fountain, when viewed, is simply a standard urinal, laid on its back and signed R. Mutt 1917, a pseudonym that Marcel Duchamp used when anonymously submitting the piece to an un-juried exhibition held by the Society of Independent Artists in New York. Though the organisers rejected the work, Duchamp had it photographed by Steiglitz and published it in the ‘Blind Man’, an avant-garde magazine formed by Duchamp and his friends. There was no canvas, there was no paint, there was nothing traditional, and there was no hint of what the art world had considered as Art in the Fountain. Thus this radical idea sparked dialogue, questioning whether this could even be considered an art or a hoax. But by doing so, Duchamp laid down the foundation of Conceptual Art, addressing that the concept behind the art was more important than the thing itself. Today this piece, which poked fun at the art world with its provocative and controversial art, has become a source of inspiration and provocation for many young artists.
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon – Pablo Picasso
Being one of Picassos’ prominent works where he began abandoning the idealised and traditional form of art, the painting consisted of five nude women, represented in unusual forms, from a brothel in Barcelona. The painting shocked the viewers with its distinctive faces that resembled African masks, angular and distorted bodies, with unladylike and exaggerated features and piercing gazes looking into the viewers. Due to these reasons, it was not happily welcomed in Paris. After the exhibition in Paris, the piece was left forgotten for years in Picassos’ studio but returned in the 1920s and is currently housed in the Museum of Modern Arts in New York. Despite the horrific reactions the painting incited, it made an impression so great that it sparked the Cubist movement.
Piss Christ – Andres Serrano | Controversial Artwork
From not a peep into this piece in 1987 to a media frenzy in 1989, exhibited in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Piss Christ was a controversial piece for its involvement of a religious article in a not-so-religious medium. The piece is a photograph of a crucifix submerged in a yellow liquid, which by no surprise from the title, was the artist’s urine. It received various criticisms, calling it blasphemous and obscene. However, what Serrano intended to deliver through this piece was the human state, the suffering and the repulsive state that Christ was on the cross for three days. Through this piece, Serrano confronts the profanity in the sanctity of the Crucifix, stating that it is a religious article that’s losing its significance. If this piece upsets someone, then the meaning of the Crucifix to the individual needs to be contemplated.
Tilted Arc – Richard Serres
In Foley Federal Plaza of 1979, an unfinished rust-covered, corten steel plate was 120 feet long and 12 feet high. The artists designed and placed it so people could pause and take in their surroundings. Unfortunately, people paused only to consider it ugly, overwhelming and depressing; they had to go out of their way to move past it, which was Serras point that people perceive space in a different approach to the environment. As the public outrage grew, people started calling it the Berlin Wall of Federal Plaza; New York Times described it as the ugliest public artwork in the city and 1985, a trial was held to remove the Tilted Arc and after four years, and in 1989, the sculpture was removed. It was cut down into three pieces and stored in a Maryland storage space. The Tilted Arc remains a controversial piece that sparks the discourse about Public Art and its functions dwelling amid society.
The Holy Virgin Mary – Chris Ofili | Controversial Artwork
The Holy Virgin Mary is a piece that consists of black women depicting the Virgin Mary, surrounded in gold (referencing the Byzantine era’s iconography) and female buttocks cut-outs from magazines. This wasn’t the controversial move, but the two balls of elephant cow dung upon which the piece rests (inscribed ‘Virgin’ and ‘Mary’ in glittering letters) and elephant dung that lay on one bare breast revealing from the blue attire Virgin Mary dawns in the painting. Ofili’s piece, using wit and religion, aimed to suggest to the audience (predominantly white audience) that black women are racially stereotyped and sexually viewed. He claims that compared to the other imageries of the Virgin Mary, his is simply a hip-hop version. He also challenges the claims of Mary’s ethnicity being Middle Eastern, which he depicts dramatically with the enlarged features and colour of her face. Despite backlash and opposition from the public, the work has been exhibited in the Brooklyn Museum of Art since 1999.
Myra – Marcus Harvey
This controversial piece deals with the notoriously famous serial killer Myra Hindley, who, along with Ian Bradley, sexually assaulted and murdered five children during the 1960s. The work is a black and white mugshot portrait of Myra, made up of children’s handprints depicting the innocence of her victims and the horrors that the face they constructed struck them. Upon its showcase in the Sensation exhibition, the public outrage grew so much that various organisations, along with one of the victims’ mothers, protested outside the Burlington House of the Royal Academy to remove the work. Windows were smashed, and eggs and ink were thrown at the painting, damaging the sensational piece. The opposition even came from Myra Hindley herself, pleading for its removal. Despite the outcry, the piece was removed, restored and re-exhibited, protected by Perspex and guarded by security.
The Physical Impossibility of Death in the mind of someone Living – Damien Hirst
Damien Hirst is known for his work that challenges the notions of science, art and religion. He taps into the emotions of human experience, often left untouched or unapproachable due to the difficulty of accepting morality in specific life experiences, all done in surprising and abnormal ways. The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living is a sensational work where a shark is suspended and preserved in a transparent tank submerged in 4,360 gallons of formaldehyde. The shark represents death but frozen in time, isolated from its natural habitat, a creature that incites fear, lies still in front yet does not fail to produce the fear and eerie essence in the piece. The original shark was also replaced due to decay (which also speaks of how the piece represents the process of death in slow motion) and was met with criticism for replacement. Hirst also faced criticism because the real art was the work of a team with him rather than him alone.
Do women need to be naked to get into the Met? – Guerrilla Girls | Controversial Artwork
Museums and galleries weren’t the only spaces that showcased art. Billboards and buses were an approachable alternative too, which is what the Guerilla Girls did when in 1989, the Public Art Fund commissioned them to design a billboard. The Guerilla Girls were a collective of artists representing feminist views in the art world, wearing, just as their name suggests, Gorilla Masks. The group’s design was a conclusion of their visit to the Met Museum, in which they compared the number of female artists represented and the number of naked female bodies in the artworks on display. Thus came the title, ‘Do women need to be naked to get into the Met?’. Ultimately the design was rejected by the Public Art Fund, stating ‘lack of clarity’, and that is when the New York buses seemed like a better alternative than the museum walls in spreading their message and what better way to get the public talking about this issue than a nude female figure (the nude figure is from French Artist Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres’s painting Grande Odalisque), unsurprisingly wearing a Gorilla Mask. The bold and eye-catching graphic of the piece with flashy colours that highlight the image made an impression about the lack of gender diversity in the art world.
Dropping of Han Dynasty Urn – Ai Weiwei
Destroying precious and historical artefacts that have had cultural and symbolic significance in this day and age is often considered a treacherous act. One such act was the Dropping of the Han Urn Dynasty by Ai Weiwei, which involved a triptych (3 images) of the process of Ai dropping the Urn. This act came with public outrage as the Urn was an important historical artefact, though destroying it had more moral reasons than the value of the Urn itself. The Han Urn was a representation of the Mao regime, and Ai wanted to remind the public about the evils that had been inflicted during the Communist regime, cleverly responding to the backlash by saying what General Mao used to say– ‘The only way of building a new world is by destroying the old one. Besides the act being against Fascism, it was also to depict how in the modern day, historical artefacts are left devastated in the aftermath of unchecked modernisation.
Erased de Kooning Drawing – Robert Rauschenberg | Controversial Artwork
As the name suggests, the piece encounters the erasure of one of De Koonings’ works, one of the greatest artists from the Abstract Expressionism Movement. Rauschenberg convinced De Kooning to give one of his paintings, to which De Kooning agreed, ending up giving a work done in charcoal, oil paint, pencil and crayon, which would be difficult to undo. After weeks of erasing, when the Erased de Kooning Drawing was presented, it met with negative criticism, which critics considered an attack on the abstract expressionism movement. Despite its opposition, the piece had a symbolic force, depicting
as though Rauschenberg was erasing the very artistic identity of De Kooning to create his own out of it. It was considered one of the destructive acts akin to Dadaism, where traditional ideas were often challenged in unusual ways.
References:
Folland, D.T. (no date) Robert Rauschenberg, erased De Kooning Drawing (article), Khan Academy. Khan Academy. [online].Available at: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-1010/post-war-american-art/new-york-school/a/robert-rauschenberg-erased-de-kooning-drawing (Accessed: November 19, 2022).
Guerrilla Girls (no date) Do Women Have To Be Naked To Get Into the Met. Museum?, Metmuseum.org. [online]. Available at: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/849438#:~:text=In%201989%2C%20the%20Public%20Art,public%2C%20to%20design%20a%20billboard. (Accessed: November 19, 2022).
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Philadelphia Museum of Art (2017) Marcel Duchamp and the Fountain Scandal, Marcel Duchamp and the fountain scandal. [online]. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Available at: https://press.philamuseum.org/marcel-duchamp-and-the-fountain-scandal/ (Accessed: November 18, 2022).
Publicdelivery (2022) Why did Ai Weiwei break this million-Dollar Han dynasty vase?, – Public Delivery. [online]. Available at: https://publicdelivery.org/ai-weiwei-dropping-a-han-dynasty-urn/ (Accessed: November 19, 2022).
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Vile or visionary?: 11 art controversies of the last four centuries (no date) Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. [online]. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/list/vile-or-visionary-11-art-controversies-of-the-last-four-centuries (Accessed: November 17, 2022).
What was so great about Marcel Duchamp’s fountain? (2022) TheCollector. [online]. Available at: https://www.thecollector.com/what-was-great-about-marcel-duchamp-fountain/ (Accessed: November 19, 2022).
Willis, J. (2022) What is controversial Art & why it is important + a look at Therese Dreaming, Carter Art. Carter Art. [online]. Available at: https://www.carterart.art/article/what-is-controversial-art-why-it-is-important-a-look-at-therese-dreaming (Accessed: November 19, 2022).
