Shock Art - Select Notable Examples

Select Notable Examples

• Fountain, a urinal placed on exhibit by Marcel Duchamp, a pioneer of the form, in 1917. In 2004, Fountain was selected in a survey of 500 artists and critics as "the most influential work of modern art".
• Orgies of Mystery Theatre, by Hermann Nitsch, a display of music and dance in the midst of "dismembered animal corpses", at 1966's Destruction in Art Symposium.
• Shoot, a 1971 performance piece by Chris Burden in which friend shot him in the arm with a .22 calibre gun from a distance of 3.5 metres (11 ft).
• The Dinner Party, a 1979 exhibit by Judy Chicago in which table place settings are set as for a dinner party of famous women. The piece was controversial and labeled shock art because of its inclusion of iconic "butterflies" at each setting representative of the vulva.
• Piss Christ, 1987, by Andres Serrano a photograph of a crucifix submerged in the artist's own urine.
• Artist Rick Gibson made a pair of earrings with freeze-dried human fetuses (Human Earrings - 1987), publicly ate a slice of human tonsil (A Cannibal in Walthamstow - 1988) and human testicle (A Cannibal in Vancouver - 1989) and proposed to make a diptych with a squashed rat (Sniffy the Rat - 1990).
• The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1992), a dead tiger shark preserved in a glass and steel tank of formaldehyde by Damien Hirst has been grouped in the category of shock art, but also criticised as an unoriginal product of "shock tactics" and not "real art".
• 12 Square Meters, a 1994 performance art display by Zhang Huan in Beijing wherein Huan "lathered his nude body in honey and fish oil" and exposed himself to "swarming flies and insects".
• In 1996 Gottfried Helnwein painted the Adoration of the Magi with Adolf Hitler as Baby Jesus, which was displayed at the State Russian Museum St. Petersburg, the Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Denver Art Museum, Museum Ludwig and others.
• Myra, (1997) a portrait of murderer Myra Hindley constructed of children's handprints, by Marcus Harvey.
• The Holy Virgin Mary, a black Virgin Mary, with elephant dung, before a background of pornography, by Chris Ofili.
• My Bed, a 1998 work by Tracey Emin consisting of the artist's bed covered with soiled bedsheets and surrounded by debris including mentrual-stained underwear.
• Helena: The Goldfish Blender, a 2000 display of live goldfish in blenders which viewers were invited to turn on, by Marco Evaristti.
• Hell, a 2000 sculpture by Jake and Dinos Chapman featuring nine nightmarish landscapes displaying thousands of hand-painted cast miniature figures of Nazis.
• In 2007, Mark McGowan ate a Corgi in London to protest fox hunting by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
• Forget Me Knot: In 2012, Sruli Recht documented a one off surgery/performance during which a plastic surgeon removed a 110mm x 10mm strip of skin from his abdomen while he was awake. The piece of skin with the hair was tanned and mounted to a 24kt gold ring.