For Friday, July 23rd, please read and post a response to the following:
- Introduction & Chapter 1: “Everybody Hates a Tourist,” in Aftershock: The Ethics of Contemporary Transgressive Art (available on Blackboard).
Your blog response must be posted by class start time on Friday, July 23rd! You can write about anything that takes your attention or raises questions. I’m more interested in quality than quantity – so be sure to thoughtfully engage with the text.
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Eric Vahouny
evahouny@gmu.edu
First and foremost I want to say that the class field trip on Wednesday to the Torpedo Factory and National Harbor was an enlightening experience for me both as a student and an artist. From the standpoint of a student I learned that transgressive art is something of a boundary breaker or pusher; something that not only bends the line but at times twists it as well. From the standpoint of an artist, viewing Rosemary Covey’s work I get a sense of death and/or dishonor that creates the more black and white world which we sometime live. Her ‘STD’ piece very much reminded me of the devil that lies within. That secret keeper of knowledge and lies that we try to hide but never seem to keep invisible. As an artist, we try to make that invisible, visible, to Others. At the National Harbor exhibit I got more a sense of new age art and pop art that ha seemed to flood the art world in recent years. The young lady who gave us the tour talked about this as well as the modern renaissance woman being projected in most of these works. I loved the Brazilian artists work for it touched a place inside of me of loneliness and sensuality that I have not explored for some time now.
Secondly, the reading. I seem to enjoy exploring the idea that transgression brings in “interrogating conservative views and subvert[ing] conventional moral beliefs.” It seems as if without transgression of one kind or another artistic creation would cease to exist. Whether it be rational or irrational work, transgression seems to deal with social taboos and psycho-pathological repressions in one’s mind. I also enjoy the idea that transgression is a war against people’s disinterest of the matter. I think this tackles the idea of ‘different strokes for different folks’ and the fact that the American way has been one of exploration of the beauty of different taste and many eyes of beholder. On page 10 of the introduction I read “There is a subtle but not imperceptible shift in [the] analysis from the description of a situation in contemporary art practice to the prescription of how we ‘ought’ to experience such a situation.” When I read this I think of others telling me how I should think and/or feel as a result of someone else’s actions or words. This knowledge is comforting in the sense that the no matter what others try to make me think or feel, at the end of the day it is only my opinions, thoughts, and feelings that matter. Not to belittle what others feel, but if others want to try and push thoughts onto me that I am not ready or do not want to hear, I have the freedom to be ‘deaf’ or ‘dumb’ to them, so to speak.
Finally, I wanted to say that I resonated with Curtis Brown’s statement on page 28 of the text that reads, art objects “should be studied and appreciated as objects in their own right, without regard to the causes of their production, their historical context, their effects on a an audience, or even their relation to the (rest of the) real world, and, moreover that the contemplation or study of artworks should appeal ‘only’ to some of the properties of the artwork, namely, its aesthetic properties – as opposed especially to its moral properties…”.
Thank you.
I love this class so far! I didn’t expect it to catch my interest as much as it has, and I was kind of dreading returning to campus after a grueling Spring semester, but I realize now how much the subject matter relates to my interests and my current career. I’ve really enjoyed it so far……even the readings were really engaging for me.
First of all, f**k Kant. (I know this is a transgressive course, but the post has to be approved….hence the stars.) He and I just have too many fundamental disagreements where human behavior is concerned. His whole theory on abandoning desire is ridiculous to me. I believe desire is a part of human nature, and it’s not a black and white concept. He argues that “it is impossible to render beautiful that which excites disgust.” However, in countering his ideologies, there is that “fine line” that exists between pleasure and pain, and even neuroscience supports this. I feel that Kant is being awfully arrogant in assuming what each individual will consider as beautiful. What excites disgust in one may be beautiful to another, and one may find beauty in the same thing that he or she finds disgusting. With this idea, I think of sexual fetishes. I read a book sometime last year called “The Other Side of Desire” that included four different biographical accounts of people who were aroused by things that are labeled in our society as non-sexual or taboo. There was a story of a man with a foot fetish, another man with an amputee fetish, a pedophile, and one about a woman who was deeply into BDSM culture. As obscure and sometimes disturbing as these stories were, it was somewhat enlightening to gain a better understanding of the many facets of desire. While I like some of the ideas Kant mentions in Chapter One about how we should treat others in what he considers a humanitarian way, he doesn’t consider how the values of others may differ from his own, and he ignores the individuality that exists within the concept of desire and how each and every one of us perceives beauty differently. I don’t like when anyone tells me how I should feel, as Kant does with shame and guilt, and his assumption that his values are universal makes me feel that he is imposing his own conditioned beliefs on me. I really like and agree with the quote in the introduction that says it is “not possible to impose a universal moral imperative that applies to all equally.”
Georges Bataille claims that the threats from transgressive art are directed at the audience, and it is the viewer who is meant to be affected by violation of whatever taboo is being expressed in the art. This was something that was touched on when we visited Art Whino. When someone asked about the titles of the pieces, Shannon mentioned that they were often purposely left ambiguous so that the person looking at the art could interpret it for his or herself. Personally, if I were the artist with a piece on display, I think I would be pretty blunt about my intent….I think I prefer transgressive artists who are more bold in their statements. I don’t know how I would feel about people interpreting my expressions in ways I didn’t intend. I’ve noticed that most of the transgressive art we’ve seen so far is at one extreme or the other….either the artists are very direct with their messages or they leave it completely ambiguous.
The reading also touched on the fact that the draw to transgressive art comes from our own repressed desires. “Thanks to transgressive art practices, we can experience excess, and identify with possibilities of life liberated from all social constraints and moral judgment, at an acceptable imaginative distance.” The “acceptable imaginative distance” mentioned here is what really interests me. Chapter one, specifically where Martha Nussbaum is mentioned, eludes to the fact that we are all abnormal or imperfect in one way or another, but the expectations we’ve set for ourselves as a society have made it taboo to let any of these transgressions from the “average” show outwardly. In this sense, transgressive art serves as an outlet both for the artists and their viewers for the many parts of our identities that we are forced not to disclose.
I really appreciate that you have a different view from just what people tell you. It shows you really think about what you see and make your own judgments about art; I’m not quite that far yet. When you talked about some artists leaving their works without titles it made me think of the pictures at Art Whino of the people with very tiny faces. When I looked at the pictures they made me feel sad the people looked so pitiful, but when I read the titles it totally changed everything. The titles were things like caged but safe which I found comfort in. So a title or an explanation of a piece of art can really change everything.
Coming into this class, I had no idea what transgressive art really meant. I just thought about it as paintings that were out of the ordinary mainstream art that we see at galleries. I had no idea that it could include such art as performance art, sculptures, or basically anything that an artist deemed as art. In our class on Monday, the videos that we saw and the discussion that we had blew my mind. I had no idea that such things existed. The one video that really disturbed me was the one from Paul McCarthy. Watching that performance video was disturbing to say the least, but at the same time, it reinforced the idea that transgressive art can be made to at first shock the viewer then allow the viewer to gain a more in depth exploration of what the art really means. The one video that I could understand more as transgressive art was Orlan’s plastic surgery account over the years as a means to show how the features of women that are so sought after are not truly beautiful when all put together on the same body. It was disturbing however that she went to the extent of actually getting the work done on her own face, but I guess when you are very passionate about something, that you will go to great lengths to get your message out as she was clearly able to do.
Our trips to Torpedo Factory and two art spaces at the National Harbor, although not as transgressive as art in New York or Chicago, still gave me that shock effect. Rosemary Covey’s talk from the Torpedo Factory gave me a sense of what it means to be transgressive. From seeing her artwork, I got a sense that transgressive art is one that does not conform to the cookie cutter editions that we see in mainstream galleries. Some of her artwork was disturbing, but at the same time the aesthetic value of her work could not be discounted. An example of this was the image of her sister on the crucifix. At first I was shocked because of the whole religion thing with only Jesus being on the crucifix, but once I got past that I saw that her drawing was really good. At the Art Whino, I loved the work of Tatyana Schnemko. Her paintings, which showed the women with the big eyes was not something that I would see at a national gallery. Although her artwork was not very shocking, it gave me a sense of awe because it was so different than any artwork I had ever seen. I was almost mesmerized by those eyes, and her use of color was dark yet bright. She used the body of the women as well sexuality to draw her audiences in and keep them with their huge eyes. At the Art league, some of the Alice art that I saw was disturbing because I just think of Alice as this little cute girl who got lost in a strange world with strange beings. Carol Dupree however showed Alice in a light that made her seem not so cute at times.
In our reading for this week, the introduction talked about the difference between moral and aesthetic art. The discussion about McCarthy’s art as aesthetic was hard for me to grasp because seeing the video all I could think about was that what he was doing was not normal and was wrong. The discussion on disinterested in looking at art is not something that I feel I can do. When I see art, I either want it because it is so beautiful or I don’t want it because it is not. I do not feel like I can just look at it objectively as Kant wants us to do. The one discussion that interested me was about the work of Quinn and Lapper’s sculpture of a pregnant Lapper. Because Lapper was disabled and had no arms and legs, some found it disturbing and felt that Quinn was exploiting Lapper by making disabled people visible when society wanted to make them invisible. I kind of felt bad for Lapper because she said that she could not even make any money off her own work depicting her disability and how others viewed her, but somebody who was not disabled (Quinn) was able to make money from showing his image of her disability. This would not jive with Kant who does not want artists to use others as a means to their own end. The discussion however goes on to dispel the negativity that some might ascribe to the sculpture as a win win for both parties because Lapper is viewed as disabled but yet abled because she is pregnant.
I am interested to learn more about transgressive art as it seems that we have only scratched the surface.
Blasting Off Into the Irregular Galaxies of Transgressive Art: Observing my Own Ellipticals, Spirals, and Lenticulars
“They play it safe, are quick to assassinate what they do not understand. They move in packs ingesting more and more fear with every act of hate on one another. They feel most comfortable in groups, less guilt to swallow. They are us. This is what we have become. Afraid to respect the individual. A single person within a circumstance can move one to change. To love ourself. To evolve”
-Erykah Badu, Window Seat, 2010
I thought the first day of class was going to be a pre-flight simulator of transgressive art, but I guess it was a launch into the unknown and sort of coming back down to try to understand what was going on for me. I came out of the first class as if I was in Plato’s Allegory of a Cave because my eyes hurt, but my brain was more curious and open than before I walked into class. I didn’t think that this kind of art existed to be honest with you, but I was really surprised at how it was described and how it was “a war against disinterestedness” and that it was “our intellect that enables us to experience beauty” because I thought it was art that was kind of shocking or awkward, but then I saw Paul McCarthy. I found that after thinking about it for a while, that Paul McCarthy did earn the title, “Father of Transgressive Art” because his art was a direct representative of pure beauty with its freedom from concepts, objectivity, disinterest of the spectator, and obligatoriness (selfless attention). Since I’m trying to become a lawyer, I was particularly wondering how transgressive art would be defended, not just legally, but in general and Anthony Julius’s “5 most common defenses of scandalous art” amused me because it made sense with each defense, such as the first amendment defense, something that had a reasonable amount for a really good argument. I was really interested in how transgressive art today could be connected to transgressive art before and thought it was interesting how transgressive art sort of evolved, but at the same time sort of paid homage to previous artistic expressions.
I came out of the first day of class and before the field trip, I wanted to find other forms of transgressive art and not have to type into a Google “transgressive art” because I thought that would be cheating. I was really puzzled and it wasn’t until the field trip visit to the Torpedo Factory and Art Whino that I realized was trying to hard. I remember talking to Professor Scott about how I wasn’t sure if I would be able to present a creative project about transgressive art after the things she showed us in class. She told me something that helped me stop worrying about finding other examples of transgressive art. Transgressive art could also be something that is starting to challenge certain ideologies and hint on strange juxtapositions of different topics.
I kind of regret taking notes on this trip because I forgot the names of the artists that inspired me from our discussions, but I will try my best to describe their works and explain how they influenced me. On the first floor at the Torpedo Factory, right next to the wall with writing on it talking about how a panel picked the artists there, there was a man there who had these great, colorful paintings of dragons. I thought this was pretty cool because he designed his art room area to be so colorful and unique like his works of art that it felt like I was walking into a children’s pop-up book. There were cut outs of different shapes and random dragon paintings with a sort of fantasy land theme going on all around that art room. I started talking to him about whether his art was all connected because on one side there was a little story about a dragon and a child with each of the paintings next to it seeming to connect with a similar feel to everything. He just looked at me and said, “Maybe, I’m still kind of deciding about that and if it is to you, then I hope you like this chapter!” It was a really free answer that inspired me to not be afraid of finding other works of art to relate to or possibly become transgressive art. Another artist on the third floor inspired me also with a project he was working on where he let random people take pictures and another group of people just put it together. He then put it up and considered it collaboration and even showed me a book of the other artist that inspired him, who was this lady that drew animals in a very unique way. It was hard for me to see the connection, but who knows, inspiration is inspiration.
On the way to Art Whino, I began pondering and even out loud about how broad art or artists were. For instance, the weekend before I met this porn star named Jenna Haze at this night club and had an interesting conversation with her about whether porn was art or not. I more I thought of transgressive art, I began to think porn was more of an art than ever before because it is using the body and sexuality. Now it is kind of common, but I remember telling her that she should be considered an artist, to which she agreed.
Art Whino was more interesting to me than the Torpedo Factory because I liked how it was a new form of art that is steadily gaining recognition and it was the first time I saw action figures at an art gallery. It also let the viewers participate with the dog and human face statues. The Brazilian art by Tatiana was really exotic and it was interesting when the guide told us how some people were shocked by just that. The last art gallery we went to was interesting because part of it was to the theme of Alice in Wonderland. I agree with my fellow classmate Eric on his experience of how transgressive art was, “something of a boundary breaker or pusher; something that not only bends the line but at times twists it as well.” I agree with him because as bizarre as Alice in Wonderland was already, it was still given a unique twist, such as with the two caterpillars with Alice in the middle, with the question, “What are you?”
I had tried to start the reading before the trip, but eventually finished it after the trip, but it was during when I was reading that I found what I thought to be examples of transgressive art. This relates back to my quote back in the beginning of this blog by Erykah Badu, a singer who I found to be so interesting and with a lovely voice that pushed many barriers in music constantly. She recently had a music video called, “Window Seat” which stirred up a lot of controversy because she strips completely naked in this video and at the end lies on the spot that John F. Kennedy was assassinated (Window Seat, 2010). I think this is transgressive art, but I want to know what you think about this and whether it is transgressive art or not. I thought this was transgressive art because it used the body, sexuality, and went against the ideology of groupthink. This music video was done live, so she was charged with disorderly conduct for public nudity right afterwards. I also think this is transgressive art because it is referring to and inspired by another music video by Matt and Kim called, “Lessons Learned” which stirred up similar controversy. This video is the same concept but is a man and a woman stripping, in New York. I then thought this music video could be related back to the painting of Manet we saw in class, “The Luncheon on the Grass” because that shock of seeing a naked women looking at the viewer and how it was first thing done in it’s time.
So for me it was “The Luncheon on the Grass” inspiring “Lessons Learned” inspiring “Window Seat” in a string of transgressive art.
Here is a link to the painting The Luncheon on the Grass: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Manet,_Edouard_-_Le_D%C3%A9jeuner_sur_l%27Herbe_%28The_Picnic%29_%281%29.jpg
Here is a link to the music video Lessons Learned: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJkymylTNU4
Here is the link to the music video Window Seat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hVp47f5YZg
The readings were interesting and part of me agrees with Eric again when he said, “not to belittle what others feel, but if others want to try and push thoughts onto me that I am not ready or do not want to hear, I have the freedom to be ‘deaf’ or ‘dumb’ to them, so to speak.” I agree with what Eric said, but I also agree with how in the reading it says, “We cannot be emotionally detached, or indifferent to the existence of an object, for it is impossible to disengage emotional responses completely and coolly detach ourselves from physical sensations that are involuntarily produced by the performance” (Cashell, Pg. 7). I think that it is possible to not accept thoughts, but at the same time not accepting is a response that is a reaction and that means in some way we are still affected, even if we don’t necessarily agree or want to think about a certain idea. I think this reading made me understand the first class better because I began to understand why Professor Scott was talking about how it was all about context and how something that may be shocking now and in this area may not be shocking in somewhere like New York or in a different time period. I sort of started figuring this out in the Torpedo Factory, when Professor Scott was talking about to that one artist on the second floor, where she was scared of Frankenstein more than anything. I had a lot of wholes missing in understanding some of the artists, but after this reading, I was more informed. For example, I was confused about Orlan, but I was delighted in reading the explanation in the reading where, “If the parts of seven different ideal women are needed to fulfill Adam’s desire for an Eve made in his image, Orlan consciously chooses to undergo the necessary mutilation to reveal that the objective is unattainable and the process horrifying” (Cashell, Pg. 10). This made me understand that each artist was trying to tell a story, spread a message, or just raise awareness. If shocking people was the only way for them to look and at least talk about certain topics, these artists were willing to sacrifice even themselves for artistic enlightenment. The last parts of the reading I found interesting were how we suffer a sort of “global traumatic neurosis” and how professional critics either completely support transgression or are against it totally. I feel like there should be a middle ground where people can support it and at the same time can condemn it. For example, I watched a movie called, “Pleasantville” where two kids get sucked into a perfect world on television that is in black and white (Pleasantville, 1998). I felt like transgressive art is described in this movie because in a perfect world, issues such as sex, personal freedoms, styles of art, and literature, even if it was just mentioned, would start changing the society. All of it, even things such as books or sex, which we see as normal today, could rapidly change a seemingly perfect world. Like I always wondered, who ever started the idea of making out in cars or even having sex in cars? I’m sure as that idea started getting bigger, it was at first seen as the same as people running naked in public now. Transgressive art is such an irregular galaxy, but at the same time, after some exploration and thought, it may become a reachable destination for everyone. Everyone has different speeds of understanding.
Bibliography and/Or Works Cited (Because I Don’t Want to Get Kicked Out of School for This Blog)
Cashell, Kieran. Aftershock: The Ethics of Contemporary Transgressive Art. London: I.B. Tauris, 2009. Print.
Pleasantville. Dir. Gary Ross. Perf. Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon. New Line Cinema, 1998. DVD.
Window Seat. Prod. James Poyser and Erykah Badu. Perf. Erykah Badu. Window Seat. YouTube, 2 Apr. 2010. Web. 22 July 2010. .
I love Erykah Badu, and I was kind of surprised when her video caused such a public stir because even though her lyrics have always sort of crossed boundaries, she has managed to keep a really low profile in the media until now. Maybe it’s because she’s more main-stream now, or maybe it’s due to the fact that through video more people understand the concepts behind her lyrics.
I find it pretty ironic that in Erykah’s attempt to express the importance of individuality and free thinking, she was ostracized for exercising those very things. It kind of makes the reaction to her video a part of the art.
While reading the introduction in the book I was a little surprised that so much goes into explaining what transgression art is. Anthony Julius explains transgression art is, “art committed to violating socio-consensual, but importantly non-legal, taboos,” (p6). It tries to push the limits of what people are comfortable with to provoke a reaction. The only thing I didn’t fully understand was how transgression art causes a moral reaction.
Transgression art has been around, as discussed in class, for a very long time. It can be placed as far back as Manet’s painting “Le déjeuner sur l’herbe”. This picture pushed the comfort zone for many people by having the nude women look directly at the viewer, which had not been done before. Although transgression art has been around for a long time it seems no one has really heard. Obviously people know what controversial art is, but not the actual term transgression art. When walking around the Torpedo Factory artists would ask what class I was in, when I said transgression art they just looked at me. I had to explain a little about what it meant then they understood, or at least acted like they did.
Many of artists on the field trip were very nice and willing to explain their art, one even gave me a tour. However, I had a little trouble actually finding transgression art there. I suppose seeing those videos Monday gave me a different idea then what we actually saw. I was picturing things like what Marc Quinn’s work, where he made a mold of his face and put his own blood on it (p22). We did see a few really good pieces, especially by the woman who was nice enough to explain her work to us. I guess Virginia is just really conservative. So is the work we saw transgression for our area? Does it change depending on where you are that drastically?
When looking at transgressive art and performances, I feel like the tourist looking out at people, sculptures, and buildings from the car window. I am never getting out of the car, but instead, I am looking out while sitting comfortably in the leather seats with my peers and family. Like expressed in Aftershock, I feel I have been sterilized by the media’s projection of worlds outside my own middle-class. There is a “media-reinforced middle-class fantasy” perception of things that are different (Cashell 21). I want to understand and better-appreciate transgressive art, but I find it difficult to get past the imaginary fabrications of which I have learned. I look at transgresive art through my contemporary views, fully aware that this mind-set is a crutch. This saddens me. I feel I have to intellectualize and conceptualize every minor detail in order to understand its complexities (or lack thereof) when I know that this habit only defeats the purpose of most transgressive art. I do not blame others or myself for the way I think, but perhaps this is instilled in me through institutions, academia, religion, or my middle-class upbringing. Whichever, I can’t help but be the tourist scrutinized in Aftershock.
After reading the Introduction and Chapter 1, I began to better understand the perspectives portrayed. Even so, having an interest in business, I cannot help but challenge the aesthetic significance in every piece of art, which to my understanding entirely contradicts transgressive art. My ideological divisions of “good” and “bad”, morally and aesthetically, continue to interrupt my learning of what transgressive art truly is. I am not content with this traditional mindset, but feel I have been trained to perceive most everything in black and white through my academic studies in business. As a foreigner to transgressive art, I am aware that my unsettledness lies within my learned perceptions of traditional and contemporary tolerations of acceptable behavior, and I fear that this will block me from hurdling over my natural instincts and reactions.
I am curious as to where transgressive art stems from. This seems like asking what is light to a person who has been living in the dark all their lives, or explaining reality to someone in a dream. Is it an emotional recovery from the holocaust, as suggested in Aftershock? Or is it challenging aesthetic attitudes towards disinterestedness, whether morally or ethically, as Orlan dares? Or is it meant for people to feel rather than intellectualize, like McCarthy’s work? For that matter, it is difficult for me to comprehend why I am having trouble understanding transgressive art because I have to learn to understand it? Why isn’t everyone exposed to it and taught these forms of visual expression in schools and universities? Unless someone is raised or lives in a progressive city, like NYC or San Francisco, our exposure to transgressive art is quite limited. This frustrates me because it is lack of exposure that makes misunderstanding more apparent. If the threats associates with transgressive art are within the audience (Cashell 2), then how can it be so harmful to educate its effects and influence through understanding from an earlier age? How can this lack of exposure be any different than colorblindness, racisms, homophobia, or prejudice?
My experience at the Torpedo Factory and Art Whino were eye opening. I am left more confused after reading this chapter and visiting the Torpedo Factory and Art Whino than when I entered the classroom on Monday. Unlike math, science, or law, there is no clear description or answer to what art is. Is there a battle within art and amongst artists of acceptable quality art: Freudian versus post-Freudian? There seems to be no boundaries as to what art really is, which is new to me because I live in a world where boundaries, rules, and limitations are all around me. How am I supposed to feel about art? Is it not the strokes, lines, and swirls in a painting that creates its aesthetic value and appreciation? Is everything I have presumed about art “wrong”?
These questions all lead to one central question: what is art? I have been debating this idea in my head and cannot seem to find any conclusions. With more questions than answers, I feel completely art illiterate.
Reading your post I felt like we were on the same page about transgressive art. Neither of us fully understands this art but want to. I think you are right about the fact that we are raised in a society where we are taught how to think and be which includes sheltering us from things they don’t want us to see. This makes it hard for us to think or be outside are comfort zones. I would personally like to know where transgressive art came from also, but I doubt one could pick a time with 100% guarantee that’s where it started.