re: #116 Dark_Falcon

True, but I still don’t like it. I don’t like people who set out to be offensive. Whatever their skills, such people tend to be assholes and more than one such person has derived sadistic pleasure from tormenting me personally. That asshole aspect is something I cannot get past.

Well, there’s people who want to do NOTHING but offend with their work, and there’s people whose art offends intentionally as a matter of course, but it’s because they feel the message is valid and being offensive is sort of the thing they have to do to get it out there. Manet didn’t JUST want to offend. Bacon didn’t JUST want to offend. They wanted to upset convention. And that requires offending people. But they had things they had to say that they felt passionately about it, and they intended to scandalize and be controversial. But it’s not the only note they played. Banksy offends and vandalizes, but he also makes people think about their world.