Decadence Now!
November 23, 2010 - Art or shock-value? Or both. The Rudolfinum hosts an exhibition of works by the bad boys (and girls) of art: Damien Hirst, Robert Mapplethorpe, Andres Serrano, and more. Not for the timid.
Zhang Peng: Desiring Happiness No. 1, 2007 (photo: Decadencenow.cz)
Trash, violence, porno, kitsch. Both disturbing and fascinating, Decadence Now! Visions of Excess presents works of art that test the boundaries of the extreme.
As the name implies, the exhibition looks at the theme of decadence in contemporary art, starting in the 1970s and going all the way to the present day. The works are not arranged chronologically, but rather are grouped thematically, touching on key themes such as alienation, ugliness, beauty, hallucination, death, pornography, drugs, sickness and madness.
The list of artists reads like a who's who of artists known for their often shocking, daring, controversial, or groundbreaking works: Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman, Nobuyoshi Araki, Jake a Dinos Chapman, Robert Mapplethorpe, Damien Hirst, Zhang Peng, Keith Haring, Andres Serrano, and Gottfried Helnwein, to name but a few.
The main Decadence Now! exhibition runs through January 2 at the Rudolfinum in Prague, with sub-exhibits at the Museum of Decorative Arts, DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, the Brno House of Arts, and the West Bohemian Gallery in Pilsen.
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