Created a Series of Paintings Titled the Women That Caused Controversy in the Art World

Artists throughout history take never shied away from controversy—in fact, many fifty-fifty try to court infamy. (Demand proof? Only look at Banksy, the anonymous street artist who recently created a work that self-destructed the moment it was sold at auction—for a whopping $one.37 million.) While it'southward up to critics and historians to debate technique and creative merit, there are some works of art that shocked most people who saw them. From paintings accounted too lewd, too rude or also gory for their fourth dimension to acts of so-called desecration and powerful political statements, these are some of the most controversial artworks ever created.

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

Some 25 years afterward 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 Second 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 style with which Michelangelo painted Jesus (beardless and in the Classic style of pagan mythology). Merely most shocking of all were the painting'southward 300 figures, generally male and mostly nude. In a move called a fig-foliage campaign, $.25 of fabric and flora were later painted over the offending anatomy, some of which were afterward removed as part of a 20th century restoration.

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

Baroque painter Caravaggio's life may be more controversial than any of his work, given the fact that he died in exile after existence accused of murder. But his unconventionally humanistic approach to his religious commissions certainly raised eyebrows in his day. In the at present-lost painting "St. Matthew and the Affections," created for the Contarelli Chapel in Rome, Caravaggio flipped convention by using a poor peasant as a model for the saint. Merely what upset critics the near were St. Matthew's dirty feet, which illusionistically seemed to jut from a canvass (a recurring visual trick for the artist), and the fashion the epitome implied him to be illiterate, equally though being read to by an angel. The work was ultimately rejected and replaced with "The Inspiration of St. Matthew," a like, yet more standard, depiction of the scene.

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3. 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'southward Jefferson Medical College. The realist painting puts the viewer in the center of a surgical amphitheater, where doctor Dr. Samuel Gross lectures students operating on a patient. But its matter-of-fact delineation of surgery was accounted too graphic, and the painting was rejected by the Philadelphia Centenary Exhibition (some blame the doctor's bloody hands, others argue it was the female person figure shielding her eyes that put it over the edge). However, a century later, the painting has finally been recognized as 1 of the dandy masterpieces of its time on both its artistic and scientific claim.

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iv. Marcel Duchamp "Fountain," 1917

When iconoclastic Marcel Duchamp anonymously submitted a porcelain urinal signed "R. Mutt 1917" every bit a "readymade" sculpture to the Society of Contained Artists, a group known to have whatsoever artist who could come up with the fee‚ the unthinkable happened: the piece was denied, even though Duchamp himself was a cofounder and board member of the grouping. Some even wondered if the slice was a hoax, but Dada periodical The Blind Man defended the urinal equally art because the artist chose it. The slice marked a shift from what Duchamp called "retinal," or purely visual, art to a more conceptual fashion of expression—sparking a dialogue that continues to this solar day about what actually constitutes a work of art. Though all that remains of the original is a photograph by Alfred Stieglitz (who threw the slice away) taken for the mag, 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

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

In some means, Robert Rauschenberg'due south "Erased De Kooning" presaged Banksy's self-destructing painting. Just in the example of the 1953 drawing, the creative person decided the original artwork must be important on its own. "When I only erased my own drawings, it wasn't art yet," Rauschenberg told SFMoMA in 1999. So he called upon the most revered modern artist of the day, the mercurial abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning, who, after some disarming, gave the younger creative person a drawing with a mix of grease pencil art and charcoal that took Rauschenberg two months to erase. Information technology took well-nigh a decade for word of the piece to spread, when it was met with a mix of wonder (Was this a young genius usurping the master?) and disgust (Is information technology vandalism?). One person not specially 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.

Ringlet to Continue

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

As performance art emerged every bit an artistic practice in the postwar years, the art grade often pushed toward provocation and even danger. In Yoko Ono'due south "Cutting Piece," a 1964 performance, the artist invited the audience to take a pair of scissors and cut off a slice of her clothing as she saturday motionless and silent. "People were and then shocked they did not talk virtually it," she after recalled.

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Ten years later, Marina Abramovic unknowingly revisited the concept with "Rhythm 0," in which the artist provided the audience with 72 objects to do what they "desired." Forth with scissors, Abramovic offered a range of tools: a rose, a plumage, a whip, a scalpel, a gun, a bullet, a slice of chocolate cake. Over the class of the 6-hr performance, the audience became more and more trigger-happy, with one drawing blood from her neck ("I still take the scars," she has said) and some other holding the gun to her head, igniting a fight even inside the gallery ("I was prepare to die"). The audience broke out in a fight over how far to have things, and the moment the performance ended, Abramovic recalled, anybody ran away to avoid against what had happened. Since and so, Abramovic has been called the godmother of performance art, with her frequently-physically-extreme piece of work standing to polarize viewers and critics akin.

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

With her "Dinner Party," Judy Chicago fix out to abet for the recognition of women throughout history—and concluded up making art history herself. A complex installation with hundreds of components, the slice is an imagined banquet featuring 39 women from throughout mythology and history—Sojourner Truth, Sacajawea, and Margaret Sanger among them—each represented at the table with a place setting, almost all of which draw 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 fine art, on permanent display at the Brooklyn Museum.

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

Maya Lin was just 21 when she won the commission that would launch her career—and a national contend. Her blueprint for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was chosen by a blind jury, who had no idea the winning designer was an architecture pupil. While the proposed design fit all the requirements, including the incorporation of 58,000 names of soldiers who never returned from the state of war, its minimalist, understated grade—ii black granite slabs that rise out of the globe in a "V," like a "wound that is closed and healing," Lin has said—was immediately subject to political fence past those who felt it didn't properly heroize the soldiers it honors. Ane veteran called the design a "black gash of shame," and 27 Republican congressmen wrote to President Ronald Reagan demanding the design not be congenital. But Lin advocated for her vision, testifying before Congress almost the intention backside the work. Ultimately it came down to a compromise, when a runner-up entry in the competition featuring iii soldiers was added nearby to complete the tribute (a flag and Women's Memorial were also added later). Every bit the altitude from the state of 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 fine art's near provocative figures, and his exercise often calls into question ideas of value and consumption. In 1995 the artist nodded to Duchamp with "Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn," a piece he chosen a "cultural readymade." As the title implies, the work consisted of dropping, and thus destroying, a 2,000-year-old ceremonial urn. Not only did the vessel have considerable monetary value (Ai reportedly paid several hundred grand dollars for information technology), but it was also a potent symbol of Chinese history. The willful desecration of an historic artifact was decried as unethical by some, to which the artist replied by quoting Mao Zedong, "the simply way of edifice a new world is past destroying the quondam one." It'south an idea Ai returns to, painting a similar vessel with the Coca Cola logo or bright candy colors as people debate whether he's using genuine antiquities or fakes. Either way, his provocative body of piece of work has inspired other acts of destruction—like when a visitor to a Miami exhibition of Ai'due south work smashed a painted vessel in an illegal act of protest that mirrored the Ai's ain.

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

It's hardly shocking that an exhibition chosen "Sensation" caused a stir, but that's simply what happened when information technology opened in London in 1997 with a number of controversial works past the so-called Young British Artists: Marcus Harvey'due south painting of killer Myra Hindley, Damien Hirst's shark-in-formaldehyde sculpture, a installation by Tracey Emin titled "Everyone I Have Ever Slept With (1963–1995)," and Marc Quinn'due south self portrait sculpture made of blood. When the show hit the Brooklyn Museum two years afterward, it was "The Holy Virgin Mary," a Madonna past Chris Ofili that earned the most scorn. The glittering collage contained pornographic magazine clippings and hunks of resin-coated elephant dung, which media outlets erroneously reported was "splattered" beyond the slice. New York mayor Rudy Giuliani threatened to pull the city'southward $7 meg grant for the show, calling the exhibition "sick stuff," while religious leaders and celebrities joined the protests on contrary sides. Two decades later, 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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