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Transgressions: The Offences of Art
Since the mid-nineteenth century, artists have compulsively rejected received ideas in order to test and subvert morality, law, society, and even art itself. But what happens when all boundaries have been crossed, all taboos broken, all limits violated?
Transgressions is the first book to address this controversial subject. Here Anthony Julius traces the history of subversion in art from the outraged response to Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe to the scandal caused by the grant programs of the National Endowment for the Arts a century and a half later. Throughout the book, and supported by the work of such artists as Marcel Duchamp, the Chapman brothers, Andres Serrano, Damien Hirst, Gilbert & George, Paul McCarthy, Jeff Koons, Hans Haacke, and Anselm Kiefer, Julius shows how the modern period has been characterized by three kinds of transgressive art: an art that perverts established art rules; an art that defiles the beliefs and sentiments of its audience; and an art that challenges and disobeys the rules of the state.
The evidence assembled, Julius concludes his hard-hitting dissection of the landscapes of contemporary art by posing some important questions: what is art's future when its boundary-exceeding, taboo-breaking endeavors become the norm? And is anything of value lost when we submit to art's violation?
Transgressions is not a comfortable—still less a comforting—read, but it has a powerful urgency that makes it an essential document for anyone involved in our cultural life at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Transgressions is the first book to address this controversial subject. Here Anthony Julius traces the history of subversion in art from the outraged response to Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe to the scandal caused by the grant programs of the National Endowment for the Arts a century and a half later. Throughout the book, and supported by the work of such artists as Marcel Duchamp, the Chapman brothers, Andres Serrano, Damien Hirst, Gilbert & George, Paul McCarthy, Jeff Koons, Hans Haacke, and Anselm Kiefer, Julius shows how the modern period has been characterized by three kinds of transgressive art: an art that perverts established art rules; an art that defiles the beliefs and sentiments of its audience; and an art that challenges and disobeys the rules of the state.
The evidence assembled, Julius concludes his hard-hitting dissection of the landscapes of contemporary art by posing some important questions: what is art's future when its boundary-exceeding, taboo-breaking endeavors become the norm? And is anything of value lost when we submit to art's violation?
Transgressions is not a comfortable—still less a comforting—read, but it has a powerful urgency that makes it an essential document for anyone involved in our cultural life at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
- GenresArtNonfictionArt History
272 pages, Hardcover
First published October 14, 2002
8 people are currently reading
133 people want to read
About the author
Anthony Julius
21 books6 followersAnthony Julius (born 1956) is a prominent British lawyer and academic, best known for his actions on behalf of Diana, Princess of Wales and Deborah Lipstadt. He is a senior consultant for the London law firm Mishcon de Reya.
Julius is known for his opposition to new antisemitism, the alleged expression of antisemitic prejudice couched in terms of criticism of Israel, and gives frequent talks on the subject all over the world to raise awareness. He is a founding member of both Engage and the Euston Manifesto.
He is a son of a successful London textile merchant, educated at the City of London School. His father died young of a brain tumour. Julius studied English literature at Jesus College, Cambridge graduating in 1977 with a first class degree and completed a Ph.D. in English literature at University College London under the novelist and academic Dan Jacobson. He joined Mishcon de Reya, a Bloomsbury law firm in 1981 becoming a partner in 1984. Currently he is a senior consultant to that firm.
He married in 1979 and had four children with his first wife (Max, Laura, Chloë and Theo). In 1999, following his divorce, he married journalist Dina Rabinovitch who died in 2007. They have one son together (Elon). He remarried in July 2009.
Julius is known for his opposition to new antisemitism, the alleged expression of antisemitic prejudice couched in terms of criticism of Israel, and gives frequent talks on the subject all over the world to raise awareness. He is a founding member of both Engage and the Euston Manifesto.
He is a son of a successful London textile merchant, educated at the City of London School. His father died young of a brain tumour. Julius studied English literature at Jesus College, Cambridge graduating in 1977 with a first class degree and completed a Ph.D. in English literature at University College London under the novelist and academic Dan Jacobson. He joined Mishcon de Reya, a Bloomsbury law firm in 1981 becoming a partner in 1984. Currently he is a senior consultant to that firm.
He married in 1979 and had four children with his first wife (Max, Laura, Chloë and Theo). In 1999, following his divorce, he married journalist Dina Rabinovitch who died in 2007. They have one son together (Elon). He remarried in July 2009.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 24, 2017
A dense, intellectually dazzling, complexly argued book. Not an easy read! My main reservation about Transgressions is the material that Julius describes and defends (and much of which is illustrated). Like the child who sees the Emperor in his "new clothes", you feel tempted to shout out "This is crap!" - which occasionally the "works of art" literally are (Gilbert & George, Chris Ofili, Piero Manzoni), though that doesn't stop collectors and public galleries from spending small fortunes to acquire them. O tempora o mores.
Since I'm currently writing an article on a related theme, I'll leave my comments at that for the moment.
Since I'm currently writing an article on a related theme, I'll leave my comments at that for the moment.
March 16, 2026
“The existence of taboos and their transgression disclose the division of society into two realms, the profane and the sacred. In the realm of the profane, taboos rule. The sacred realm depends on limited acts of transgression. It is the domain of celebrations, sovereign rulers and God.”
I love transgressive art. As someone who has grown up on the fringes of what is considered normal, I have always gravitated towards the dark and the profane. This book explores the history of transgressive art, and the complex relationship we as a species have with transgression itself. This book explored many different kinds of art, and explained the relationship we have with limitations in art itself. I loved the analysis of what we find offensive; Julius explores political art, protest art, art that examines fecal matter, dead bodies, sexual hedonism, art that harms humans, animals, and religious institutions. The book does a great job at examining the many different angles and aspects to transgression and transgressive art, and I appreciated learning a lot more about specific pieces and art movements. Among many different themes and avenues explored in this book, Julius dives into the relationship between art and the mainstream, the nature of the sacred and the profane, the concept of offensive and violent art, the power of art as protest, the complex nature of consent and art, what should be illegal in the art world, etcetera. What this book did a great job of, in my opinion, is making me realize that I do have my own limits to what I think is acceptable in art. Prior to reading this, I truly believed that anything could be made or done in the name of art, but this book did a great job at challenging this idea with the concept of consent in art, and exploring violent artworks. If someone uses the likeness of someone without their consent, or the likeness of a child, in artwork deemed depraved or sexual, who would we be not to step in and prevent that? I loved how the author explores this complicated subject that did not have clear cut answers. Where does censorship begin and end? When do we step in and how do we monitor and regulate that? Where do we draw the line, and how do we know where to draw it? Sometimes the answer is clear and unanimously agreed. Other times it’s more murky and nebulous. Julius highlights the subjectivity of belief, how it’s formed by our cultural environments and experiences, and how our beliefs form what we consider normal and what we consider transgressive. This, in itself, could be the basis for another book, one that didn’t just focus on transgressive art. This book cut to the core of what I love about transgressive art and literature, and why I feel the themes that reoccur in art outside of the cultural norms feel more significant and nuanced than comfortable and conforming art. In the age of generative artificial intelligence, the modern populace is drowning in commercial sludge. Literacy rates have declined, and many popular art forms such as ballet and opera are on their last legs. Anti-intellectualism isn’t just a pop culture social media topic, it’s a genuine plague on humanity that is killing our collective spirit. Algorithms have rotted people’s souls and turned us against one another, and navigating this has been exhausting and depressing. My only solace has truly been in art/literature/cinema that is transgressive, weird, and strange. Art that has the balls to defy conventional norms inherently has something to say or examine, and in an age where people want content over substance, that means the world to me, and to many. This book introduced me to many facets of the art world and art history I had never heard of; Art being removed from its cultural context and losing its meaning, thus losing its impact when viewed in a museum after its intended time. The idea that many viewed the golden age of art to be over, and everything now is just an echo of what was, was interesting, although something I didn’t agree with. The final chapter spoke of art and its relation to the crime world, and featured art crimes and crime that explored true crime, and I felt as though that one chapter could have been expanded into a book in its own right. The book itself is dense in some parts, but carries a massive amount of information, and should be intriguing to any reader interested in this part of the art world. Overall, this was a dense deep dive of the transgressive art world, and I loved learning more about the history of art and transgression.
“These art works thus draw to our attention what we would rather overlook: that governing our lives are sentiments acquired in infancy, carried unexamined into adulthood, and which largely take the form of fears. We are not the authors of our own lives; what we believe
- and therefore, who we are - is largely a matter of inheritance. (We may regard taboo-breaking works as immoral in part because of a coincidence: our moral intuitions are also acquired in infancy, invariably within the context of family life, and so an attack on one kind of belief can be taken as an attack on all beliefs derived from the same place.) Beliefs are judged well- or ill-founded according to how we came by them and how we can justify them (a point made by Leszek Kolakowski in the aptly titled essay 'On Superstition'). If we do not know from whence our beliefs came, and we cannot in any event justify them, we are in trouble. Artworks that aggravate our awareness of this double handicap are unwelcome. Our beliefs constitute us, but are hard to defend. These beliefs are both more important, and less capable of justification, than we at one time thought. We cannot slough them off; we cannot ground them in reason. This is very unsettling. But if we want art, rather than kitsch, can we complain when artists take risks with our sensibilities?”
I love transgressive art. As someone who has grown up on the fringes of what is considered normal, I have always gravitated towards the dark and the profane. This book explores the history of transgressive art, and the complex relationship we as a species have with transgression itself. This book explored many different kinds of art, and explained the relationship we have with limitations in art itself. I loved the analysis of what we find offensive; Julius explores political art, protest art, art that examines fecal matter, dead bodies, sexual hedonism, art that harms humans, animals, and religious institutions. The book does a great job at examining the many different angles and aspects to transgression and transgressive art, and I appreciated learning a lot more about specific pieces and art movements. Among many different themes and avenues explored in this book, Julius dives into the relationship between art and the mainstream, the nature of the sacred and the profane, the concept of offensive and violent art, the power of art as protest, the complex nature of consent and art, what should be illegal in the art world, etcetera. What this book did a great job of, in my opinion, is making me realize that I do have my own limits to what I think is acceptable in art. Prior to reading this, I truly believed that anything could be made or done in the name of art, but this book did a great job at challenging this idea with the concept of consent in art, and exploring violent artworks. If someone uses the likeness of someone without their consent, or the likeness of a child, in artwork deemed depraved or sexual, who would we be not to step in and prevent that? I loved how the author explores this complicated subject that did not have clear cut answers. Where does censorship begin and end? When do we step in and how do we monitor and regulate that? Where do we draw the line, and how do we know where to draw it? Sometimes the answer is clear and unanimously agreed. Other times it’s more murky and nebulous. Julius highlights the subjectivity of belief, how it’s formed by our cultural environments and experiences, and how our beliefs form what we consider normal and what we consider transgressive. This, in itself, could be the basis for another book, one that didn’t just focus on transgressive art. This book cut to the core of what I love about transgressive art and literature, and why I feel the themes that reoccur in art outside of the cultural norms feel more significant and nuanced than comfortable and conforming art. In the age of generative artificial intelligence, the modern populace is drowning in commercial sludge. Literacy rates have declined, and many popular art forms such as ballet and opera are on their last legs. Anti-intellectualism isn’t just a pop culture social media topic, it’s a genuine plague on humanity that is killing our collective spirit. Algorithms have rotted people’s souls and turned us against one another, and navigating this has been exhausting and depressing. My only solace has truly been in art/literature/cinema that is transgressive, weird, and strange. Art that has the balls to defy conventional norms inherently has something to say or examine, and in an age where people want content over substance, that means the world to me, and to many. This book introduced me to many facets of the art world and art history I had never heard of; Art being removed from its cultural context and losing its meaning, thus losing its impact when viewed in a museum after its intended time. The idea that many viewed the golden age of art to be over, and everything now is just an echo of what was, was interesting, although something I didn’t agree with. The final chapter spoke of art and its relation to the crime world, and featured art crimes and crime that explored true crime, and I felt as though that one chapter could have been expanded into a book in its own right. The book itself is dense in some parts, but carries a massive amount of information, and should be intriguing to any reader interested in this part of the art world. Overall, this was a dense deep dive of the transgressive art world, and I loved learning more about the history of art and transgression.
“These art works thus draw to our attention what we would rather overlook: that governing our lives are sentiments acquired in infancy, carried unexamined into adulthood, and which largely take the form of fears. We are not the authors of our own lives; what we believe
- and therefore, who we are - is largely a matter of inheritance. (We may regard taboo-breaking works as immoral in part because of a coincidence: our moral intuitions are also acquired in infancy, invariably within the context of family life, and so an attack on one kind of belief can be taken as an attack on all beliefs derived from the same place.) Beliefs are judged well- or ill-founded according to how we came by them and how we can justify them (a point made by Leszek Kolakowski in the aptly titled essay 'On Superstition'). If we do not know from whence our beliefs came, and we cannot in any event justify them, we are in trouble. Artworks that aggravate our awareness of this double handicap are unwelcome. Our beliefs constitute us, but are hard to defend. These beliefs are both more important, and less capable of justification, than we at one time thought. We cannot slough them off; we cannot ground them in reason. This is very unsettling. But if we want art, rather than kitsch, can we complain when artists take risks with our sensibilities?”
May 26, 2021
A very interesting, dense book on the fashions of making art while exceeding scholar, social and political boundaries, a praxis that has come to the foreground in modern and contemporary art. Highly recommended to better understand not only this but the evolution of art aesthetics and our responses to them.
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April 7, 2024This reads like a very pretentious textbook. It was extremely dense and I was not impressed.
January 25, 2009
This is a really great resource to defend controversial art. Also, the picture of Bruce Nauman on the cover is pretty hot.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews