Transgressive art

Transgressive art names artistic practice that violates or challenges established boundaries, conventions, or taboos. The provocation may be aimed at the conventions of the art world itself, at the moral or religious sensibilities of an audience, or at wider social and legal norms; its subjects include sex and sexuality, violence, the body, religion, and obscenity. Marcel Duchamp's Fountain (1917) is the standard early precedent, with the Viennese Actionists of the 1960s and feminist performance artists such as Carolee Schneemann carrying transgression into the body itself. The term is usually applied retrospectively by critics rather than adopted by artists, and what counts as transgressive shifts with time and place. Following Georges Bataille, theorists stress that transgression exists only against a boundary: a work is transgressive because a rule was there to break.

Defining characteristics

• Deliberate violation of an art-world rule - medium, subject matter, or display convention
• Confrontational content: nudity, violence, bodily functions, religious provocation
• The artist's own body used directly as medium and site of provocation
• Abject or everyday materials chosen to offend expectations of what art is
• Institutional critique: the gallery, museum, or censor made part of the work's subject

Key figures

• Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) — Dadaist whose Fountain (1917) set the template for art as institutional challenge
• Carolee Schneemann (1939-2019) — Feminist performance artist who turned the naked body into a transgressive medium
• Chris Burden (1946-2015) — Performance artist who risked his own body in works like Shoot (1971)
• Andres Serrano (b. 1950) — Photographer whose Piss Christ (1987) ignited censorship battles
• Chris Ofili (b. 1968) — Painter whose The Holy Virgin Mary (1996) provoked religious outrage

Example works

• Fountain — Marcel Duchamp (1917)
• Piss Christ — Andres Serrano (1987)
• The Holy Virgin Mary — Chris Ofili (1996)

Sources

• Transgressive art - Wikipedia encyclopedia

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