Hugging a Porcupine: Transgression and Timing

When I think about the role of transgression in artmaking, I usually find myself harkening back to the prodding of the bourgeoisie that began in earnest in the late 19th Century in Paris. What a courageous gang of heroes they were, no? Calling society on its excesses, championing free will and progressive ideals, telling the Academy where to stick its musty traditions. Bold young rebel rousers...whose works today just happen to sell for enough money to feed millions of starving children, or buy needed AIDS drugs, or build a dozen schools, but...nevermind the money...it's all about the in-your-face daring of the singular artist willing to challenge the establishment and speak the Truth! What it generally takes me a few moments to realize when daydreaming about these romantic martyrs is that although we love them today (and pay fortunes to own their works), they were truly despised in their time, and have no one to blame for that but themselves.

The thing is, transgressive art, by design, pisses people off. The conventional wisdom, at least in the art world, is that it only pisses off the people who need to rethink their position, but even so, transgressive art intentionally pushes buttons, if not the envelope, and tells the viewer, every viewer, in fact: THINK MY WAY. Which in some ways is what all art does, but non-transgressive art does it more subtely.

What bothers me about the tradition of transgressive art, though, is how it has evolved to where too many transgressive artist expect, rather than to be despised in their time, to instead be appreciated, if not loved. This seems unrealistic, cowardly, and unaltruistic...essentially, the opposite of everything we celebrate transgressive artists in the the past for being.

The New York Times Magazine focused on the state of architecture last Sunday, offering a tone-setting commetary by Deyan Sudjic on why architecture remains perhaps the only form of expression that still has the power to really piss people off. How the commentary began, however, solidified my thinking about transgression in Fine Art a bit:

Painting and sculpture still have the power to make people intemperately angry, as former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's outrage over Chris Ofili's distinctive ways with elephant dung and canvas vividly demonstrated not so long ago. But after a century or more of twisting the bourgeoisie by the tail, the cultural shock tactics of visual artists are subject to the inevitability of diminishing returns.

There's a lot in there. First is the idea that when the culture at large expects artists to be shocking, the artists have to be extra-super-duper shocking to be actually transgressive. Second is the idea that there are diminishing returns on being trangressive, which I interpret as meaning a) artists should be prepared for a backlash; and b) artists won't actually affect change through transgression as the public becomes immune to its power. Finally, there's also the questionable assertion that artists are not bourgeoisie themselves...that there's a built-in dichotomy/antagonism that strikes me as more and more anachronistic.

But let me back up. Traditionally, the transgressive artist was subject to a timeline that goes something like this: Once there was an artist who recognized an ingrained social injustice or hypocrisy. He/She made art that shocked the public out of its complacency about the issue. The public responded with outrage, a double-edge sword in that it can result in opening people's minds or it can result in the artist be attacked....often both. It's important to remember that the angry people were seriously angry and felt true animosity toward the artist. The artist is called names, shunned, taunted or worse. Eventually, though, a debate was initiated, in part because of the artwork, and attitudes changed. A few generations later, the artist was recongized as a element of change for good, and got absorbed into the list of lovable favorites.

Today, however, I see a desire for a short-cut through this. In other words, I see otherwise realistic aritsts who find transgression the best means of expressing an idea expecting that he/she will become beloved in his/her lifetime for telling the Truth in such an in-your-face way. This is somewhat understandable in that they do get incredible support from the art machine (dealers, curators, collectors), many of whom tend to assume that a societal critique doesn't apply to them personally, so they create an environment in which an artist gets lulled into a false sense of acceptance by "society" for their transgression. It's further complicated by the politically correct stance adopted by the vast majority of the art world as well (of course, the critique doesn't apply to me...I'm enlightened).

But what this implies in the end is that transgression has become merely a means toward acceptance, which is a paradox of Biblical proportions, IMO, not to mention a tactic that demands a new word for cynicism. And, yet, that tactic is not particularly new. What's new, I feel, is the idea that transgression and the artist should be embraced immediately. (Images of hugging a porcupine spring to mind.) Freedom of expression has somehow morphed into an implied freedom to be transgressive, which neuters the whole concept quite effectively. If you're free to say anything (i.e, there are no boundaries), there's no such thing as transgression and the tactic loses its effectiveness.

I'll admit my thinking on this is in its infancy. I look forward to any input.