Disparities & Deformations: Our Grotesque, The Fifth International Site Santa Fe Biennial

This comprehensive examination of the grotesque in contemporary art, published in conjunction with Site Santa Fe’s Fifth International Biennial Exhibition, traces the evolution of this paradoxical aesthetic mode from its origins in ancient Rome to its diverse manifestations in current artistic practice. Curator Robert Storr’s scholarly framework illuminates how the term “grotesque”—derived from the Italian “grotto” and first applied to the strange hybrid forms discovered in Nero’s excavated palaces—has evolved from a descriptor of decorative whimsy into a critical paradigm for understanding art that deliberately disrupts conventional categories and comfort zones. Through careful analysis of works by over sixty international artists, including established figures like Louise Bourgeois and Paul McCarthy, the catalogue demonstrates how contemporary artists deploy grotesque strategies to navigate the cultural and psychological landscape of our time.

Through extensive illustrations and penetrating critical essays, the volume reveals how today’s artists have expanded upon historical precedents—from Renaissance masters to Baroque experimentalists—to create works that embrace formal and conceptual incongruity as a means of cultural critique. Whether manifesting in Charles Burns’s unsettling comic narratives, Maria Lassnig’s comical and alarming paintings, or John Waters’s deliberately transgressive films, these contemporary interpretations of the grotesque continue to probe what Jean-Paul Sartre termed a state of “soul dizziness”—that vertiginous space where familiar realities dissolve into productive paradox. The catalogue situates these contemporary works within a broader theoretical discourse about hybridity, transgression, and the dissolution of traditional aesthetic hierarchies, demonstrating how the grotesque tradition has become a crucial lens through which artists examine the contradictions and complexities of contemporary experience.

Published by SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2005

Essay by Robert Storr

Designed by Joseph Guglietti

Hardcover, fully illustrated, 175 pages