Violence in art

with his horses and Persephone (down). An Apulian red-figure volute krater, c. 340 BC. Antikensammlung Berlin 15th century to 17th century '' Politics of House of Medici and Florence dominate art depicted in Piazza della Signoria, making references to first three Florentine dukes. Besides aesthetical depiction of violence these sculptures are noted for weaving through a political narrative. The artist Hieronymus Bosch, from the 15th and 16th centuries, used images of demons, half-human animals and machines to evoke fear and confusion to portray the evil of man. The 16th-century artist Pieter Brueghel the Elder depicted "...the nightmarish imagery that reflect, if in an extreme fashion, popular dread of the Apocalypse and Hell". 18th century onwards In the mid-18th century, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, an Italian etcher, archaeologist, and architect active from 1740, did etchings of imaginary prisons that depicted people "stretched on racks or trapped like rats in maze-like dungeons", an "aestheticization of violence and suffering". In 1849, as revolutions raged in European streets and authorities were putting down protests and consolidating state powers, composer Richard Wagner wrote: "I have an enormous desire to practice a little artistic terrorism." Laurent Tailhade is reputed to have stated, after Auguste Vaillant bombed the Chamber of Deputies in 1893: " [What do the victims matter, so long as the gesture is beautiful]?" In 1929 André Breton's Second Manifesto on surrealist art stated that "" [The simplest Surrealist act consists of running down into the street, pistols in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd]." == In high culture ==

High culture forms such as fine art and literature have aestheticized violence into a form of autonomous art. This concept of an aesthetic element of murder has a long history; in the 19th century, Thomas de Quincey wrote, In his 1991 study of romantic literature, University of Georgia literature professor Joel Black stated that "(if) any human act evokes the aesthetic experience of the sublime, certainly it is the act of murder". Black notes that "...if murder can be experienced aesthetically, the murderer can in turn be regarded as a kind of artist—a performance artist or anti-artist whose specialty is not creation but destruction." == In films ==

Film critics analyzing violent film images that seek to aesthetically please the viewer mainly fall into two categories. Critics who see depictions of violence in film as superficial and exploitative argue that such films lead audience members to become desensitized to brutality, thus increasing their aggression. On the other hand, critics who view violence as a type of content, or as a theme, claim it is cathartic and provides "acceptable outlets for anti-social impulses". Adrian Martin describes the stance of such critics as emphasizing the separation between violence in film and real violence. To these critics, "movie violence is fun, spectacle, make-believe; it's dramatic metaphor, or a necessary catharsis akin to that provided by Jacobean theatre; it's generic, pure sensation, pure fantasy. It has its own changing history, its codes, its precise aesthetic uses." Margaret Bruder, a film studies professor at Indiana University and the author of Aestheticizing Violence, or How to Do Things with Style, proposes that there is a distinction between aestheticized violence and the use of gore and blood in mass market action or war films. She argues that "aestheticized violence is not merely the excessive use of violence in a film". Movies such as the popular action film Die Hard 2 are very violent, but they do not qualify as examples of aestheticized violence because they are not "stylistically excessive in a significant and sustained way". Writing in The New York Times, Dwight Garner reviews the controversy and moral panic surrounding the 1991 novel and 2000 film American Psycho. Garner concludes that the film was a "coal-black satire" in which "dire comedy mixes with Grand Guignol. There's demented opera in some of its scenes." The book, meanwhile, has acquired "grudging respect" and has been compared to Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange. Garner claims that the novel's author, Bret Easton Ellis, has contributed to the aestheticization of violence in popular media: "The culture has shifted to make room for Patrick Bateman|[Patrick] Bateman. We've developed a taste for barbaric libertines with twinkling eyes and some zing in their tortured souls. Tony Soprano, Walter White from "Breaking Bad", Hannibal Lecter (who predates "American Psycho")—here are the most significant pop culture characters of the past 30 years... Thanks to these characters, and to first-person shooter video games, we've learned to identify with the bearer of violence and not just cower before him or her." Morales argues that, similarly to A Clockwork Orange, the film's use of aestheticized violence appeals to audiences as an aesthetic element, and thus subverts preconceptions of what is acceptable or entertaining. ==See also==