Research - Transgression And Taste

Transgressive art aims to outrage or violate basic morals and sensibilities. The term transgressive was first used in this sense by American filmmaker Nick Zedd and his Cinema of Transgression in 1985. From an academic perspective, many traces of transgression can be found in any art considered offensive because of its shock value; from the French Salon des Refusés artists to Dada and Surrealism. Philosophers Mikhail Bakhtin and Georges Bataille have published works on the nature of transgression. Transgressional works share some themes with art that deals with psychological dislocation and mental illness.

Transgressive art refers to art that attempts to push boundaries. In an effort at social critique, transgressive artists often use shocking themes and images. Robert Mapplethorpe is one such artist.

Another transgressive artist is Andres Serrano. Serrano worked with photographs and painting, and some of the themes he used were the Ku Klux Klan (like leads to his works related), gun violence, and religion. One of Serrano's most famous artistic series is a photographic series called Object of Desire. Here, Serrano explores themes such as life, death, and religion. One of the most famous photographs in this series is from the point of view of the photographer staring down the barrel of a gun.

Since the late 1990s, a new group of transgressive artists has emerged, such as the Canadian artist Rick Gibson who made a pair of earrings out of human fetuses (below) and ate a piece of human testicle.

During the 1984 exhibition of freeze-dried sculptures in London, an anatomy professor gave Gibson two dehydrated human fetuses. They were 10 weeks in development and had been dehydrated for 20 years. Gibson re-hydrated both fetuses, freeze-dried them and attached them as earrings to a female mannequin head. The sculpture was titled Human Earrings. They were exhibited at the Young Unknowns Gallery in south London in December 1987.

Another artist who uses transgression in their art is Stelarc (born Στέλιος Αρκαδίου Stelios Arcadiou in Limassol in 1946; legally changed his name in 1972), a Cyprus-born Australian performance artist raised in the Melbourne suburb of Sunshine, whose works focus heavily on extending the capabilities of the human body. As such, most of his pieces are centred on his concept that "the human body is obsolete". Until 2007 he held the position of principal research fellow in the Performance Arts Digital Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University in Nottingham, England. He is currently furthering his research at Curtin University in Western Australia.

Stelarc's idiosyncratic performances often involve robotics or other relatively modern technology integrated with his body. In 26 different performances, he has suspended himself in flesh hook suspension, often with one of his robotic inventions integrated. His last suspension performance was held in Melbourne in March 2012.

(Ear And Arm Suspension)