Bad Holocaust Art

Abstract

This article examines the representation of the Holocaust in the visual arts, and evaluates theories of that representation which seek to place limits upon artworks that are seen to transgress responsible modes. Acknowledging that the Holocaust is one of the most fraught and contested of crime scenes, it opens by studying the public responses to the Mirroring Evil exhibition, at the Jewish Museum in New York in 2002. It traces changing critical and theoretical discourses about the limits of Holocaust representation, and tests these against practices in literature, historiography, jurisprudence and visual art. In particular, it describes the transgressive goals of certain practices within contemporary visual art, and proposes an ethical framework for engaging with various forms of transgressive conduct.