That's Disgusting! Can Art be Creative and Repulsive?

Dare You To Look!

DON'T LOOK AWAY! You might want to, given the title, but read on. Creative Life is an intrepid explorer. Plus, this post is bound to be interesting.

I do love all things beautiful. Who wants to focus on what's gross or ugly? Yet, much of art now and for centuries has depicted the ugly and brutal as well as the beautiful and sublime. If you're curious, you can search art images using "disgust" as a key word and see works meant to be disgusting or revolting throughout history.

What Is the Disgust Reaction?

Disgust is impulsive reaction that forces us turn from and, repel or expel (vomit) the cause of this feeling . We can see it clearly in infants’ reactIons to some foods, and disgust persists throughout life as a -physiological reaction.

Starting as an involuntary physical response during infancy and hardwired into our facial expressions (pinched eyes and mouth), disgust functions to defend us from something unpleasant while also alerting others who read our facial expression. Charles Darwin thought disgust was a universal human reaction, originating primarily in response to food that endangered our survival but extending to visual and other sensory input.

Just as individuals vary in their tastes, they vary in their disgust reactions. Different cultures vary in this as well, suggesting socially transmitted tastes and disgusts. Experience and learning have their role in fashioning both. I remember visiting an art museum as a child and running away in disgust after a close viewing the portraits by Arcimboldo (shown above). I now regard them now as very cleverly concocted curiosities.

Disgust and Art

One deliberately repulsive work that remains indelibly memorable to me and many who study art history is Francisco Goya's depiction of Saturn Devouring HIs Son. This repulsive masterpiece was not intended for public exhibition. It was painted directly onto the walls of Goya's private home, then transferred to canvas (now in the Prado Museum). Theorized to reflect the artist's state of mind late in a life that witnessed the violence and terror of war and the the Spanish Inquisition, the painting depicts  a violent madman tearing at the flesh of the mutilated human form in his jaws.

Goya wasn't the first to paint this ancient theme from Greek mythology. Peter Paul Rubens, that courtly painter known for his wondrous rendering of human flesh, painted his version two centuries earlier. Ruben's refined painting style is certainly less brutal than Goya's more modern rendering, but is horrific in its effect. Both are masterpieces in depicting the artist's intention. Goya's intention certainly was to confront horror.

Think of all the depictions of war in paintings and photography in museums. And of the many religious depictions that emphasize the gruesome aspects of the crucifixion. Artists walk with eyes open. Some of what is seen (or imagined) and needs confrontation is violent and part of our human legacy.

The realm of visual art, like other forms of human inquiry and imagination, explores all aspects of experience and expression. It’s not just the positive side of human experience merits artistic attention. Tasteful art can soon get hackneyed. We stop looking because it gets predictable and fits in too well within our decor. Avant-garde art movements typically appear ugly and gross to traditionalists - until that avant-garde, itself, becomes the norm.

In my two drawings (below), the first, called Gross Consumption, is intended to depict a disgusting theme. The second, Recalling Judith (after Caravaggio's Judith Beheading Holofernes) singles out only the woman's face during the act decapitation. Both drawings deal with revulsion, but one of them is also beautiful.

Gross Consumption, drawing by Janet Strayer

Recalling Judith, drawing by Janet Strayer

Disgust Elevated to Museum Status

Each epoch has its own varieties of the ugly, gross, and disgusting. The avant-garde has often chosen to shock and revolt across history. We've had our raw meat-paintings and similar assaults on good taste.

Disgust today even merits its own museums. The first, located in Malmö, Sweden, the Museum of Disgusting Food challenges the concept of taste quite literally . It dramatically by presents and invites us to eat foods we presume to be disgusting. Opened in 2018, there are now other such museums catering to different tastes.

We can dither about artistic taste, but the museum in Malmö challenges the concept of taste quite literally. It presents visitors with foods likely to be disgusting to eat. These include freshly served, often smelly items native to different regions of the world: poop wine, fish heads, rancid shark, Spam, stinkbugs, dog meat, kosher fried locusts, worms, chili grasshoppers, and durian (a delicious custardy fruit with a terribly repellent smell that I was able to eat only after months of habituation in Singapore).

It's notable that visitors to this Museum end up tasting more foods than they initially expect they will. They report that some of it tastes surprisingly good once they get past a pre-formed idea. On the other hand, the museum has also been rebuked as culturally insensitive, even racist.

I've not been to this museum so I can't speak first-hand to its intent, emphasis or impact. What's interesting to me is that some of the same biases relating to our concepts of disgust may also apply to our attributions of beauty (or ugliness). Art and cultural anthropology show us that these formulations change across historical time and cultures and even during our own lifespan.

Disgust, Bias, and Creative Curiosity

Cultures and socio-cultural groups have their own taste delicacies and taboos. Foie gras may ignite one person's tastebuds and another's outrage. Necessity, of course, even more clearly and dramatically trumps appetite and taste preferences. We aren't fussy eaters when starving!

In a less forceful way, education can moderate what we consider disgusting. Curiosity helps. Travel outside our comfort zone, challenges our taste preferences in food, art, and behaviour. An inclination to assimilate new knowledge helps us to learn quickly, acquire new tastes, expand our preferences and opinions.

This foray into Disgust applies to the art of creative living. Many judgements can be weaponized for either prejudice, on one hand, or political correctness, on the other. My preference is an attitude of curiosity and mindful exploration of experiences that increase depth and dimension of our views... and the diversity of our tastes.