Provocative art. Is it needed ? What is its place in our society, what does it do. What can it do

Maurizio Cattelan (b. 1960) La Nona Ora (The Ninth Hour) wax, clothing, polyester resin with metallic powder, volcanic rock, carpet, glass dimensions variable Executed in This work is the first of two versions. The second version slightly differs in the figure's face and clothes.

The artist

Cattelan’s personal art practice has led to him gaining a reputation as an art scene’s joker. [1] In 1995 he began his line of taxidermied horses, donkeys, mice and dogs; in 1999 he started making life-size wax effigies of various people, including himself. [2] One of his best known sculptures, ‘La Nona Ora’ consists of an effigy of Pope John Paul II in full ceremonial dress being crushed by a meteor and is a good example of his typically humorous approach to work. Another of Cattelan’s quirks is his use of a ‘stand-in’ in media interviews equipped with a stock of evasive answers and non-sensical explanations. [1] [2]Pope John Paul II

Maurizio Cattelan : I like to think of La Nona Ora as a sculpture that doesn't exist: a three- dimensional image that dissolves into pure communication - an object disappearing in the flux of information, news, comments, headlines, reproductions, newspapers and other seductive spectacles. On the other hand, La Nona Ora could simply be a bad joke taken too seriously, an exercise in absurdity.

In a press article, Cattelan explained the meaning. “I had immense respect for Pope John Paul II. Even old and tired, afflicted with Parkinson’s disease, he still kept doggedly touring the world. For an exhibit I made a statue of the Pope holding his staff with the crucifix on top, and together with my Milanese gallerist friend, I propped him up in a room carpeted in red. The result was appalling.” The work was revised. “We even broke the skylight to make it seem as though the rock were a meteorite sent by God to stop his overzealous servant from accepting any burden. There were some who believed that the work was a provocation and a sign of contempt, but they were way off base: It was actually an act of mercy.”

“Him”, traded behind the scenes for $10m, a sum that few living artists of his generation can command. Smaller than life-size, “Him” is a spookily realistic depiction of Hitler kneeling in prayer. Among other things, it poses the question: if the Führer asked for absolution, would God forgive him? Stefan Edlis, a Viennese-born Holocaust survivor and eminent American collector, is a proud owner an edition of the work. “When people see this piece,” says Edlis, “they react with gasps, tears, disbelief. The impact is stunning. Politics aside, that is how you judge art.”

Damien Hirst 2007 Inkjet print and household gloss on canvas with glass, blades and flocking powder 3658 x 2438 mm | 114 x 96 in Painting Biopsy Paintings

Damien Hirst 2008 Inkjet print and household gloss on canvas with glass, pins, needles, blades and fish-hooks x 2436 mm | x 95.9 in Painting Biopsy Paintings

“Art’s about life and it can’t really be about anything else … there isn’t anything else.”[1] [1] The ‘Biopsy’ series takes as its subject the results artist with paint and collage. The titles derive from each biopsy’s complete digital name. The attractive colours of the canvas surface are, on closer examination, variously furnished with broken glass, human hair, teeth, needles, pins, fish hooks and scalpel blades. of biopsies conducted on diseased cells. The images are extracted from science photo libraries, then inkjet or silkscreen-printed onto canvas before being worked on by the

Hirst’s vast oil paintings of human cancerous growths at the White Cube are perhaps reasonably shocking. Despite our increasingly familiarity with the disease, there is still something unsettling about cancer – the illness that used to be even more unmentionable than sexually transmitted diseases – and Hirst’s paintings are undeniably repulsive, especially given their vitality and their generous use of paint and rich colour. Like a physiotherapist feeling for knotted muscle or a psychotherapist feeling for resistance, so a good artist is often able to sense the knots in the psyche of his or her contemporaries, the painful areas where a sharp jolt will produce maximum effect.

Egon Schiele June 12, 1890 – October 31, 1918 Known for his figures with distorted forms and provocative nudes, Austrian painter Egon Schiele became one of the leading artists in Vienna during the early 20 th century

My Bed is a work by the British artist Tracey Emin. First created in 1998, it was exhibited at the Tate Gallery in 1999 as one of the shortlisted works for the Turner Prize.

Two performance artists, Yuan Chai and Jian Jun Xi, jumped on the bed with bare torsos in order to improve the work, which they thought had not gone far enough. They called their performance Two Naked Men Jump into Tracey's Bed. The men also had a pillow fight on the bed for around fifteen minutes, to applause from the crowd, before being removed by security guards. The artists were detained but no further action was taken

Piss Christ is a 1987 photograph by the American artist and photographer Andres Serrano. It depicts a small plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist's urine.

Robert Mapplethorpe (/ˈmeɪpəlˌθɔrp/; November 4, 1946 – March 9, 1989) was an American photographer, known for his sometimes controversial large-scale, highly stylized black and white photography. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-portraits and still-life images of flowers. The homoeroticism of this work fuelled a national debate over the public funding of controversial artwork.homoeroticism

Does it serve a purpose or does it simply mock, poke fun at people and their values/emotions / beliefs. Is shocking art a symptom of a diseased mind ? Of the the artist and the audience ? Is this progression. Or regression - what is progression. Who decides what the ‘improvement’ from one movement of art to another movement is. Is art supposed to be beautiful. What is beauty. Is art supposed to be a mean to escape from reality. Or a reminder of reality’s harsh truths. would shocking a group of people give you a sense of power/ superiority ?