Funk art

DEFINITION

Artwork with subject matter and style intended to offend by being vulgar and shockingly narrative, it is offbeat, sensuous and direct with a heavy influence from earlier anti-war movements such as DADA and NEO-DADA. The term, Funk Art, refers to a movement born in the San Francisco area during the 1960s, and it was made official with the 1967 exhibition "Funk". The word funk derives from funky, a musical term. Peter Selz, then director of the University Art Museum in Berkeley, gave the name to the movement. Artists involved were Robert Arneson, Clayton Bailey, Bruce Conner, Roy De Forest, Mel Henderson, Robert Hudson, Richard Shaw, and William Wiley. Source: Robert Atkins, "Art Speak"<br><br>A term used loosely for art in which offensive subject matter is presented in order to offend, sometimes pornographically. It gained this association in the 1960s, when used to refer to such work produced in the San Francisco area. The word "funky", from which this term was derived, has older, wide-ranging meanings, including: having a moldy or unwashed odor; smoky or earthy qualities in music, as in the blues; self-expressive, original, and modish; unconventional, outlandishly vulgar or eccentric in a humorous or tongue-in-cheek manner; campy.Also see aesthetic, bad art, beauty, fumage, grotesque, kitsch, obscene, and ugly.