Shock Art
...system and otherwise left alone. The art is looked at in the same way that passersby turn to see an awful car crash. It’s nteresting and hard to ignore, but to most, it is seen as immoral or sinful to take the time to contemplate the work and the concept behind it’s appearance. I am talking about work such as that of Robert Mapelthorpe, Andres Serrano, Merry Aplern or Joel-Peter Witkin. Pierre Molinier, and even the most contemporary photographers in the same vein: Terry Richardson or John Waters. By creating images of love and sex, fashion and food, fetish, death, subcultures and the secret lives of people, these artists are prime examples of those producing such ‘atrocities.’ Artists have been publicly displaying explicit images for centuries. Manet, for example, presented his Olympia to the Salon in 1863. A woman stripped of her clothing is shown enticingly posed across a table, while the empty gaze toward the viewer clearly describes that of a prostitute’s. She is adorned in jewelry, and being presented with a bouquet of flowers by a black maid. Never before had such a thing graced the walls of the salon, and it was seen as a distasteful, open-arm welcome to the widespread outbreak of prostitution and a new modern Paris that upset artists, critics and it’s audiences alike. Nonetheless, Manet was the spark that lit the fire under artists who wished to comment on the same sort of issues they saw in front of them, and inevitably, the art world had to stretch and conform to the work that started pouring in. It was just a matter of time before a change in what was considered acceptable took place. The controversy, over time, has been dilluted, and Manet’s painting is now just a marker in art history’s ever-growing timeline. Although I’d quickly like to get onto my thoughts about photographic sensationalism, I think it is neccessary to mention the recent show at the Brooklyn Museum of Art show entitled Sensation that featured a group of boundary-pushing youn...