Aesthetic Vertigo and the Jurisprudence of Disgust

This article engages with the intersection of law, legitimation and aesthetics by examining the controversies surrounding the exhibition in 1997 of two artworks: Piss Christ by Andres Serrano, andMyra by Marcus Harvey. The article is less concerned with issues such as freedom of expression or the rights of display, which by now are well-known in debates on censorship and the arts; rather, its focus is on the consequences for an artwork's exhibition when it is deemed to be `disgusting'. The judgment of the two selected artworks as disgusting is traced in public discourse, through newspaper reports, public protest, and in socio-legal responses to the artwork such as a civil suit for possible obscenity, in decency or blasphemy. The argument suggests that the jurisprudence of disgust in its response to a sensation of ‘aesthetic vertigo’ can provide a key means of understanding aesthetic controversies, and their legal regulation. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.