The Artist Is Present: Scandal and the Academic Study of the Living Artist

How do we write about or perform the work of contemporary artists who are engulfed in scandal’s flames? In this chapter, York combines theories of celebrity and scandal to ponder the thorny issue of how to conduct academic study on a contemporary artist in the midst of scandal. York queries the pervasive language of pre- and post-scandal celebrity that characterises such discussions as well as the metaphors of sudden incendiary crisis (e.g. the ‘dumpster fire’). In questioning these discourses of apocalyptic destruction, York suggests that scandal in the contemporary artistic celebrity realm can be better understood as disclosing a situation, whether of inequity, harassment or discrimination, that was already fully in place: a cultural space already in flames.