In The Anatomy of Disgust (Miller, 1997) Miller denotes that disgust is derived from two key areas accordingly: whether the feeling of disgust involves the emission of any raw bodily matter, or, from a disgusting smell, sound or sight. The latter form of disgust, that is derived from using the key sense organs (nose, ears and eyes) are more susceptible to ‘spiritual invasion’ (Miller, 1997, pg.89), an invasion of the ego* In this first chapter, it will focus on the act of ‘looking’ at the disgusting, and the crisis in which the viewer has when faced with viewing something that elicits disgust.
‘Art is not, in essence, a leisure pursuit’, an exercise in therapy or act of self-expression, but rather a primary quest for meaning and understanding.’ (Abbs, 1989, pg.35) This non-expressional quest for understanding, it would seem, is central to most, if not all contemporary artist’s practices. Subjects in which artist’s chose to understand and explore, can be said to range between two key areas: the pleasurable and the painful. Brook suggests:
‘We do not only celebrate good things in the popular sense of the term. We celebrate joy, sexual excitement, and all forms of pleasure; but also as an individual or as a member of a community through our cultures, we celebrate violence, despair, anxiety and destruction. The wish to make known, to show others, it is in a sense a celebration.’ (Brook, The Symbolic Order, 1989, pg.37)
It is this second form of ‘celebration’ in which Brook discusses, that would be more likely to elicit disgust, over the celebration of which is pleasurable (with the exception of sexual pleasure, depending on its context): celebrating subjects of discourse, pain and other forms of human despair they have experienced. One such artist who chooses to celebrate violence, despair, anxiety and destruction, is the artist and photographer, Joel-Peter Witkin, who delves head-first into such themes, re-creating things thought to be grotesque, then equalizing, if not surpassing them, into symbols of beauty. This of course, is not a new concept within the history of art. Images such as the crucifixion of Christ, or the spectacle of a damaged human body: The mutilated, dying or dead: The broken body: Often these images are as grotesque as they are beautiful, as pitiful as they are magisterial.
