Contaminated by Daisy Dixon review – a history of dark arts and horror | Art and Design Books

Museums are damned if they do, damned if they don’t. Don’t ignore past problems and get blamed for having problems. Rewrite their writings according to political changes and are called evangelists and wake up. The truth is, history is full of immoral art. But how do we know it when we see it? And what should we be doing about it?

In her timely and challenging new book, philosopher Daisy Dixon explores some of the most controversial works of art ever created. He is fascinated by how an artist’s appearance can affect his creations, and the negative impact those creations can have on the world.

He is not the first. Plato was horrified by art’s ability to destroy citizens, while Oscar Wilde celebrated its ability to awaken. Recently, Claire Dederer grappled with the problem of what we should do with the great art of evil men in her book 2023. Beasts.

Come to Depraved expecting a historical spectacle and you will be disappointed. Along with traditional media from history to the present, including art, literature and drama, and modern “arts” such as video games; There are also porn stories for a long time. Some of the material is so ugly that it is difficult to read. There are talks of goldfish being crushed in the name of art, and a film with horrific scenes of paedophilia. A video game called Rape Day needs no explanation, but Dixon won’t let you look away.

Evil, he writes, can hide under “a beautiful oil-soaked canvas”. “What’s wrong with this beautiful picture?” he asks in Titian’s The Rape of Europa, a fascinating 16th-century painting depicting a princess being dragged across the ocean by Jupiter, king of the gods, in the guise of a bull. “Yes, it tells us that sexual violence is attractive and sexually arousing.” It tells us that ‘No’ does not necessarily mean rejection; But the look! Bright colors! The raw emotion! I shudder, before admitting that the cow’s milky eyes are probably rose petals to do pretend pain.

According to the author, art can be corrupted in five ways: it can show immorality; causing a person to do bad things; convey a dangerous message; made by a gay artist; or made in a morally questionable manner. Forget good intentions. In 2017, protests erupted around Dana Schutz’s presentation at the Whitney Biennial, a sculpture of the mutilated body of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy who was killed in 1955 after allegedly having an affair with a white man. Schutz’s goal was to express pure sadness. The main response was that his use of dark pain as material was appropriate. Dixon wrote: “A good speech can be tainted even when spoken in good faith.”

How does technology change our moral compass? According to ancient writers, the first Greek sculpture of a naked woman was so alive that a man tried to have sex with it before throwing himself off a cliff in shame. Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, who raped and murdered five children in and around Manchester in the 1960s, were avid readers of the Marquis de Sade’s “tragic” work. In the 1990s, Marilyn Manson and his band were accused of preying on depressed youth.

What should our response be? Dixon isn’t shy about giving an answer. In the past, pieces that were considered so bad that people kept them in private collections. He believes that bad art is not something to be chased away, but to be met “loudly, angrily, beautifully”: ideas that attract the spirit of this beloved book, which, like the texts rewritten in museums, will please some, and show the eye in others. Dixon wrote: “The issue is speaking well. Good skill. Good planning.” He makes it simple.