Bang! the Gun as Image

Book excerpt: This volume includes artworks from a wide range of artists from the unknown and untrained to the internationally successful, including Robert Mapplethorpe, Andres Serrano, and Andy Warhol. All media are included although photographic imagery is dominant. The range of their political positions on the topic is wide and the implications of their imagery diverse. Also included are quotations from literature or film, a listing of over 200 films that include guns or shooting in their titles, and a list of ephemera, primarily contemporary, from a "Mean Wiener" toy, a plastic hot dog bun holding a gun, to magazines, calendars, bumper stickers, t-shirts, books, key chains, cigarette lighters, and glassware. Of interest to art and gun aficionados alike, Bang both celebrates and criticizes the many political points of view surrounding the gun.