Blasphemy: Art That Offends

The issue of censorship has never been hotter. The boundary between artistic freedom and incitement is becoming ever more blurred, and the modes of objection by political and religious fundamentalists to the art they deem offensive are turning ever more extreme. God, Mohammed, Jesus, the Quran and the Torah have all been at one point or another subjected to artistic interpretation, as have more liberal values, such as friendship, education and the nation-state. The responses these images have provoked have ranged from indifference, to, in the case of Theo Van Gogh, murder. Through an examination of a broad range of contentious imagery in art, this book questions the status of blasphemy in a world ever more divided in its views of what is acceptable, and provides an intriguing vantage point from which to view the interrelations between religion, politics and the visual arts.