Even When It Is Outlawed Art Finds a Means of Expression Explain This Statement

Artists throughout history accept never shied away from controversy—in fact, many even try to court infamy. (Need proof? Just look at Banksy, the bearding street creative person who recently created a work that cocky-destructed the moment it was sold at auction—for a whopping $1.37 million.) While it's up to critics and historians to argue technique and creative merit, in that location are some works of art that shocked most people who saw them. From paintings deemed too lewd, likewise rude or besides gory for their time to acts of so-called desecration and powerful political statements, these are some of the most controversial artworks e'er created.

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1. Michelangelo, "The Concluding Judgement," 1536–1541

Some 25 years after completing the Sistine Chapel ceiling, Renaissance polymath Michelangelo returned to the Vatican to work on a fresco that would be debated for centuries. His depiction of the 2d Coming of Christ in "The Last Judgement," on which he worked from 1536 to 1541, was met with immediate controversy from the Counter-Reformation Catholic church. Religious officials spoke out against the fresco, for a number of reasons, including the mode with which Michelangelo painted Jesus (beardless and in the Archetype style of pagan mythology). Only virtually shocking of all were the painting'south 300 figures, mostly male person and mostly nude. In a motion called a fig-leaf campaign, bits of material and flora were later painted over the offending anatomy, some of which were later removed every bit part of a 20th century restoration.

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2. Caravaggio, "St. Matthew and the Affections," 1602

Bizarre painter Caravaggio's life may be more than controversial than any of his work, given the fact that he died in exile later on existence accused of murder. But his unconventionally humanistic approach to his religious commissions certainly raised eyebrows in his twenty-four hours. In the now-lost painting "St. Matthew and the Angel," created for the Contarelli Chapel in Rome, Caravaggio flipped convention past using a poor peasant every bit a model for the saint. But what upset critics the almost were St. Matthew's muddied feet, which illusionistically seemed to jut from a canvas (a recurring visual trick for the creative person), and the way the epitome unsaid him to exist illiterate, as though being read to past an angel. The work was ultimately rejected and replaced with "The Inspiration of St. Matthew," a similar, yet more than standard, depiction of the scene.

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iii. Thomas Eakins, "The Gross Clinic," 1875

This icon of American art was created in anticipation of the nation's centenary, when painter Thomas Eakins was eager to show off both his talent and the scientific advances of Philadelphia's Jefferson Medical College. The realist painting puts the viewer in the center of a surgical amphitheater, where physician Dr. Samuel Gross lectures students operating on a patient. But its matter-of-fact delineation of surgery was accounted as well graphic, and the painting was rejected by the Philadelphia Centenary Exhibition (some blame the doctor'southward encarmine hands, others contend it was the female figure shielding her eyes that put it over the edge). Withal, a century later, the painting has finally been recognized as 1 of the great masterpieces of its time on both its artistic and scientific claim.

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four. Marcel Duchamp "Fountain," 1917

When iconoclastic Marcel Duchamp anonymously submitted a porcelain urinal signed "R. Mutt 1917" as a "readymade" sculpture to the Society of Independent Artists, a group known to have any artist who could come with the fee‚ the unthinkable happened: the slice was denied, even though Duchamp himself was a cofounder and board member of the group. Some even wondered if the slice was a hoax, but Dada journal The Blind Homo defended the urinal as art because the artist chose it. The slice marked a shift from what Duchamp called "retinal," or purely visual, art to a more conceptual way of expression—sparking a dialogue that continues to this day about what really constitutes a work of fine art. Though all that remains of the original is a photo by Alfred Stieglitz (who threw the piece away) taken for the magazine, multiple authorized reproductions from the 1960s are in major collections around the world.

Photograph by Ben Blackwell/Robert Rauschenberg Foundation/San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

five. Robert Rauschenberg, "Erased De Kooning," 1953

In some means, Robert Rauschenberg's "Erased De Kooning" presaged Banksy's cocky-destructing painting. Only in the case of the 1953 drawing, the creative person decided the original artwork must be important on its own. "When I just erased my own drawings, information technology wasn't art notwithstanding," Rauschenberg told SFMoMA in 1999. So he called upon the nearly revered modern artist of the twenty-four hour period, the mercurial abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning, who, later some disarming, gave the younger artist a drawing with a mix of grease pencil art and charcoal that took Rauschenberg two months to erase. It took about a decade for give-and-take of the slice to spread, when it was met with a mix of wonder (Was this a young genius usurping the master?) and cloy (Is it vandalism?). Ane person not especially impressed was de Kooning himself, who later on told a reporter he initially found the idea "corny," and who some say resented that such an intimate interaction between artists had been shared with the public.

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6. Yoko Ono, "Cut Piece," 1964 / Marina Abramovic, "Rhythm 0," 1974

As performance fine art emerged as an artistic exercise in the postwar years, the art form often pushed toward provocation and even danger. In Yoko Ono's "Cut Piece," a 1964 operation, the artist invited the audience to take a pair of scissors and cut off a piece of her wearable every bit she saturday motionless and silent. "People were so shocked they did not talk about information technology," she afterward recalled.

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Ten years later, Marina Abramovic unknowingly revisited the concept with "Rhythm 0," in which the creative person provided the audience with 72 objects to do what they "desired." Along with scissors, Abramovic offered a range of tools: a rose, a feather, a whip, a scalpel, a gun, a bullet, a slice of chocolate cake. Over the course of the six-hour performance, the audience became more than and more fierce, with one drawing blood from her neck ("I nevertheless have the scars," she has said) and another holding the gun to her head, igniting a fight even within the gallery ("I was ready to dice"). The audience bankrupt out in a fight over how far to take things, and the moment the operation concluded, Abramovic recalled, everyone ran away to avert confronting what had happened. Since and then, Abramovic has been called the godmother of performance fine art, with her often-physically-extreme piece of work continuing to polarize viewers and critics alike.

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7. Judy Chicago, "The Dinner Party," 1974–79

With her "Dinner Party," Judy Chicago gear up out to advocate for the recognition of women throughout history—and concluded up making art history herself. A complex installation with hundreds of components, the piece is an imagined banquet featuring 39 women from throughout mythology and history—Sojourner Truth, Sacajawea, and Margaret Sanger amongst them—each represented at the table with a place setting, almost all of which depict stylized vulvas. With its mix of anatomical imagery and craft techniques, the work was dubbed vulgar and kitschy by critics, and it was speedily satirized by a counter-exhibition honoring women of "dubious distinction." Merely despite the detractors, the piece is now seen as a landmark in feminist art, on permanent brandish at the Brooklyn Museum.

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8. Maya Lin, "Vietnam Veterans Memorial," completed 1982

Maya Lin was only 21 when she won the commission that would launch her career—and a national contend. Her design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was chosen by a blind jury, who had no idea the winning designer was an architecture student. While the proposed design fit all the requirements, including the incorporation of 58,000 names of soldiers who never returned from the war, its minimalist, understated course—two black granite slabs that ascent out of the earth in a "5," like a "wound that is closed and healing," Lin has said—was immediately field of study to political contend by those who felt it didn't properly heroize the soldiers information technology honors. One veteran called the design a "black gash of shame," and 27 Republican congressmen wrote to President Ronald Reagan demanding the design not be built. But Lin advocated for her vision, testifying earlier Congress about the intention backside the piece of work. Ultimately information technology came down to a compromise, when a runner-upwards entry in the competition featuring three soldiers was added nearby to complete the tribute (a flag and Women'south Memorial were also added after). Every bit the altitude from the war has grown, criticism of the memorial has faded.

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9. Ai Weiwei, "Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn," 1995

Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei is one of art's most provocative figures, and his do oft calls into question ideas of value and consumption. In 1995 the artist nodded to Duchamp with "Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn," a piece he called a "cultural readymade." As the title implies, the work consisted of dropping, and thus destroying, a 2,000-year-quondam formalism urn. Not only did the vessel have considerable monetary value (Ai reportedly paid several hundred thousand dollars for it), but it was also a potent symbol of Chinese history. The willful desecration of an celebrated artifact was decried as unethical by some, to which the artist replied past quoting Mao Zedong, "the only way of building a new world is by destroying the former one." Information technology's an thought Ai returns to, painting a similar vessel with the Coca Cola logo or bright processed colors as people debate whether he's using 18-carat antiquities or fakes. Either way, his provocative torso of piece of work has inspired other acts of destruction—similar when a visitor to a Miami exhibition of Ai's work smashed a painted vessel in an illegal act of protestation that mirrored the Ai's own.

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10. Chris Ofili, "The Holy Virgin Mary," 1996

It'southward hardly shocking that an exhibition chosen "Sensation" caused a stir, just that'due south just what happened when it opened in London in 1997 with a number of controversial works by the so-called Young British Artists: Marcus Harvey'southward painting of killer Myra Hindley, Damien Hirst'due south shark-in-formaldehyde sculpture, a installation past Tracey Emin titled "Anybody I Take Ever Slept With (1963–1995)," and Marc Quinn's cocky portrait sculpture made of blood. When the bear witness hitting the Brooklyn Museum two years after, it was "The Holy Virgin Mary," a Madonna by Chris Ofili that earned the near scorn. The glittering collage independent pornographic magazine clippings and hunks of resin-coated elephant dung, which media outlets erroneously reported was "splattered" beyond the piece. New York mayor Rudy Giuliani threatened to pull the city's $7 million grant for the prove, calling the exhibition "ill stuff," while religious leaders and celebrities joined the protests on contrary sides. Two decades afterwards, Ofili's controversial painting has earned a identify in the arc of art history—and in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

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Source: https://www.history.com/news/most-controversial-art-in-history

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