Aftershock

The Ethics of Contemporary Transgressive Art

Kieran Cashell

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780857731074
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Arte
• Subtopic: Historia del arte

Accused by the tabloid press of setting out to 'shock', controversial artworks are vigorously defended by art critics, who frequently downplay their disturbing emotional impact. This is the first book to subject contemporary art to a rigorous ethical exploration. It argues that, in favouring conceptual rather than emotional reactions, commentators actually fail to engage with the work they promote. Scrutinising notorious works by artists including Damien Hirst, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Richard Billingham, Marc Quinn, Sally Mann, Marcus Harvey, Hans Bellmer, Paul McCarthy, Tierney Gearon, and Tracey Emin, "Aftershock" insists on the importance of visceral, emotional and 'ethical' responses. Far from clouding our judgement, Cashell argues, shame, outrage or revulsion are the very emotions that such works set out to evoke. While also questioning the catch-all notion of 'transgression', this illuminating and controversial book neither jumps indiscriminately to the defence of shocking artworks nor dismisses them out of hand.

Kieran Cashell is Lecturer in Critical and Contextual Studies at the School of Art and Design, Limerick Institute of Technology.

‘Kieran Cashell discusses artists who use everything from soiled bed linens to blood to dead sharks in their works. Drawing on an impressive array of philosophical ideas, Cashell helps viewers tackle the messy details of art by Damien Hirst, Orlan, Marc Quinn, Tracey Emin, and more, as he provides a probing and subtle defence of the moral value of such recent “transgressive” art.’

Cynthia A. Freeland, Professor & Chair,

Department of Philosophy, University of Houston, Texas

AFTERSHOCK

THE ETHICS OF CONTEMPORARY TRANSGRESSIVE ART

KIERAN CASHELL

Published in 2009 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd

6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU

175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010

www.ibtauris.com

Distributed in the United States and Canada Exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan

175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010

Copyright © 2009 Kieran Cashell

The right of Kieran Cashell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, eletronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN 978 1 84511 524 1

eISBN 978 0 85773 107 4

A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available

Typeset by JCS Publishing Services Ltd, www.jcs-publishing.co.uk

For Rachel and Benjamin

with all my love

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

0 Introduction

The Incompatibility of Aesthetics and Contemporary Art

Transgression: The War Against Disinterestedness

The Ethics of Transgressive Art

1 Everybody Hates a Tourist

The Ethical Analysis of Contemporary Art

Disinterestedness and Cultural Tourism

The Ethical Evaluation of Art: Autonomism versus Moralism

A Difficult Case: Marc Quinn and Alison Lapper

Transgressive Art Meets the Autonomist–Moralist Model

Quinn and Lapper Revisited: A Contextualist Analysis

Conclusion

2 Carte Blanche

Marcus Harvey’s Myra

Preliminary Approaches to the Ethical Analysis of Myra

‘Suffer Little Children’: The Facts of the Case

Myra: Portrait of a Serial Killer

Postmodernism and the Absence of the Referent Thesis

Contextualist Ethical Analysis of Myra

Myra and Merited Response Theory

Conclusion

3 Atrocity Exhibition

Aesthetic Defences of the Work of Jake and Dinos Chapman

The Canonic Defence and the Chapmans’ Disasters of War

The Transgressive Defence of Transgressive Art

Hans Bellmer, Bataille and Authentic Transgression

The Trivial Pursuit of Psychoanalysis

Evaluation of Aesthetic Defences of Transgressive Art

Acknowledging the Immorality of the Chapmans’ Work

Contextualist Ethical Evaluation of Zygotic Acceleration

Conclusion

4 Fearless Speech

Tracey Emin’s Ethics of the Self

‘With Myself Always Myself Never Forgetting’: The Structure of Ethical Subjectivity

Exposure Without Reserve: Emotional Response and its Moral Significance

Shame: An Existential Analysis

Concluding Ethical Evaluation: Tracey Emin’s Fearless Speech

5 Horrorshow

The Transvaluation of Morality in the Work of Damien Hirst

Obscene Objects of Pleasurable Fascination

Non-Human Animals and Ethical Inclusion

Attending to the Other of the Animal: Art and the Ethics of Care

Exquisite Corpse: Death and the Sublime

Cognitive Immoralism

The Artistic Transvaluation of Morality

Aftershock: Tragic Sympathy and Meta-Ethical Significance

Conclusion

Notes

Further Reading

ILLUSTRATIONS

1 Richard Billingham, Ray’s A Laugh (Untitled)

2 Richard Billingham, Ray’s A Laugh (Untitled)

3 Marc Quinn, Alison Lapper Pregnant

4 Marc Quinn, Self

5 Marc Quinn, Self (detail)

6 Marcus Harvey, Myra

7 Myra Hindley, custodial photograph

8 Marcus Harvey, Dudley, Like What You See? Then Call Me

9 Marcus Harvey, Julie from Hull

10 Jake and Dinos Chapman, Zygotic Acceleration, Biogenetic De-sublimated Libidinal Model (enlarged x 1000)

11 Jake and Dinos Chapman, Great Deeds Against the Dead

12 Goya, Grande Hazaña con Meurtos

13 Tracey Emin, If I Could Just Go Back and Start Again

14 Tracey Emin, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995

15 Tracey Emin, My Bed

16 Tracey Emin, Why I Never Became a Dancer (1)

17 Tracey Emin, Why I Never Became a Dancer (2)

18 Damien Hirst, When Logics Die

19 Damien Hirst, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1)

20 Damien Hirst, Mother and Child Divided

21 Damien Hirst, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (2)

22 Damien Hirst, A Thousand Years

23 Damien Hirst, This Little Piggy Went to Market, This Little Piggy Stayed at Home

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my gratitude to several people whose assistance was invaluable to the realisation of this project. My former editor at I.B.Tauris, Susan Lawson, supported my proposal and her detailed commentary on the early states of the manuscript was crucial. Sara Macdonald and Sophie Greig at the White Cube Gallery, Annabel Fallon at the Saatchi Gallery, Maria Stathi at the Anthony Reynolds Gallery, and Robyn Katkhuda at Other Criteria secured permission to reproduce the images discussed in the book. Philippa Brewster, at I.B.Tauris, took up the project at a critical stage and, with the assistance of Victoria Nemeth, shepherded the project to its final publishable form. A particular word of thanks is due to Jessica Cuthbert-Smith for her forensic copy-editing, and to artists Marcus Harvey and Richard Billingham who personally gave me permission to reproduce their work in this book.

I would also like to acknowledge the help and encouragement of my colleagues, John Scaggs, Alice Bendinelli, Brian Coates and Dara Waldron. I sincerely thank Professor Christopher Norris and Professor Daniela Carpi for their mentoring assistance; thanks also to Professor Cynthia Freeland for reading and commenting on the final draft. Projects like this would be unfeasible without the support of family and friends; and I want to take this opportunity to extend very special (and long overdue) thanks to Pat and Anne Cashell.

But in acknowledgement of the exceptional debt of gratitude I owe to Rachel and to Benjamin (who was born during the red-eye period of writing), I dedicate this book to them.

Finally, as the sole author of this work, I remain responsible for any errors or omissions that may have escaped detection, and for this I apologise in advance.

That coming autumn, the Royal Academy wo...

Table of contents

• CONTENTS
• ILLUSTRATIONS