...support and not voluntarily give their money to some particular artworks and artists who have a strongly different opinion, and try to express what they think is offensive. Ambiguously defined obscene and the fact that there’s no general standards of “proper art” has made many artworks and artists to be attacked. Chris Ofili’s The Holy Virgin Mary is the example of controversies over public funding and “offensive” art. In 1999, the Brooklyn Museum of Art exhibited The Holy Virgin Mary, the work includes many collaged images and materials include pornographic photographs of female genitalia and elephant dung....
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...questions, may it be evaluated? We will look at two books on this subject: Beauty by philosopher and critics Roger Scruton and Cynthia Freeland: but is it art? Both writers are consummate prose stylists who display as well as discuss a fine aesthetic sensibility. We will use the Holy Virgin Mary painting by Chris Ofili and the Matana Roberts performance as the template for which we will assess the fine line between aesthetics and ethics according to these philosophers. The Holy Virgin Mary is a painting created by Chris Ofili in 1996. The subject of the work, and its execution, caused considerable controversy– describing Ofili's work as "sick". The piece features a yellow-orange background, the large painting (8x6) depicts a black...
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...Alison Robinson Art 11 Prof. Justin Campoy Controversial art exhibit What makes a painting controversial? Maybe something that attacks our religious concepts can be controversial; maybe anything that contains nude matter is controversial, or maybe causes a great debate. Well, none of this is wrong because people have general norms related to such matters. Paintings often become controversial when it goes against commonly accepted norms. Throughout history audiences have been offended and outraged by paintings that were socially, religiously or politically inappropriate. Artists used subject matters that were a taboo in social situations. This could be a matter relating to one human being or nudity or addressing a complicated moral issue. The artworks I’ve chosen are all paintings, sculptures, or performance pieces from history that were considered controversial, and by artists who weren’t afraid to stand out. The first piece of art I chose for my exhibit is by Georgia O'Keeffe. It is titled “Blue and Green Music”, 1919/21, and she chose to use Oil on canvas. It measures at 58.4 x 48.3 cm (23 x 18 in.) Although she had not yet visited Europe, Georgia O’Keeffe was exposed to Modernism through exhibitions at Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery 291 in New York and her studies at the University of Virginia and Columbia University Teacher’s College. She was drawn to the theories of the Russian Expressionist painter...
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...“Sensation” Exhibit For over a century public galleries in Western democracies have been forums not only for displaying works by “old Masters” but also for presenting art that is new, as well as ideas that are sometimes radical and controversial. In the United States that tradition has been under wide attack in the past generation. Various political and first line of all religious leaders have criticized exhibits of works of art that they claim paragraphs indented offend against notions of public decency, and have crusaded against providing public funding for the creation or display of such works. The largest such controversy of the past generation was sparked by the display of a painting entitled “The Holy Virgin Mary,” by the British text left justified and ragged right artist Chris Ofili at the Brooklyn Museum in 1999. Though the image appears inoffensive at a distance, the artist has affixed to the painting cutouts of body parts from magazines, and has incorporated clumps of elephant dung into the piece, both below the main body of the work as if supporting it and as part of the collage. The text double-spaced throughout 1 03f-BGtW-AmEd 85-106.indd 86 19/01/10 4:08 PM Sample Essay | 87 Davis 2 resulting uproar led both to a widely publicized court case and to an ongoing campaign to support “decency” in artistic expression. Should...
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...which includes sheeting smeared with what she says is her blood, unless she admits it was a hoax. Shvarts has refused to talk to the media, with the exception of a statement in the Yale Daily News, in which she wrote, "for me, the most poignant aspect of this representation … is the impossibility of accurately identifying the resulting blood." According to Shvarts, because it would be unclear if the blood in the work was the result of a miscarriage or her menstrual cycle, the piece is ultimately about the narrative she has constructed. (Doctors have pointed out, however, that blood samples could be tested for pregnancy hormones.) Feminist artists such as Judy Chicago and Ana Mendieta have long used blood as a medium; performance artists (Chris Burden, Marina Abramovic) have manipulated their bodies in the name of...
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...Cultural Moves AMERICAN CROSSROADS Edited by Earl Lewis, George Lipsitz, Peggy Pascoe, George Sánchez, and Dana Takagi 1. Border Matters: Remapping American Cultural Studies, by José David Saldívar 2. The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture, by Neil Foley 3. Indians in the Making: Ethnic Relations and Indian Identities around Puget Sound, by Alexandra Harmon 4. Aztlán and Viet Nam: Chicano and Chicana Experiences of the War, edited by George Mariscal 5. Immigration and the Political Economy of Home: West Indian Brooklyn and American Indian Minneapolis, by Rachel Buff 6. Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East,1945–2000, by Melani McAlister 7. Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown, by Nayan Shah 8. Japanese American Celebration and Conflict: A History of Ethnic Identity and Festival, 1934–1990, by Lon Kurashige 9. American Sensations: Class, Empire, and the Production of Popular Culture, by Shelley Streeby 10. Colored White: Transcending the Racial Past, by David R. Roediger 11. Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico, by Laura Briggs 12. meXicana Encounters: The Making of Social Identities on the Borderlands, by Rosa Linda Fregoso 13. Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight, by Eric Avila 14. Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom, by Tiya Miles 15. Cultural Moves: African Americans and the Politics of...
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