Art causing outrage

Does anyone know when musicians and artists first started causing outcry or disgust? I mean, when did the trope of "this is too much" or "this shows we've crossed a line/society is in the gutter" emerge?

Are there any good books on this? What did it say about art or culture when this began happening? I guess I'm trying to ask what element of humanity creating art changed when art began to have the ability to offend? Is it sort of hard wired into the process of people creating things that they may challenge a moral majority or offend it. When did this begin?

Do you think there's any meaning left in art being "offensive" or people being offended by it? Is it an actual societal function of art to lead people to lament the quality of the era they live in? It seems as natural an effect as bouncing a ball.

Can you ever imagine a world where people stopped saying "this is symptomatic of our declining society"? Was there ever a world where people didn't say this?

Sorry if this is a bit vague but I find this interesting.

At least as early as between the two World Wars. Probably earlier, but that's the earliest I can think of it.

Of course, didn't Caravaggio get in trouble for some of his paintings? I'm guessing that as art began to move away from patrons and commissions, and it became possible to create art entirely independently as the artist, then people started to say that it was too much and went over some line.

It's as old as the Greeks. Plato was the first documented writer to write about how degenerate art was a sign of a disintergrating society, but I suspect that it's older than that. It was certainly a well established meme by the late Roman empire, so it's hardly a modern phenomenon.

Goes back to the Ten Commandments really; thou shalt not, graven images &c.

1st caveman to second caveman: "Looks nowt like him.."

sum of thos cavpaytings wer very rud!!!

oh xpost

yeah exactly I imagine it must be really old...why do we do this? why is it such a popular trope?

Mainly because of Victorianism, which preferred its citizens to indulge in more robust forms of recreation, such as kicking a ball in the street.

so it's only in Britain? seems hard to believe...

Plato was the first thing that sprung to mind, though really he's talking about art in general, whereas I think your question is more about specific pieces of art, no? Like, (as I remember) Plato (or rather Socrates) thinks all representational art is basically terrible and degenerate; your question (which is maybe more nuanced) is asking, I think, when did people start labeling specific works of art as offensive--implying thereby that there is inoffensive ("good"?) art.

But likely that started, like everything else, with the Greeks.

Yes exactly it Max.

It seems like this is the cornerstone of a cultural value system or something...though I can't quite express why I think that. Just before people labelled particular works as degenerate or symptomatic of decline then there must have been nothing to compare them with.

The problem is, so much of the early examples of this are about religious or moral objections to art itself - iconoclasm, Islamic objections to imagery, etc. - rather than a specific piece of art being labelled as offensive.

It's certainly not specifically British - for example the old memes about viewers rioting when the Impressionists displayed in Paris.

I would guess, however, that widespread outrage against specific works would require a mass press, so we're talking about post-Guttenberg pre-modern period?

Yeah religion must be a part of this. Obv I'm approaching this in an armchair discussion on a messageboard way, but it's interesting that with religion's influence so diminished we still do this, the idea of decline is very strong.

what are today's objections based in? it still seems like moral outrage a lot of the time when you read a diatribe against the Pussycat Dolls or whatever, just shrouded in aesthetic problems.

Do you think there's any meaning left in art being "offensive" or people being offended by it?

Absolutely. It annoys me that our cultural shorthand for shocking art has become Banksy or Damien Hirst, rather than say the Satanic Verses or that publisher that got firebombed at the weekend

The only outrage Hirst causes is the amount of money people will pay for his meretricious muck rather than the work itself.

its still outrage!!

Unfortunately Wiki only covers Judeo-Christian iconoclasm:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iconoclasm

Thing is, that for most of the history of the world, religion has been pretty much synonymous/shorthand with both the dominant culture and the dominant morality. In "secular" world of today, these things are so much more fragmented, but the sense of outrage remains, even when divorced from the usual reasons.

It certainly is possible to still be offensive. Just, when we no longer have the shorthand of religion as code for morality, it's harder to work out what the sacred cows are.

A current example - I've done some artwork for a band called The Racists. Now this name has generated a huge amount of outrage even in the limited circles they operate in. How could it be that... simple to be so genuinely transgressive?

Well, there are some things I can think of that would cause an absolute rage. EG someone promoting paedophilia or something.

But I'm not sure people would say "this is symptomatic of our decline", in that case. That seems a less angry more studied response, maybe not even outrage so much as just disappointment or hand wringing.

That's great xp. If the Racists' songs are pro-militarism, against regional accents, and are generally about not being true to yourself, they could stir up quite the storm

See? You know jack shit about them, but you're already getting yourself heated up.

The irony being, the name came from the fact that they are 4 girls from 3 different races who gave themselves the moniker as a commentary on the unspoken but rampant racism in the indie scene. Then *they* get anti-Daily Mailism backlash for pointing it out in the first place. Like, double whammy.

They'd better not sound like Travis, after this build-up

Are they hot?

They should really call themselves the Sexists.

They actually sound like Skrewdriver

OK, I can try to come up with serious examples of things that cause offense, and why, and generally try to stay on topic - or else I can just go and post pictures of semi-naked nu-rave teenagers all over ILX.

Your choice.

They'd better not sound like Travis

http://www.radiorewind.co.uk/images/convoy_label.jpg

Let's remember that ethnics can be racist too though guys!

"guys"? What are you, a SEXUALIST?

so is there a band called The Paedos yet?

"The Homosexuals" were by all accounts pretty good

"Rapeman" etc.

The Glitter Band

Hmmmm. iirc, the first public exhibition of impressionist paintings in Paris caused a huge outcry and earned them nickname 'beasts'. Also, Richard Wagner's opera's caused a couple of riots by outraged concert-goers.

http://i36.tinypic.com/6ymg6b.jpg

i think the object to focus on may not be "outrage" but "public". the idea here is that some mass of individuals with a sense of taste and propriety in common feels offended, and has the means to express itself. when did that come to be? ovid certainly pissed off the decision maker of his time but that's not exactly the same kind of outrage.

the idea i'm feeling for is that the proportion of outrageousness of art is somewhat constant but the sense of the audience for artworks being "the public" is a newer phenomenon, but i don't exactly have the data here.

http://www.europe.org.uk/europlus/images/romania/180px-Bird_in_space.jpg

"Bird in Space" was the cause of a court battle due to the piece being taxed by U.S. Customs. The argument was in regard to Brancusi stating that the sculpture was 'art' and not taxable materials. Time magazine reported (in 1968) the event thus;

"Rumanian Sculptor Constantin Brancusi had to pay $4,000 to bring his Bird in Flight into the U. S. ... Works of art are duty free. But Sculptor Brancusi's bird had neither head, feet nor feathers. It was four and a half feet of bronze which swooped up from its base like a slender jet of flame. Customs Inspector Kracke said it was not art; merely "a manufacture of metal . . . held dutiable at 40% ad valorem." The press bantered, jibed. Indignant modernists wrote abstruse, defensive paragraphs. Sculptor Brancusi complained to the Customs Court.

"Last week Sculptor Brancusi won his case. In its decision the Customs Court dogmatically defined art: "It is a work of art by reason of its symmetrical shape, artistic outlines and beauty of finish." Even the most wretched of logicians knows enough not to repeat the same term in both subject and definition ("art" —"artistic outline"). But Sculptor Brancusi had his money refunded."

I love Bird in Flight.

If the art is making a political/religious/social statement that causes outrage, e.g Frankie saying Relax, then I don't think that's particularly noteworthy in this context - it's more a question of freedom of expression, where the outrageous opinion happens to be contained in an artwork. Outrageous opinions go way back. If, Quantum Leap style, Banksy was transported to Wittenberg in 1517, and stencilled 95 Theses and a policeman in a pig mask onto the door of the church, the subsequent outrage would be nothing at all to do with art

It's more interesting where the outrage is due to the art making no statement other than about itself. The fauvist one is the type of thing the OP had in mind, I think. Other examples would be The Rites of Spring, Dylan going electric, or the exposure of Milli Vanilli. Why does this happen? I kind of agree with goole here - you need a group of people who buy into the form so much that stepping outside it becomes a kind of heresy, so the starting point must be sometime after people got rich enough to care. I don't imagine our hunter-gatherer forefathers were too bothered about respecting the conventions of cave painting

I don't imagine our hunter-gatherer forefathers were too bothered about respecting the conventions of cave painting

Greeks, Romans, Egyptians - they all were heavy into respecting conventions

There is an ebony, and a white stone of some sort (soapstone maybe) pair of "Bird In Flight" at the National Gallery in Canberra - sits in a still pool of water. One of my favourite sculptures.

Anyway for current outrage caused by art, see any recent article on Bill Henson's photography and the pedophelia accusations he's been getting, despite the fact hes been doing photos of seminaked/naked 13-18 year olds for like 20 years, and no one complained before.