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Even though I don't consider myself an artist (I'd have to get, you know, money for it,) I do enjoy art. I'm kind of like that guy who watches ESPN all the time and plays on the company softball team. (So... I'm like my dad, only pre-ALS. And with art.)

I like to go to museums and find out weird historical stuff like the symbolic importance of the 'Phrygian Cap' during the Revolutionary war, or staring at old vases and wondering what the people who owned them were like, or joyfully noting something interesting, like that a Persian plate has a Chinese-style drawing on it. I like reading comics as art and looking at buildings and architecture as art (unfortunately, architecture as art seems to have a habit of ******** up architecture as a place for humans to do stuff.) I like looking at book covers and thinking about graphic design.

And it occured to me, while wandering around the museum yesterday (shortly after thinking yet again that Roman art is not simply derivative of Greek art and that it really is both its own thing and the completion of things begun in Greek art; that it really is awesome in its own way,) that there seems to be very little room for being 'outrageous' or 'new' or 'different' in art.

I don't mean that art can't outrage the common public. That is trivially simple. "Look I took Jesus and put breasts on him and made him! And he's ******** Mary Magdelin!" Yeah, that took all of two seconds to think up. Hell, the regular public still thinks nudity is shocking, when nudity has been going on the art world since... Well, how far back does the archeological record go? The Venus of whatever it's called?

Nudity isn't shocking in art. Ho-hum. Neither is pretty much anything involving religious iconography. Teehee it's heresy. Hell, even the idea of breaking artistic molds is gone--back in the day, folks like Picasso were greeted with a general 'WTF'. Today, being a weirdo is celebrated in art.

So celebrated, in fact, that I'd almost wager that it is impossible to be a weirdo in art. Draw cartoons? That's fine! Art has a place for you. Like to draw multi-colored penises? People will love you! Design funky buildings which are impossible to navigate efficiently? Here, have a million bucks! Draw pictures with your own excerement? Wow, you sure are avant-garde.

It seems a situation which is both bad and good--bad because the artist wants to be outrageous and can't, but good because so many things wich once were not accepted as art now are. The world of art has saturated the every-day world in a way which would have been unimaginable to the average person 100 or 200 years ago. And as our notions and concepts of art have expanded, the scope of what is 'new' or 'outrageous' has narrowed.

What's left? Where can we go from here? Is anything still new? Is anything actually shocking anymore, or are we left playing the same tricks over and over again on the unsuspecting public? And is this actually a bad thing?

I don't buy that.

Really, the only thing I can think of which would be 'shocking' right now is a bunch of giant paintings of child rape. That might even shock the art community.

Remember, we're not talking about shocking the general public. That's trivial. Show them a 2.5thousand year old Greek vase and we've got that covered.

I saw a major CD cover with the artist's semen and blood on it. So not only has it been done, it's been commercialized.


I was thinking last night that racism might be shocking to the art world. If someone did a bunch of paintings which were nothing but racist steroetypes (from all directions) that might be shocking...

Messages against racism, sure. But what about art glorifying racism? Art that says, "this is a racist stereotype, and it's cool!" Then throw in a few small children being raped, and I think you might actually be able to shock the art world--or at least make it feel uncomfortable and try to avoid you.

Why am I suddenly reminded of the movie "Bamboozled"?

Great movie, by the way.

Hmm....I will definetely take this into consideration. Would you happen to have pictures or links to said pieces?