Transgressive art
Encyclopedia
Transgressive art refers to art
forms that aim to transgress; i.e. to outrage or violate basic mores
and sensibilities. The term transgressive was first used by American filmmaker Nick Zedd
and his Cinema of Transgression
in 1985. Zedd used it to describe his legacy with underground filmmakers like Paul Morrissey
, John Waters
, and Kenneth Anger
, and the relationship they shared with Zedd and his New York peers in the early '80s.
; from the French Salon des Refusés
artists to Dada
and surrealism
. Philosophers Mikhail Bakhtin
and Georges Bataille
have published works on the nature of transgression. Probably the most thorough book on the early transgressive movement is Deathtripping: The Cinema of Transgression by Jack Sargeant
.
Transgressional works share some themes with art that deals with psychological
dislocation and mental illness
. Examples of this relationship, between social transgression and the exploration of mental states relating to illness, include many of the activities and works of the Dadaists, Surrealists and Fluxus
related artists, such as Carolee Schneemann
- and, in literature, Albert Camus
's L'Etranger
or J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye
.
who made a pair of earrings out of human fetuses and ate a piece of human testicle. In China several artists became well known for producing transgressive art, including Zhu Yu, who achieved notoriety when he published images of himself eating what appeared to be a human fetus
and Yang Zhichao
for extreme body art
.
began making films in New York with infamous underground actors Nick Zedd
and Lung Leg
. Some of them were videos for artists like the Butthole Surfers
and Sonic Youth
.
Subsequent transgressive artists of the 1990s overlapped the boundaries of literature, art, and music, most notably GG Allin
, Lisa Crystal Carver
, Costes and Dame Darcy
. With these artists came a greater emphasis on life itself (or death) as art, rather than just depicting a certain mindset in film or music. They were instrumental in creating a new type of visionary art and music, and influenced artists like Alec Empire
, Cock E.S.P.
, Crash Worship
, Usama Alshaibi
, Natural Athlete, Liz Armstrong, Lennie Lee
, Johnny Terris
, Weasel Walter
, Andy Ortmann, and the later work featured in Peter Bagge
's Hate
.
However, the term can also be applied to transgressive literature
as well. Recent examples include Trainspotting
by Irvine Welsh
, Blood and Guts in High School
by Kathy Acker
, American Psycho
by Bret Easton Ellis
, Fight Club
by Chuck Palahniuk
, and J.G. Ballard's short story The Enormous Space. These works deal with issues that were considered to be outside the social norms. Their characters abuse drugs, engage in violent behaviour or could be considered sexual deviants.
Among the most notorious works of transgressive art among the general public have been sculpture, collages, and installation art which self-consciously sought to offend Christian religious sensibilities. These include Andres Serrano
's Piss Christ
, featuring a crucifix in a beaker of urine, and Chris Ofili
's The Holy Virgin Mary
, a multi-media painting which is partially made of elephant dung.
music has inspired controversy for the entirety of its existence. As the music grew in popularity, some artists used controversy to make a statement or turn it to their advantage. For genres, such as shock rock
, punk rock
, and death metal
, offending modern sensibilities was an integral part of their music. Musicians such as Alice Cooper
, WASP
, GWAR
, GG Allin
, The Plasmatics, Marilyn Manson
, The Mentors
, Anal Cunt
and The Sex Pistols used prejudiced, racist, sexist, gory, and/or dark lyrics that were generally considered to be evil. Some bands used the controversy to increase their popularity. The idea was that if people complained about their music enough and truly hated them, then the band's name and knowledge of their
existence would reach the ears of people who would appreciate their music.
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
forms that aim to transgress; i.e. to outrage or violate basic mores
Mores
Mores, in sociology, are any given society's particular norms, virtues, or values. The word mores is a plurale tantum term borrowed from Latin, which has been used in the English language since the 1890s....
and sensibilities. The term transgressive was first used by American filmmaker Nick Zedd
Nick Zedd
Nick Zedd is an American filmmaker and author based in New York City. He coined the term Cinema of Transgression in 1985 to describe a loose-knit group of like-minded filmmakers and artists using shock value and black humor in their work...
and his Cinema of Transgression
Cinema of Transgression
The Cinema of Transgression is a term coined by Nick Zedd in 1985 to describe a New York City, United States based underground film movement, consisting of a loose-knit group of like-minded artists using shock value and humor in their work...
in 1985. Zedd used it to describe his legacy with underground filmmakers like Paul Morrissey
Paul Morrissey
Paul Morrissey is an American film director, best-known for his association with Andy Warhol.Morrissey attended Ampleforth College, a private Roman Catholic boarding school and Fordham University, both Roman Catholic schools, and later served in the United States Army...
, John Waters
John Waters (filmmaker)
John Samuel Waters, Jr. is an American filmmaker, actor, stand-up comedian, writer, journalist, visual artist, and art collector, who rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films...
, and Kenneth Anger
Kenneth Anger
Kenneth Anger is an American underground experimental filmmaker, occasional actor and author...
, and the relationship they shared with Zedd and his New York peers in the early '80s.
Definition
From a collegiate perspective, many traces of transgression can be found in any art which by some is considered offensive because of its shock valueShock value
Shock value is the potential of an action , image, text, or other form of communication to provoke a reaction of disgust, shock, anger, fear, or similar negative emotions.-Shock value as humor:...
; from the French Salon des Refusés
Salon des Refusés
The Salon des Refusés, French for “exhibition of rejects” , is generally an exhibition of works rejected by the jury of the official Paris Salon, but the term is most famously used to refer to the Salon des Refusés of 1863.-Background:...
artists to Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
and surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
. Philosophers Mikhail Bakhtin
Mikhail Bakhtin
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin was a Russian philosopher, literary critic, semiotician and scholar who worked on literary theory, ethics, and the philosophy of language...
and Georges Bataille
Georges Bataille
Georges Bataille was a French writer. His multifaceted work is linked to the domains of literature, anthropology, philosophy, economy, sociology and history of art...
have published works on the nature of transgression. Probably the most thorough book on the early transgressive movement is Deathtripping: The Cinema of Transgression by Jack Sargeant
Jack Sargeant
Jack Sargeant is a writer specialising in cult film, underground film, and independent film, as well as subcultures, true crime, and other aspects of the unusual. In addition he is a film programmer and an academic...
.
Transgressional works share some themes with art that deals with psychological
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
dislocation and mental illness
Mental illness
A mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern generally associated with subjective distress or disability that occurs in an individual, and which is not a part of normal development or culture. Such a disorder may consist of a combination of affective, behavioural,...
. Examples of this relationship, between social transgression and the exploration of mental states relating to illness, include many of the activities and works of the Dadaists, Surrealists and Fluxus
Fluxus
Fluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning,...
related artists, such as Carolee Schneemann
Carolee Schneemann
Carolee Schneemann is an American visual artist, known for her discourses on the body, sexuality and gender. She received a B.A. from Bard College and an M.F.A. from the University of Illinois. Her work is primarily characterized by research into visual traditions, taboos, and the body of the...
- and, in literature, Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
's L'Etranger
The Stranger (novel)
The Stranger or The Outsider is a novel by Albert Camus published in 1942. Its theme and outlook are often cited as examples of existentialism, though Camus did not consider himself an existentialist; in fact, its content explores various philosophical schools of thought, including absurdism, as...
or J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye
The Catcher in the Rye
The Catcher in the Rye is a 1951 novel by J. D. Salinger. Originally published for adults, it has since become popular with adolescent readers for its themes of teenage confusion, angst, alienation, language, and rebellion. It has been translated into almost all of the world's major...
.
Changes in movement
Since the late 1990s a new group of transgressive artists have emerged, such as the Canadian artist Rick GibsonRick Gibson
Rick Gibson is a Canadian sculptor and artist. He was born in Montreal, Quebec and he studied Psychology at the University of Victoria. Between 1973 and 1974 he drew weekly comics for the student newspaper. After completing his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1974 he moved to Vancouver, Canada. He...
who made a pair of earrings out of human fetuses and ate a piece of human testicle. In China several artists became well known for producing transgressive art, including Zhu Yu, who achieved notoriety when he published images of himself eating what appeared to be a human fetus
Fetus
A fetus is a developing mammal or other viviparous vertebrate after the embryonic stage and before birth.In humans, the fetal stage of prenatal development starts at the beginning of the 11th week in gestational age, which is the 9th week after fertilization.-Etymology and spelling variations:The...
and Yang Zhichao
Yang Zhichao
Yang Zhichao Born in 1963 in Gansu province Northern Manchuria, is a performance artist living and working in Beijing....
for extreme body art
Body art
Body art is art made on, with, or consisting of, the human body. The most common forms of body art are tattoos and body piercings, but other types include scarification, branding, scalpelling, shaping , full body tattoo and body painting.More extreme body art can involve things such as mutilation...
.
Artists
Perhaps the most famous transgressive artist of early 1980s, Richard KernRichard Kern
Richard Kern is a New York underground filmmaker, writer and photographer. He first came to underground prominence as part of the underground cultural explosion in the East Village of New York City in the 1980s, with erotic and experimental films featuring underground personalities of the time...
began making films in New York with infamous underground actors Nick Zedd
Nick Zedd
Nick Zedd is an American filmmaker and author based in New York City. He coined the term Cinema of Transgression in 1985 to describe a loose-knit group of like-minded filmmakers and artists using shock value and black humor in their work...
and Lung Leg
Lung Leg
Born Elizabeth Carr, Lung Leg is best known for appearing on the cover of the Sonic Youth album EVOL...
. Some of them were videos for artists like the Butthole Surfers
Butthole Surfers
Butthole Surfers is an American alternative rock band formed by Gibby Haynes and Paul Leary in San Antonio, Texas in 1981. The band has had numerous personnel changes, but its core lineup of Haynes, Leary, and drummer King Coffey has been consistent since 1983. Teresa Nervosa served as second...
and Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth is an American alternative rock band from New York City, formed in 1981. The current lineup consists of Thurston Moore , Kim Gordon , Lee Ranaldo , Steve Shelley , and Mark Ibold .In their early career, Sonic Youth was associated with the No Wave art and music scene in New York City...
.
Subsequent transgressive artists of the 1990s overlapped the boundaries of literature, art, and music, most notably GG Allin
GG Allin
Kevin Michael "GG" Allin was an American punk rock singer-songwriter, who performed and recorded with many groups during his career. GG Allin is perhaps best remembered for his notorious live performances, which often featured transgressive acts, including coprophagia, self-mutilation, and...
, Lisa Crystal Carver
Lisa Crystal Carver
Lisa Crystal Carver , also known as Lisa Suckdog, is an American writer known for her writing in Rollerderby. Through her interviews, she introduced the work of Vaginal Davis, Dame Darcy, Cindy Dall, Boyd Rice, Costes , Nick Zedd, GG Allin, Kate Landau, Queen Itchie & Liz Armstrong to many...
, Costes and Dame Darcy
Dame Darcy
Dame Darcy is an alternative cartoonist. Her comic book, Meatcake, has been published by Fantagraphics since 1993. Darcy has also released several graphic novels, Frightful Fairytales, Dame Darcy's Meatcake Compilation, The Illustrated Jane Eyre, Dollerium , Comic Book Tattoo, and Gasoline .-...
. With these artists came a greater emphasis on life itself (or death) as art, rather than just depicting a certain mindset in film or music. They were instrumental in creating a new type of visionary art and music, and influenced artists like Alec Empire
Alec Empire
Alec Empire is a German musician who is best known as a founding member of the band Atari Teenage Riot. Also a prolific and distinguished solo artist, producer and DJ, he has released well over a hundred albums, EPs and singles and remixed over seventy tracks for various artists including Björk...
, Cock E.S.P.
Cock E.S.P.
Cock E.S.P. is a US-American band based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The group draws on the most extreme, subversive and absurdist elements of both popular and experimental Twentieth century music and performance art, creating abstract high-energy entertainment. Influences include noise music, punk...
, Crash Worship
Crash Worship
Crash Worship or ADRV was a San Diego based experimental-aktionist-industrial-noise performance group formed in 1986. Most renowned for its live shows in which three stand-up percussionists hammered out concussive poly-rhythms to abstract mutated guitar, synthesizers, effects and dualling vocalists...
, Usama Alshaibi
Usama Alshaibi
Usama Alshaibi is an Iraqi-American independent filmmaker and visual artist.Starting in early 2004, Alshaibi worked on a documentary on his homeland, and its current situation, titled Nice Bombs...
, Natural Athlete, Liz Armstrong, Lennie Lee
Lennie Lee
Lennie Lee is a South African conceptual artist who lives and works in London.-Life and career:Lennie Lee is a British artist born in Johannesburg, South Africa. He moved to the UK in 1960. He was educated at Dulwich college in London before winning a scholarship to study philosophy at Christ...
, Johnny Terris
Johnny Terris
Born in Toronto and raised in Pictou County Nova Scotia, Dutch-Canadian Johnny Terris is an actor, filmmaker, writer, producer, dancer, model, artist, photographer and visual video editor...
, Weasel Walter
Weasel Walter
Weasel Walter is a composer and instrumentalist who founded the band The Flying Luttenbachers in Chicago in 1991 with late jazz cult figure Hal Russell and is a current member of Cellular Chaos and Behold...The Arctopus...
, Andy Ortmann, and the later work featured in Peter Bagge
Peter Bagge
Peter Bagge is an American cartoonist. He is the creator of Buddy Bradley, Hate, Neat Stuff, Martini Baton, and Sweatshop, Apocalypse Nerd and Other Lives. His stories often use black humor and exaggerated cartooning to dramatize the reduced expectations of middle-class American youth...
's Hate
Hate (comic)
Hate is a semi-autobiographical comic book by writer-artist Peter Bagge. First published by Fantagraphics in 1990 it ran for 30 issues, and was one of the best-selling alternative comics of the 1990s, at its height selling 30,000 copies an issue...
.
However, the term can also be applied to transgressive literature
Transgressional fiction
Transgressive fiction is a genre of literature that focuses on characters who feel confined by the norms and expectations of society and who break free of those confines in unusual and/or illicit ways. Because they are rebelling against the basic norms of society, protagonists of transgressional...
as well. Recent examples include Trainspotting
Trainspotting (novel)
Trainspotting is the first novel by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh. It is written in the form of short chapters narrated in the first person by various residents of Leith, Edinburgh, who either use heroin, are friends of the core group of heroin users, or engage in destructive activities that are...
by Irvine Welsh
Irvine Welsh
Irvine Welsh is a contemporary Scottish novelist, best known for his novel Trainspotting. His work is characterised by raw Scottish dialect, and brutal depiction of the realities of Edinburgh life...
, Blood and Guts in High School
Blood and Guts in High School
Blood and Guts in High School is a novel by Kathy Acker. It was written in the late 1970s and copyrighted in 1978. It traveled a complex and circuitous route to publication in 1984. It remains Acker's most popular and best-selling book. The novel is also considered a metafictional text, which is...
by Kathy Acker
Kathy Acker
Kathy Acker was an American experimental novelist, punk poet, playwright, essayist, postmodernist and sex-positive feminist writer. She was strongly influenced by the Black Mountain School, William S...
, American Psycho
American Psycho
American Psycho is a psychological thriller and satirical novel by Bret Easton Ellis, published in 1991. The story is told in the first person by the protagonist, serial killer and Manhattan businessman Patrick Bateman. The book's graphic violence and sexual content generated a great deal of...
by Bret Easton Ellis
Bret Easton Ellis
Bret Easton Ellis is an American novelist and short story writer. His works have been translated into 27 different languages. He was regarded as one of the so-called literary Brat Pack, which also included Tama Janowitz and Jay McInerney...
, Fight Club
Fight Club (novel)
Fight Club is a 1996 novel by Chuck Palahniuk. It follows the experiences of an unnamed protagonist struggling with insomnia. Inspired by his doctor's exasperated remark that insomnia is not suffering, he finds relief by impersonating a seriously ill person in several support groups...
by Chuck Palahniuk
Chuck Palahniuk
Charles Michael "Chuck" Palahniuk is an American transgressional fiction novelist and freelance journalist. He is best known for the award-winning novel Fight Club, which was later made into a film directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter...
, and J.G. Ballard's short story The Enormous Space. These works deal with issues that were considered to be outside the social norms. Their characters abuse drugs, engage in violent behaviour or could be considered sexual deviants.
Among the most notorious works of transgressive art among the general public have been sculpture, collages, and installation art which self-consciously sought to offend Christian religious sensibilities. These include Andres Serrano
Andres Serrano
Andres Serrano is an American photographer and artist who has become notorious through his photos of corpses and his use of feces and bodily fluids in his work, notably his controversial work "Piss Christ", a red-tinged photograph of a crucifix submerged in a glass container of what was purported...
's Piss Christ
Piss Christ
Piss Christ is a 1987 photograph by artist and photographer Andres Serrano. It depicts a small plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist's urine...
, featuring a crucifix in a beaker of urine, and Chris Ofili
Chris Ofili
Chris Ofili is a Turner Prize winning British painter best known for artworks referencing aspects of his Nigerian heritage, particularly his incorporation of elephant dung. He was one of the Young British Artists, and is now based in Trinidad.-Early life:Ofilli was born in Manchester. He had a...
's The Holy Virgin Mary
The Holy Virgin Mary
The Holy Virgin Mary is a painting created by Chris Ofili in 1996. It was one of the works included in the Sensation exhibition in London, Berlin and New York in 1997–2000...
, a multi-media painting which is partially made of elephant dung.
In Music
Rock and rollRock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
music has inspired controversy for the entirety of its existence. As the music grew in popularity, some artists used controversy to make a statement or turn it to their advantage. For genres, such as shock rock
Shock rock
Shock rock is an umbrella term for artists who combine rock music with elements of theatrical shock value in live performances.-History:Screamin' Jay Hawkins was arguably the first shock rocker...
, punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
, and death metal
Death metal
Death metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal. It typically employs heavily distorted guitars, tremolo picking, deep growling vocals, blast beat drumming, minor keys or atonality, and complex song structures with multiple tempo changes....
, offending modern sensibilities was an integral part of their music. Musicians such as Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper is an American rock singer, songwriter and musician whose career spans more than four decades...
, WASP
WAsP
WAsP is a PC program for predicting wind climates, wind resources, and power productions from wind turbines and wind farms. The predictions are based on wind data measured at stations in the same region. The program includes a complex terrain flow model, a roughness change model, and a model for...
, GWAR
GWAR
Gwar is a satirical heavy metal band formed in Richmond, Virginia, United States, in 1984. The band is best known for its elaborate science fiction/horror film inspired costumes, obscene lyrics and graphic stage performances, which feature humorous enactments of politically and morally taboo...
, GG Allin
GG Allin
Kevin Michael "GG" Allin was an American punk rock singer-songwriter, who performed and recorded with many groups during his career. GG Allin is perhaps best remembered for his notorious live performances, which often featured transgressive acts, including coprophagia, self-mutilation, and...
, The Plasmatics, Marilyn Manson
Marilyn Manson
Marilyn Manson may refer to:* Marilyn Manson , an American rock musician* Marilyn Manson , the American rock band led by the singer of the same name...
, The Mentors
The Mentors
The Mentors are an American heavy metal band noted for its deliberately sexist shock rock lyrics.They formed in 1977 in Seattle, Washington and relocated to Los Angeles, California in 1979, where their irreverent attitude aligned them with the city's punk rock scene. Their music has developed...
, Anal Cunt
Anal Cunt
Anal Cunt, also known as AxCx and A.C., was an American grindcore band that formed in Newton, Massachusetts in 1988. Since its inception, the band underwent a number of line-up changes. Known for its grindcore musical style and controversial lyrics, Anal Cunt released eight full-length studio...
and The Sex Pistols used prejudiced, racist, sexist, gory, and/or dark lyrics that were generally considered to be evil. Some bands used the controversy to increase their popularity. The idea was that if people complained about their music enough and truly hated them, then the band's name and knowledge of their
existence would reach the ears of people who would appreciate their music.
See also
- Cinema of TransgressionCinema of TransgressionThe Cinema of Transgression is a term coined by Nick Zedd in 1985 to describe a New York City, United States based underground film movement, consisting of a loose-knit group of like-minded artists using shock value and humor in their work...
- New French ExtremityNew French ExtremityNew French Extremity is a term coined by Artforum critic James Quandt for a collection of transgressive films by French directors at the turn of the 21st century. The filmmakers are also discussed by Jonathan Romney of The Independent...
- New Gothic ArtNew Gothic Art-Manifesto:The Neo Gothic Art Manifesto was written by gothic artist Charles Moffat in 2001, who also coined the term "Neo Gothic" in an effort to differentiate it from gothic architecture...
- Shock artShock artShock art is contemporary art that incorporates disturbing imagery, sound or scents to create a shocking experience. While the art form's proponents argue that it is "embedded with social commentary" and most critics dismiss it as "cultural pollution", it is an increasingly marketable art,...
- Transgressive fiction
- Pink FlamingosPink FlamingosPink Flamingos is a 1972 transgressive black comedy film written, produced, composed, shot, edited, and directed by John Waters. When the film was initially released, it caused a huge degree of controversy and thus became one of the most notorious cult films ever made. It made an underground star...