From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Related e

Wikipedia Wiktionary Shop Featured: Rhombicuboctahedron by Leonardo da Vinci

Shock art is art that utilizes disturbing imagery, sound or scents to create a shocking experience. 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, Reason magazine's 2007 review of The Art Newspaper suggested 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 Academy curator Norman Rosenthal noted in the catalog for the "shock art" exhibit Sensation in 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 the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, encroachment on the taboo has led the Ministry of Culture to attempt a crackdown on the artform, banning the use of corpses or body parts in art.

Select notable examples

• 12 Square Meters, a 1994 performance art display by Zhang Huan in Beijing wherein Huan "lathered his nude body in honey and fish oil" and exposed himself to "swarming flies and insects".
• Fountain, a urinal placed on exhibit by Marcel Duchamp, a pioneer of the form, in 1917.

In 2004, Fountain was selected in a survey of 500 artists and critics as "the most influential work of modern art".

• Helena: The Goldfish Blender, a 2000 display of live goldfish in blenders which viewers were invited to turn on, by Marco Evaristti.
• The Holy Virgin Mary, a black Virgin Mary, with elephant dung, before a background of pornography, by Chris Ofili.
• Merda d’Artis-ta (1961), a series of 40 tin cans allegedly filled with the excrement of artist Piero Manzoni which have been displayed in the collections of Tate, Pompidou and New York City's Museum of Modern Art.
• Myra, (1997) a portrait of murderer Myra Hindley constructed of children's handprints, by Marcus Harvey.
• Orgies of Mystery Theatre, by Herman Nitsch, a display of music and dance in the midst of "dismembered animal corpses", at 1966's Destruction in Art Symposium.

See also

• Jake and Dinos Chapman
• Gottfried Helnwein
• Damien Hirst
• Robert Mapplethorpe
• Andres Serrano
• Kara Walker