Is There Room for Scandal In Art Today?

When artists like Ana Mendieta, Valie Export, Mary Beth Edelson, Ewa Partum, Carolee Schneemann, and Hannah Wilke created work during the feminist art movement, they pioneered art that shocked, repulsed, and made the spectator uncomfortable. In her performance piece, S.O.S. Starification Object Series (1975), Hannah Wilke provided visitors with colored gum, instructed them to chew the pieces, and then hand them back. Wilke would then shape the pieces into the shape of labia and adhere them to her body, which was naked at the top. The accompanying photographic series (1974-1982) was intentionally created to address the repugnance and gratification that developed from viewing the piece. 

In her 1971 piece Lipstick Pictures, Ewa Partum mouthed specific letters and took prints of her lips as they moved, referencing female genitalia. Even as recently as 1996 with Renée Cox’s Yo Mama’s Last Supper (1996), which depicted a reimagining of Leonardo da Vinci’s celebrated mural, The Last Supper (c. 1495-1498). In it, she replaces the image of Jesus commonly seen at the center with a nude Black woman surrounded by Black male disciplines. They all shocked viewers with their scandalous and provocative work that also confronted social inequalities and issues like sexism, racism, and sexual violence, but looking at work that’s been created since, with so many endeavoring to gain notoriety in and outside of art, can the same be said?  

In 2020, sculptors like Luciano Garbati and Maggi Hambling echoed the work of Wilde and Partum and displayed sculptures depicting historically renowned women. Garbati ‘s Medusa With the Head of Perseus (2008) portrayed Medusa holding Perseus head and positioned across the New York Country Criminal Court. Claire Selvins writes that this was meant to symbolize justice for women in the wake of the #metoo movement but that many in and outside the art world questioned whether amale artist should be provided with the space to confront this topic. In London, Hambling’s nude figure portrayed Mary Wollstonecraft and was supposed to illustrate the everywoman. While a statue of a woman was a rarity in the city, its lack of clothing shocked spectators who could not comprehend why the statues dedicated to men were fully clothed, and this one seemed to objectify Wollstonecraft. In both these instances, while the intention was to add to the crucial discourses surrounding the #metoo movement with Garbati’s sculpture and show support for all women, they were somewhat flawed in approach and realization.

The history of nude bodies in art dates back to antiquity when figures like Aphrodite were depicted in sculptures. Jean Sorabella writes that the representation of the female nude in art during this period was meant to “embody the divinity of procreation.” Images of the nude female body have historically been depictions of what was considered the ideal body, the ideal figure. Since, the portrayal of the female nude body in art has changed, from Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus (1480s), to Gustave Coubert’s The Origin of the World (1866), to the artists whose paintings strayed from the realistic figures of the past, choosing instead to adopt an abstract approach, but all viewed as scandalous. 

While these caused scandals, compared to Diego Velázquez’s The Toilet Venus (The Rokeby Venus), 1647-1651, they have survived intact. Alina Cohen writes that Velázquez completed his painting during a period in which the Catholic Church discouraged female nudity in paintings, indicating that a member of the nobility most likely commissioned the painting. In the painting, we encounter a female figure with her back turned to us, with her buttocks the focal point. As Cohen writes, this pose made it impossible for Venus to “respond or react to onlookers.” In 1914, the lack of bodily autonomy Venus possessed, compounded with the recent arrest of fellow feminist Emmeline Pankhurst, motivated Canadian suffragette Mary Richardson to enter the National Gallery in London and slash the painting. After her arrest, she proclaimed, “I have tried to destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the Government for destroying Mrs. Pankhurst.” Not only was the painting labeled scandalous, but the vandalism perpetrated is proof of how one scandal leads to another. 

Throughout the early 20th century, the nude female figure continued to be represented in art through a male gaze. I opine that it was not until the feminist art movement, beginning in the 1960s and during which women were finally being acknowledged for their contributions to the art canon, that the portrayal of the female figure was viewed from the perspective of women. Women artists challenged the roles society forced on them that reduced them to stereotypes, their sexualization in and outside of art, and confronted the sexism and violence of which they were casualties. Given the context of their work, it was often seen as shocking. 

But looking at the artwork of feminist artists of the 1970s and that of Cox in a 2022 frame, are we still shocked? More importantly, is the thought-provoking art of the past concerned with addressing social justice issues still being created today? Take, for example, the portrayal of the female body in art. One could argue that the sight of the female body presented in such a public forum, which is typically expected to be kept private lest it is stereotyped, is startling, but is it still considered a scandal? I would posit that although there is currently a movement to center women’s bodies outside of a sexualized frame, art today that centers the body may be viewed as outrageous but solely for having a nude body, not for what it is attempting to convey or argue for/against.  

The images and performances we are barraged with via television, film, and social media have desensitized us to the point of being unable to regard scandalous art as something shocking, instead viewing it in a subdued manner. Or maybe, it just forces us to adjust our understanding of what accounts for scandal within art today. I’m not arguing that there isn’t art being created today that can be construed as scandalous, as we can see in images by creatives like Helmut Newton. What I am arguing, though, is that art like this seems to lack the urgency and weight of work like Cox and the feminist artists of the past. While maybe aesthetically pleasing, they contain scandal just for scandal’s sake.  

Artists like Dominican-born Joiri Minaya, who examine the experiences of living and existing within two cultures, and Amy Sherald, who documents the African American experiences, have decidedly picked up the mantle of addressing these societal issues we continue to reckon with. And while they may not be as ostentatious or blatantly provocative as those that came before them, they call attention to the realities outside of the artwork. They are rooted in a similar fundamental need to push against society and the structures that continue to marginalize and injure those that have been othered.