1. British Artist Damien Hirst and His Dead Animal Exhibition
Hirst became infamous (and the richest living artist) for a series in which dead animals, including a cow cut in half, a shark, a pig and a sheep,are preserved—sometimes having been dissected—in formaldehyde.
2."Piss Christ" by U.S. Artist Andres Serrano
It shows a picture of a crucifix supporting the body of Jesus Christ submerged in a glass jar of the artist's urine. In 1989, this piece caused a scandal with detractors accusing Serrano of blasphemy and others raising this as a major issue of artistic freedom.
It shows a picture of a crucifix supporting the body of Jesus Christ submerged in a glass jar of the artist's urine. In 1989, this piece caused a scandal with detractors accusing Serrano of blasphemy and others raising this as a major issue of artistic freedom.
3. "Holy Virgin Mary" Painting by Chris Ofili
This painting was part of the Sensation Exhibition, at the Museum of Art in New York on December 16, 1999 that caused a great deal of controversy for using elephant dung and pornographic images in a picture of the Virgin Mary. The Catholic Church, as well as New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani found the exhibit as morally offensive and threatened to cut off funding to the museum and terminate its lease if it did not cancel the exhibit that included Ofili’s painting.
This painting was part of the Sensation Exhibition, at the Museum of Art in New York on December 16, 1999 that caused a great deal of controversy for using elephant dung and pornographic images in a picture of the Virgin Mary. The Catholic Church, as well as New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani found the exhibit as morally offensive and threatened to cut off funding to the museum and terminate its lease if it did not cancel the exhibit that included Ofili’s painting.
4. American Photographer Robert Mapplethorpe's Sexuality and Obscenity
Mapplethorpe was known for his large-scale black and white portraits, naked men and photos of flowers. Homosexual eroticism of some of the work of his middle period triggered a more general controversy about the public funding of artworks.
Mapplethorpe was known for his large-scale black and white portraits, naked men and photos of flowers. Homosexual eroticism of some of the work of his middle period triggered a more general controversy about the public funding of artworks.
5. Tilted Arc by Richard Serra
Titled Arc was a sculpture made of curving wall of raw steel, 120 feet long and 12 feet high, that carved the space of the Federal Plaza New York, NY in half, and constructed in 1981, and after much debate dismantled in 1989. 
This Czech artist's work always tends to be controversial. He gained notoriety in 1991 for painting a Soviet tank pink that was used as a war memorial in central Prague, for which he was arrested. Several of his pieces were censored when he launched them, including an image of Saddam Hussein in a tank of formaldehyde.
7. Surrounded "Pink" Islands, Biscayne Bay, Miami, Florida, 1980-1983 by Christo and Jean-Claude
Christo and Jean-Claude used 6.5 million square feet of floating pink fabric to encircle eleven islands in Miami’s Biscayne Bay. Surrounding Islands required the help of hundreds of people, engineers, contractors, seamstresses, as well as extensive consultations with marine ornithologists and biologists.
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This article was written by Vera Djonovic, Director of Customer Relations at VandM.com
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1 comments:
Some points to consider: this posits a timeline that makes the choices presumptuous in the extreme. If it were really 2 centuries (instead of four decades) this lovely blog would be hamstrung by blogosoporific academia that would keep the audience to whom the title would most appeal efficiently at bay. So let's append it to the last 40 years (or 50 just to include Diane Arbus) but if you don't, it would hardly be difficult to make this an even 10. Joseph Beuys, like Christo, Mapplethorpe, and Cerny would be hard to distill into one key outrage, but then this list vacillates between art and artist as lightning rod anyway. That would be the case with Banksy as well - where we see institutional outrage (from the Arts, the Establishment, and the City Beautiful Movement (kidding.) Almost everyone except those most easily offended by modern art. More along the Piss Christ trajectory would have to be Wim Delvoye's Cloaca which really wins the award for most controversial by offending not only those offended by the rest of the list but by the art community and academics alike by being profitable... through duplication and through sales of the piece's output. Retail is never pretty.
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