# The MOST offensive piece of art ever. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 2, 2012, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-offensive-piece-of-art-ever/639669 "2012-11-02T15:00:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2012, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-offensive-piece-of-art-ever/639669/41 "2012-11-03T14:54:38Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > In fact, it’s [this piece](http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.lalouver.com/resource/kienholz/room5/large/The-Bear-Chair-v.2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.lalouver.com/html/kienholz/kienholz26.html&h=425&w=345&sz=17&tbnid=uE2HgtnOyc8uzM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=73&zoom=1&usg=__gpWjnIDzEWINIT7Ahf00EqpPSoo=&docid=SiG7cXlxJTusGM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=M5SUUNGGDuPkiAKJhIHgCw&ved=0CCUQ9QEwAQ&dur=466) by Keinholz: girl tied under a chair, bear on the chair with his penis pointed at the girl. Jeepers. That’s pretty offensive. Not the most offensive thing I’ve ever seen, but yeah… I mean, I can sort of see that there’s possibly sort of some _thing_ there - Goldilocks, childhood, destruction of innocence, etc - but the execution…jeepers. ---
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2012, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-offensive-piece-of-art-ever/639669/42 "2012-11-03T16:09:07Z")
> [@I\_Made\_French\_Toast\_For\_You](#): > > Where you see a child, the artists might see an ambiguous creature with both juvenile and adult characteristics. Where you see implied pedophilia, the artists might see a figure of sexual empowerment. It’s very easy to look at _F_ck Face\* and be offended/cry child abuse – I think the artists want you to question those too easy reactions. That’s exactly what I took from those two works. ---
**Author:** ![April\_R](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@April\_R](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/April_R)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2012, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-offensive-piece-of-art-ever/639669/43 "2012-11-03T16:11:37Z")
> [@Oedipus](#): > > My art class has made me realize how little I find things truly offensive. Obviously, some things are just offensive to my eyes because it is such BAD art. > > [Case in point.](http://fineartamerica.com/contestlogos/logo1-most-offensive-paintings.jpg) > > However, nothing that the other students posted TRULY offended me. So, without further adieu, I beg of you to post the trashiest, most offensive piece of art you can find. Goatse and other rule 34s are discouraged, seeing that this is supposed to be about “real” art. These things have to be at least able to go in a gallery. Sorry. > > Hopefully we can find what the most offensive, revolting art piece is. > > (BTW…if this is more Cafe Society, feel free to move it there.) So that MS Paint monstrosity is “real art” hang-able in a gallery? What gallery would allow that? ---
**Author:** ![April\_R](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@April\_R](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/April_R)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2012, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-offensive-piece-of-art-ever/639669/44 "2012-11-03T16:14:46Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > A lot of people were upset when Chris Ofili’s _The Holy Virgn Mary_ (paint, elephant dung) was pout on exhibit in 1996. > [The Holy Virgin Mary - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holy_Virgin_Mary) > > [http://media.ft.com/cms/62c97b7a-0c96-11df-b8eb-00144feabdc0.jpg](http://media.ft.com/cms/62c97b7a-0c96-11df-b8eb-00144feabdc0.jpg) > I don’t personally find it the most offensive, but I can see the point of view of the offendees. And I don’r care for it myself. I tried to find the “collaged pornographic images” but I didn’t see them. Also, you wouldn’t know it had poop on it if you weren’t told. The most offensive thing about it is the depiction of a black woman with the stereotypical black faced lips. That’s just unnecessary. ---
**Author:** ![April\_R](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@April\_R](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/April_R)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2012, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-offensive-piece-of-art-ever/639669/45 "2012-11-03T16:20:14Z")
> [@I\_Made\_French\_Toast\_For\_You](#): > > I don’t think I’ve ever been outright offended by a legitimate piece of art, but the work of Jake and Dinos Chapman comes very close. So, kudos, I guess? > > [F\*ck Face (NSFW)](http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/aipe/imgs/chapman/CHAPMANfuckfaceCHA0003.jpg) > [Zygotic Acceleration, Biogenetic, De-Sublimated Libidinal Model (NSFW)](http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/aipe/imgs/chapman/CHAPMANzygoticaccelerationCHA0006.jpg) WTF is wrong with them? How is that art? Please help me understand how it is artistic to depict a child’s face as a vagina mouth and penis nose? ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2012, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-offensive-piece-of-art-ever/639669/46 "2012-11-03T16:23:17Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Jeepers. That’s pretty offensive. Not the most offensive thing I’ve ever seen, but yeah… I mean, I can sort of see that there’s possibly sort of some _thing_ there - Goldilocks, childhood, destruction of innocence, etc - but the execution…jeepers. The biggest problem with this thing is that anybody can happen on it, including children, adults who suffered childhood sexual trauma, etc. It’s much more offensive in person than in the photograph. ---
**Author:** ![April\_R](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@April\_R](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/April_R)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2012, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-offensive-piece-of-art-ever/639669/47 "2012-11-03T16:25:03Z")
> [@bup](#): > > I think that photographer that sets up tableaux with body parts and/or whole dead bodies is pretty offensive. He gets his parts from Mexican morgues, mostly, I think. > > But I don’t think finding something offensive is a condemnation of it. Maybe it’s good art. I just can’t handle it because I’m offended. > > Found him -[Joel Peter Witkin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel-Peter_Witkin) (link is safe). That guy is a repressed serial killer. ---
**Author:** ![April\_R](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@April\_R](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/April_R)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2012, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-offensive-piece-of-art-ever/639669/48 "2012-11-03T16:28:37Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > I’m normally of the school of: if you don’t understand what you’re looking at, it’s not the fault of the object. However, the Portland Art Museum presently has a piece that pretty graphically shows pedophilia in action. It’s not in a room of its own, with a warning sign near the door; it’s on full display, where anyone can round a corner and see it. This is by design of the museum director, who loves to think that he’s being daring and unconventional. I think he’s just being a dick. The piece is offensive and doesn’t belong there. Who is the artist? ---
**Author:** ![April\_R](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@April\_R](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/April_R)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2012, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-offensive-piece-of-art-ever/639669/49 "2012-11-03T16:43:24Z")
Faces of Death > **[Faces of Death](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faces_of_Death)** > > Faces of Death (later re-released as The Original Faces of Death) is a 1978 American mondo horror film written & directed by John Alan Schwartz, credited under the pseudonyms "Conan Le Cilaire" & "Alan Black" respectively. > The film, shown in a documentary-like style, centers on pathologist Francis B. Gröss, played by actor Michael Carr. The narrator presents the viewer with a variety of footage showing different gruesome ways of dying from a variety of sources. Some of the most iconic scenes w... ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2012, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-offensive-piece-of-art-ever/639669/50 "2012-11-03T16:47:12Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > It is architecture that pushes me over the edge. I have an irrational hatred for Frank Lloyd Wright buildings for example and find them quite offensive in general. > > However, there is one piece of architecture that is legitimately offensive in both function and design. The [Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health](http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/view/10353/frank-gehry-the-cleveland-clinic-lou-ruvo-center-for-brain-health.html) designed by Frank Gehre is not only hideous in the exterior with a less than welcoming image for a hospital, it is also quite inappropriate because it features an intentionally confusing interior with few straight lines. This is a hospital that treats people with Alzheimer’s and other serious brain diseases. Gehre claimed his unconventional design was supposed to be therapeutic for patients in some bizarre way but it does the exact opposite of course. I think that building is wonderful, a clever statement of the distortions - in perspective, in relationships, in self-image - caused by neurological disease. It’s good art - _as art._ If it is intentionally confusing internally - and the article you linked to didn’t mention anything about the inerior - then it’s form trumping function and inappropriate to its purpose. So it may be bad architecture, but good art. The building itself is beautiful to me; Gehry is brilliant. > [@Colibri](#): > > The [Monument to President Arnulfo Arias]([http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/) MonumentoArnulfoArias.JPG) of Panama is exceptional as bad public art even for Panama. Especially so, since Arias was (literally) a fascist and admirer of Hitler. He was president three times, and deposed each time. He was elected two other times, but had the election stolen from him. > > [More photos](http://epiac1216.wordpress.com/2009/10/10/monument-to-a-controversial-panamanian-political-leader/). But is that really offensive as a piece of art? Sure, a monument to a dictator is an offensive _concept,_ but the monument itself is rather mediocre, not so much offensive as meh. ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2012, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-offensive-piece-of-art-ever/639669/51 "2012-11-03T16:54:20Z")
> [@April\_R](#): > > WTF is wrong with them? How is that art? Please help me understand how it is artistic to depict a child’s face as a vagina mouth and penis nose? Well, putting a penis together with a vagina sometimes results in a child, right? I’m not defending the work - I haven’t opened the link and seen it - just pointing out the thnking behind it. ---
**Author:** ![I\_Made\_French\_Toast\_For\_You](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/858c86/32.png) [@I\_Made\_French\_Toast\_For\_You](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Made_French_Toast_For_You)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2012, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-offensive-piece-of-art-ever/639669/52 "2012-11-03T17:01:57Z")
> [@HeyHomie](#): > > That’s exactly what I took from those two works. Hah! > [@April\_R](#): > > WTF is wrong with them? How is that art? Please help me understand how it is artistic to depict a child’s face as a vagina mouth and penis nose? Don’t be vulgar; it’s an anus mouth. 😉 I spoke a bit about their artistic meaning in an above post, which I took from an online interview with the artists: [here](http://www.royaljellyfactory.com/newartupclose/chapman-iv.htm). Personally I like both pieces, but once you get past the rather shallow meanings and shock value, there’s not much to look at again. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2012, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-offensive-piece-of-art-ever/639669/53 "2012-11-03T19:02:27Z")
> [@April\_R](#): > > Who is the artist? Edward Kienholz, as noted above. He primarily did “found object” art pieces, many of which are interesting. This one is not, IMO. ---
**Author:** ![April\_R](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@April\_R](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/April_R)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2012, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-offensive-piece-of-art-ever/639669/54 "2012-11-03T21:43:48Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > Edward Kienholz, as noted above. He primarily did “found object” art pieces, many of which are interesting. This one is not, IMO. Oh, the penis bear one. And as for the ass-face penis nosed child, it’s not art. It’s vulgar, there is no social commentary or thought provoking controversy involved. It’s just gross. and I laughed when I read the part of the interview yu posted which said “We’re not interested in making copies of things.” Really? Then why did you copy your ass-faced penis nosed child for at least 2 sculptures? ---
**Author:** ![April\_R](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@April\_R](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/April_R)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2012, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-offensive-piece-of-art-ever/639669/55 "2012-11-03T21:55:03Z")
Wow, these guys really wallow in their own self importance don’t they? Those two sculptures are no less representations of children than dolls without genitalia. It’s obviously a child, or a child-like representation. They could have very easily made it a dog or a grown adult, but they chose to make it child-like just to upset people. here is what they have to say about it: [spoiler] JAKE AND DINOS CHAPMAN: The good thing about sculptures is that they exist in a funny art-hyperspace that runs alongside the normal, non-art world. There are a lot of very strange things in galleries that you don’t apply the usual set of moral rules to. On the whole, people understand this, but then you get agitators - like journalists - deliberately misunderstanding the situation and provoking others to misunderstand it too. For example, a journalist said to us, ‘How can you dare do these things to small girls?’ So you think, well, hold on a minute, let’s just take that question apart - why is it a girl? So the journalist replies and says, ‘Well it’s got long hair and freckles’. OK. When Jake was a little child he had long hair and freckles, does that mean that he was a girl then and now, miraculously, he’s turned into a man because he’s got short hair and his freckles have gone? He says, ‘No, no, you know what I mean’. We’re like, no, we actually don’t know what you mean. You’re applying rules to something that they don’t actually apply to. This thing is inanimate, it’s made from resin and paint. It bears 90% relationship to a mannequin, and maybe less than 10% to things that you can buy in Ann Summers [a chain of s_x-toy shops]. There’s no point at which you can say this is a child. It might look like a child from the back, but from the front it doesn’t. And then the idea that something with an erect p_nis on its nose could ever be female is also another problem… The whole point of these objects was actually to back people into a corner with their strange morality. You make an object and put it in a gallery and people don’t really see it; they see what they think about things reflected in the object. You might as well put a mirror in the gallery because they’re not looking at the object. It’s an attempt to force people to take into account their bad thinking. ‘Zygotic acceleration…’, for example, it doesn’t work if you say it’s a child or it’s children; I’ve never seen 20 children fused together with adult gen\*talia on their faces. IMAGE: Jake and Dinos Chapman, Zygotic acceleration, biogenetic, de-sublimated libidinal model (enlarged x 1000), 1995 Jake and Dinos Chapman Zygotic acceleration, biogenetic, de-sublimated libidinal model (enlarged x 1000), 1995 DAVID BARRETT: With the full title of that work, ‘Zygotic acceleration, biogenetic, de-sublimated libidinal model (enlarged x 1000)’, the final part tells you that this is not even a child-sized creature. Exactly, although people don’t read the titles. If you look at our work and think about child abuse, then that would have to be in your mind before you looked at it. You have a matrix of knowledge, of references, before you understand anything, because when you look at something your mind compares it to prior experience in order to understand it. You run through this pattern-recognition process comparing what you’re looking at with previous knowledge, and if you don’t recognize what you’re seeing then you move onto something else that it might be: ‘Well, it’s obviously not an elephant, maybe it’s a pig…’ And we do this at such incredible speed that it sometimes goes wrong, so instead of saying ‘I don’t know what it is’, people say ‘It is a…’, and then make a really stupid analysis of what it is. ‘It’s an abused child,’ they say. Look again; it isn’t. So once viewers make that initial misreading, their ongoing attempts to understand the sculptures simply unravel? Exactly. Also, if you’re going to talk about abuse, I would say that our objects are more likely to cause abuse than receive it. If you decide that 'F_ck Face’ is a child, for example, then it is an unbelievably aggressively empowered one. Its s_xuality is on its face. It’s not going to have any problems telling you what it wants. I’ve known that work a long time and, for some reason, the idea of child abuse never occurred to me; 'F_ck Face’ does not look abused in any way. In fact, as far as I can tell, all the creatures that have an_ses for mouths also have p\*nises for noses. Yes. You can’t f_ck them unless you get f_cked yourself at the same time. They’re polymorphous s\*xual beings and people get very anxious about those grey areas around their morality. They’re so desperate to place everything in a comfortable box that, the moment you put something in front of them that doesn’t fit in with this, they run around screaming their heads off. Which is the reaction we were trying to provoke; the effect is more interesting than the object. They’re like moral hand grenades in galleries. But if you go into a gallery you should be expecting to see things like that. That’s what a gallery is: a place where you leave your baggage by the door and you look around and hopefully you see something that makes you think a little bit. [/spoiler] ---
**Author:** ![April\_R](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@April\_R](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/April_R)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2012, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-offensive-piece-of-art-ever/639669/56 "2012-11-03T22:04:32Z")
Sometimes I think calling something “art” is just giving yourself liberty to shove trash in people’s faces then look down on them when they don’t “get it.” Maybe, just maybe, it is trash and it does suck and it isn’t artistic no matter how much you delude yourself into thinking art has to be controversial to be valid. Things can be weird, and interesting, and thought provoking without being purposefully bad just to get a reaction out of people. ---
**Author:** ![user\_hostile](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/user_hostile/32/474_2.png) [@user\_hostile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/user_hostile)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2012, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-offensive-piece-of-art-ever/639669/57 "2012-11-03T22:30:20Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > The [Monument to President Arnulfo Arias](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/MonumentoArnulfoArias.JPG) of Panama is exceptional as bad public art even for Panama. Especially so, since Arias was (literally) a fascist and admirer of Hitler. He was president three times, and deposed each time. He was elected two other times, but had the election stolen from him. > > [More photos](http://epiac1216.wordpress.com/2009/10/10/monument-to-a-controversial-panamanian-political-leader/). I sense the artist is being _ironic_. “I will lead you all off the edge of the cliff!” ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2012, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-offensive-piece-of-art-ever/639669/58 "2012-11-04T06:39:24Z")
> [@April\_R](#): > > And as for the ass-face penis nosed child, it’s not art. It’s vulgar, there is no social commentary or thought provoking controversy involved. It’s just gross. Um, I know you posted the interview with the creators of _Fuck Face_ in order to show what a couple of self-important art-school wankers they are, but it makes the opposite impression. Clearly these guys have thought about what they are trying to say with their art. Your reaction, on the other hand, sounds like pure emotion. You are looking at a sculpture of acrylic and paint, with features no human face has ever had, and seeing a child with inapproriate sexuality. Just exactly the unexamined mental processing that they talked about. Art is about making you think not just about _what_ you are seeing, but _how_ you are seeing it. It is necessarily transgressive. That’s why Modigliani is a great artist and Thomas Kinkade is not. And it was ever thus - a critic said that the only thing more obscene than Goya’s _Naked Maja Reclining_ was his _Clothed Maja Reclining._ G.K. Chesterton thought that Impressionism was literally Satanic. I’m not saying that _Fuck Face_ is great art - I’m not competent to judge, but it seems juvenile and unsubtle to me - but it _is_ art. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2012, 9:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-offensive-piece-of-art-ever/639669/59 "2012-11-04T09:05:21Z")
I heartily endorse everything **Slow Moving Vehicle** said. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2012, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-offensive-piece-of-art-ever/639669/60 "2012-11-04T19:13:08Z")
> [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](#): > > Um, I know you posted the interview with the creators of _Fuck Face_ in order to show what a couple of self-important art-school wankers they are, but it makes the opposite impression. Clearly these guys have thought about what they are trying to say with their art. Your reaction, on the other hand, sounds like pure emotion. You are looking at a sculpture of acrylic and paint, with features no human face has ever had, and seeing a child with inapproriate sexuality. Just exactly the unexamined mental processing that they talked about. > > Art is about making you think not just about _what_ you are seeing, but _how_ you are seeing it. It is necessarily transgressive. That’s why Modigliani is a great artist and Thomas Kinkade is not. And it was ever thus - a critic said that the only thing more obscene than Goya’s _Naked Maja Reclining_ was his _Clothed Maja Reclining._ G.K. Chesterton thought that Impressionism was literally Satanic. > > I’m not saying that _Fuck Face_ is great art - I’m not competent to judge, but it seems juvenile and unsubtle to me - but it _is_ art. It is true that transgressiveness does not prevent art from being art. However, transgressiveness does not, all on its lonesome, make something art (except in the trivial sense that any object placed in a gallery by an artist is “art”). Aside from this trivial sense, the better question is “is this art in any way interesting?” The problem in this particular case is that all the artists are aiming at is to offend the easily offended. Heck, they say as much. From their interview: > [@](#): > > Yes. You can’t f_ck them unless you get f_cked yourself at the same time. They’re polymorphous s\*xual beings and people get very anxious about those grey areas around their morality. They’re so desperate to place everything in a comfortable box that, the moment you put something in front of them that doesn’t fit in with this, they run around screaming their heads off. Which is the reaction we were trying to provoke; the effect is more interesting than the object. They’re like moral hand grenades in galleries. But if you go into a gallery you should be expecting to see things like that. [Emphasis addeed] It is very easy to offend people. This talk about “unexamined mental processes” is all very well, but the creators of this piece knew full well (and anyone of any common sense already knows) that making sculptures that resemble children and sexualizing them will create offence - which is what they were aiming for, as they themselves say in the above quote. It is an uninteresting insight that many will be offended by such images. The offence is totally predictable and indeed they predicted it. If this (totally predictable) reaction is “more interesting than the object” (that is, their art), then I have it on no less authority than the artists themselves that their “art” isn’t interesting. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-offensive-piece-of-art-ever/639669.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-offensive-piece-of-art-ever/639669.md?page=4)