When Lady Gaga arrived at last year’s Video Music Awards wearing a dress made of meat, many people wondered about her motivations for sporting such an ensemble.
Though it had nothing whatsoever to do with her music, that outfit stole the show and all subsequent media attention.
So shocking was that dress that it even made the opening monologue of several late-night talk show hosts.
Gaga later claimed that she wore the dress to oppose the U.S. military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, but the connection between the two is unclear.
Gaga’s stunt is nothing new. There are artists across all mediums who behave in a purposely shocking manner in order to garner media attention for themselves and their work.
But whether or not that attention is sustained is another story.
Every established artist working today has a story about that one artist they know who employs shallow shock tactics for attention, not for a cause.
Winnipeg-based contemporary artist Diana Thorneycroft mentioned an art student who would perform explicit sex acts on a stool in front of an audience.
But when asked what message she was trying to portray through her performance art, the student came up empty handed.
Ottawans reference the work of Itsvan Kantor, the local performance artist famous for splashing gallery walls with his own blood – work he calls his “Blood Campaign.”
Though most press coverage is good for an artist’s career, performing stunts for notoriety doesn’t have lasting positive effects. The shock-and-awe shtick always seems contrived.
Many artists blame the press, pointing accusatory fingers at newsrooms that purposely focus on shocking and scandalous stories.
But it is a fact of society and culture that shocking and scandalous stories are of interest to most people and get the most web hits on news websites.
Artists with a new show to exhibit have to get the word out somehow, right?
Wrong.
In fact, the panty-dropping, wardrobe malfunctioning, staged photo-opping, Hollywood-esque machine so permeates our culture that many young artists and art students today are shying away from those types of shocking stunts in an attempt to be taken seriously in the arts community. They fear a “shocking” label will reduce their credibility.
Local painter Andrew Morrow is one young artist attempting to distance himself from that label to protect his career.
He received some bad press this past October at the Toronto International Art Fair for his sexually explicit paintings.
But Morrow, whose work investigates relationships between people, wasn’t trying to be deliberately provocative.
He said he feared being misrepresented by the “controversial” label and saw it as a potential bullet to his credibility.
Though controversy in art can be a launching point to ignite a conversation about the social commentaries addressed in artistic works, once the focus shifts from the social commentary to the sensationalist aspects of the work, then those tactics can become destructive and minimize the importance of the artist and the art.
Hollow shock tactics don’t lead to career longevity, and artists who employ them aren’t taken seriously among their peers.
If artists launch their careers based on shock and controversy alone, they will disappear within a couple of years because they can’t survive in the industry with that attitude.
If there is not a deeper cultural meaning beneath the surface sensationalism, the artist has failed his work, his vocation and his fans.
Sensationalism for sensationa-
lism's sake alone can hurt – and end – an artist’s career.