Art is defined as something that is created with imagination and expresses important ideas or feelings. Yet, are artists limited in their creativity and expression of ideas to fit within the confines of appropriateness? Are artists becoming more provocative and disregarding decency in order to gain notoriety?
This isn't anything new, however. Art is supposed to capture the viewers attention, whether it's the oohs and aahs or boos and hisses. If art makes a group of people talk, then the artist's goal has been met.
Examples of highly provocative art includes: D. W. Griffith's highly controversial 1915 silent film, The Birth of a Nation, which depicted black men as sexually aggressive towards white women; Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris; Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange; Fernando Botero's Abu Ghraib 52; Andres Serrano's Piss Christ; or photography and artwork by Gottfried Helnwein and Robert Mapplethorpe.
Last night, comedian Kathy Griffin and provocative photographer Tyler Shields made headlines for a video and image that was tweeted. An unemotional Kathy Griffin is captured holding a severed head of President Donald Trump.
Kathy Griffin tweeted the photo with a caption of "there was blood coming out of his eyes, blood coming out of his...wherever," a reference to Trump's comment to Megyn Kelly, "You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever."
After receiving backlash, Griffin deleted the tweet and provided an apology. Unfortunately, this didn't stop CNN from firing her from the NYE show with Anderson Cooper.
I am sorry. I went too far. I was wrong. pic.twitter.com/LBKvqf9xFB— Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) May 30, 2017
