Artistic Transgression Has Become So Very Boring

By Itxu Díaz

Sunday, May 21, 2023

 

There was a time when anything viral had to be handled with medication, rest, and a good-faith effort not to infect others. Then came the 21st century, and we decided to eliminate its derogatory meaning. It’s trendy to be viral, even if that means scandalous, and people pay a lot of money to achieve this. Novelty, however, is starting to feel like tedium — especially in the art world, where “contemporary” too often trumps the word that follows it.

 

The great artistic conquest of postmodernism is transgression; the more viral, the more scandalous, the more successful. And the ploy descends into self-parody. Recently, progressive-minded functionaries decided to put on an art exhibition in the European Parliament — and, yes, you guessed it, it is not Velázquez, not Bernini, not even Warhol. It is a collection of photographs in which Jesus appears surrounded by homosexual and transgender apostles, some dressed as sadomasochists. It scores points among a certain crowd for sticking it to devout Christians, as if the Romans hadn’t already invented the practice.

 

And who is Elisabeth Ohlson, the artist? Until age 38, despite being a good photographer, the Swedish artist had led a discreet career. So discreet that there was no chance you would have heard of her. But then she realized she could make a living effortlessly, instead of eking out a living shooting weddings and graduation ceremonies. She was right. So, in 1998, Ohlson, a lesbian, decided to create her exhibition Ecce Homo (part of which is now on display at the European Parliament). As a work of art, the show itself was about as suggestive as an IRS inspection, but it had something that skyrocketed Ohlson’s popularity: scandal. It went viral. Since then, she has done nothing but recreate religious scenes with homosexual content. Twenty-five years of nonstop transgressing.

 

The idea from leftist MEPs was to generate a big scandal, but the truth is that the only thing it has provoked in me is a yawn; as for the artist, I fear that at the Final Judgment she will be held accountable for being tedious, more than for being blasphemous.

 

This world is already home to more works of art featuring drag queens, gay porn, bananas stuck to the wall with duct tape, urine, semen, or blood than there are people capable of being shocked by it. Perhaps the only way to produce something truly transgressive today is to photograph a large family, with a normal, non-drug-addicted father and mother, and seven or eight cute children who look like they were not mistreated. Or to painstakingly paint something, with style and depth and technique.

 

The only transgressive artist who has done something intelligent and coherent is Damien Hirst, who decided to burn 6,000 of his works as part of an art project. You may remember Hirst; he’s the guy who became famous in the ’90s for exhibiting a shark in formaldehyde and adding a pretentious title to the work: The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. The only problem is that the title would work just as well if, instead of a shark in formaldehyde, Hirst had offered the museum some sausages sizzling in a deep fryer. I hope I haven’t given Ohlson any ideas.

 

Half of the viral art disease would be solved if artists would turn their eyes to John Keats: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty — that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” Far from this, I read that Ohlson aims to awaken deep reflections through her work, and I, who have contemplated Ecce Homo in order to write this piece, admit that it has awakened in me a very deep reflection: Why?

 

When P. J. O’Rourke walked Moscow’s Arbat Street, he wrote: “There are artists with palettes and easels selling the kind of modern art that Soviet art critics used to critique with bulldozers. Judging by the paintings I saw, the Soviets were right the first time.” But at least those guys lived on their money and exhibited in any old slum. None of them would think of exhibiting in the European Parliament, where today, no doubt, there are plenty of boomer politicians trying their hand at provocation — and a few bulldozers would come in handy.