Art and Outrage

by Walker, John Albert

• ISBN13: 9780745313597
• ISBN10: 0745313590
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-01-01
• Publisher: Pluto Pr

Summary

When art hits the headlines, it is usually because it has caused offence or is perceived by the media to have shock-value. Over the last fifty years many artists have been censored, vilified, accused of blasphemy and obscenity, threatened with violence, prosecuted and even imprisoned. Their work has been trashed by the media and physically attacked by the public. In Art & Outrage, John A. Walker covers the period from the late 1940s to the 1990s to provide the first detailed survey of the most prominent cases of art that has scandalised. The work of some of Britain's leading, and less well known, painters and sculptors of the postwar period is considered, such as Richard Hamilton, Bryan Organ, Rachel Whiteread, Reg Butler, Damien Hirst, Jamie Wagg, Barry Flanagan and Antony Gormley. Included are works made famous by the media, such as Carl Andre's Tate Gallery installation of 120 bricks, Rick Gibson's foetus earrings, Anthony-Noel Kelly's cast body-parts sculptures and Marcus Harvey's portrait of Myra Hindley. Walker describes how each incident emerged, considers the arguments for and against, and examines how each was concluded. While broadly sympathetic to radical contemporary art, Walker has some residual sympathy for the layperson's bafflement and antagonism. This is a scholarly yet accessible study of the interface between art, society and mass media which offers an alternative history of postwar British art and attitudes.

Author Biography

John A Walker recently retired as Reader in Art and Design History at Middlesex University. The author of a number of books on art theory and aspects of popular culture, his previous Pluto titles are Cultural Offensive: America's Impact on British Art since 1945, Art in the Age of Mass Media and Design History and the History of Design.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction	p. 1
1949: Munnings and Modern Art	p. 23
1951: Gear and Abstraction	p. 27
1953: The Cold War Monument That Was Never Built	p. 32
1958: The Strange Case of William Green	p. 37
1966: Art and Destruction	p. 42
1967: Swingeing London	p. 47
1971: The Catfish Controversy	p. 52
1972: Modern Sculpture Vandalised to Destruction	p. 57
1973: Womanpower Exhibition Provokes Strong Reactions	p. 62
1974: The Oak Tree That Looked Like a Glass of Water	p. 68
1976: Bricks and Brickbats	p. 73
1976: Pole-carrying Performance Arouses Derision	p. 79
1976: Can Dirty Nappies Be Art?	p. 83
1976: From Shock Art to Shock Rock	p. 88
1977: Hayward Annual Exhibition Savaged by Critics and a TV Journalist	p. 94
1979: The Arts Council, Censorship and the Lives Exhibition	p. 98
1979: Morgan's Wall: the Destruction of a Community Mural	p. 105
1980: Performers Jailed for Wearing 'Rude' Costumes	p. 110
1981: Portrait of Lady Di Attacked	p. 113
1983-96: The War of Little Sparta	p. 118
1983: The Destruction of Polaris	p. 123
1984: Rape Picture 'Too Disturbing'	p. 128
1984: Attack on 'Porno-Art' in Leeds	p. 134
1986-87: Art, Money and the Bank of England	p. 138
1986: Erotic or Sexist Art?	p. 144
1987-89: The Case of the Foetus Earrings	p. 149
1988: Nude Painting Deemed Too Rude for Royal Eyes	p. 155
1992: British Gulf War Painting Accused of Anti-Americanism	p. 159
1993: The House That Was No longer a Home	p. 164
1993-94: Outsiders Seek to Outrage the Art World	p. 170
1993: The Artist Who Adores Little Girls	p. 176
1994: Hirst's Lamb Vandalised	p. 181
1994: Painting of Rape Too Brutal for Imperial War Museum	p. 187
1994: Child Murder - A Suitable Subject for Art?	p. 192
1996: Perversity and Pleasure - The Art of Dinos and Jake Chapman	p. 197
1996: Punishing a Graffiti Artist	p. 202
1997: A 'Sick, Disgusting, Evil, Hideous' Portrait of Myra Hindley	p. 207
1998: An Angel Descends on the North and Divides the Community	p. 214
1998: Sculptor found Guilty of Stealing Body Parts	p. 221
Notes	p. 227
Index	p. 245
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