Art Attack 3

"We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realise truth”

- Pablo Picasso

Gakuruahundi by Owen Maseko

Art is not actual reality, it can usher reality in and help us deal with it in a moderated or graduated way which in turn helps us to grapple with our past and current failings and successes in a palatable manner. The artistic field is one of the most important areas of liberated and investigative thought, a bastion of an expressive cultural identity, the most communal in outreach; bold, entertaining, and intelligent.

Any society which does not uphold such ideals and avenues, risks producing a people stultified, numb and unquestioning. It is the role of art to intervene in every society, to make conscious in the most intimate mode of our senses. Nothing could be more precious or urgent in the evolution of a society. Art as well plays a vital role in defining a society; in giving it an identity, a history, a present, a future.

There have been many examples in recent history where the art has been banned, artists being accused on the basis of morality, obscenity or criticising the government. The most recent example of the attack on artistic freedom being the case of Ai Weiwei, the world-famous artist ( He is the one who designed the Bird's Nest stadium for the Beijing Olympics) who was released on on bail in China two days back after more than two-and-a-half months of detention and a sustained international campaign calling for his freedom.

Degenerate art

The Nazi regime in Germany once banned virtually all modern art calling it Degenerate art (English translation of the German entartete Kunst) on the grounds that it was un-German or Jewish Bolshevist in nature, and those identified as degenerate artists were subjected to sanctions. These included being dismissed from teaching positions, being forbidden to exhibit or to sell their art, and in some cases being forbidden to produce art entirely.

Degenerate Art was also the title of an exhibition, mounted by the Nazis in Munich in 1937, consisting of modernist artworks chaotically hung and accompanied by text labels deriding the art. The aim of this organization was to halt the "corruption of art" and inform the people about the relationship between race and art. While modern styles of art were prohibited, the Nazis promoted paintings and sculptures that were narrowly traditional in manner and that exalted the "blood and soil" values of racial purity, militarism, and obedience. (There’s a striking similarity on the logics raised by Hindu right wing who targeted M.F.Hussain for his depiction of Hindu Godesses and Bharat Mata.) Interestingly Many of the artists included in the Degenerate art exhibition such as Marc Paul Klee,Chagall, Max Ernst, Wassily Kandinsky etc are now considered masters of the twentieth century. Paul Klee being one the most important icon of the modern art history responded to Hitler's artistic purge through his own work, visually reproducing the inhumanity of the Nazi regime. Years later in Germany itself the Holocaust Memorial near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin has been considered a necessary work of art-– a stark reminder of a terrible past which no-one should ever forget. It is a good example where the art works which are sombre and accurate visions of reality or which help nations to realise the truth of their past are not just allowed but are revered.

The Perfect Moment (1989) By Robert Mapplethorpe:

Twenty two years ago, in the summer of 1989, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. cancelled its scheduled retrospective exhibition of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe called ‘Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment’. several members of the U.S. Congress were upset when the works were revealed to them, due to some of the content being homoerotic and sadomasochistically themed.

Two decades later the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania organized a seminar on Mapplethorpe called ‘Imperfect Moments: Mapplethorpe and Censorship Twenty Years Later’

Owen Maseko
In 2010 Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwean government has banned visual artist Maseko’s paintings, and is effectively preventing anyone from debating the massacres issue. Maseko’s works depict the massacres of thousands of opposition ZAPU supporters in Midlands and Matabeleland provinces in the eighties. Not the recent ones, but those in the early years of Zimbabwe’s independence. Maseko was slapped with leg irons, taken to prison and held for four days.

Unfortunately nowhere in the world do art has been completely accepted as it is, or artists have been given unfettered freedom to produce works of art. The boundary of these laws imposed by society or the governments is subjective and varies greatly from one another depending upon their willingness to face it. Who decides what is "obscene" or "offensive" in public exhibitions? The Government? Or Society? Can art be considered a form of freedom to create? To this day, these questions remain unanswered.

Art Attacks 2

Renowned Indian painter M.F.Hussain’s death has put the debate on artistic freedom and religious tolerance back in to news. Attempts to attack art is something which has been going on for quite some time and we can find endless examples of it. In 1999, a man who escaped a psychiatric clinic, took to Picasso's Femme nue devant le jardin (Woman Nude Before A Garden) with a blunt knife. The same man had earlier acid attacked on Rembrandt's The Night Watch. His Self Portrait was attacked with yellow paint by Vincent Bethell, Britain's notorious nudist activist at the National Gallery in London. In 1993, Jubal Brown, vomited Blue paint over Piet Mondrian's Composition (1933) also known as Composition in Red, White and Blue at the Museum Of Modern Art; New York. In 21 May, 2000 at the Tate Modern, London, two men were arrested for peeing on Marcel Duchamp's Fountain one of the urinals he signed "R.Mutt in 1917.

Many of these attacks involve either an artist who is acting on behalf of their own artistic ideals or a person who attacks an icon of the culture we live in such as a Rembrandt or Picasso, that themselves were worshiped in a manner otherwise reserved for religious worship. (Some of these attacks itself could be seen as a belief system comparable to a religion though.) But at the same time some attempts are art in itself. Like this Bansky work

Bansky

Then there is a second type of attack mainly Iconoclasm, which can be defined as the act of breaking or destroying images, especially religious ones. That is more dangerous than the above examples. Here art is simply being damaged, just because it is against someone’s religious faith.

It could be argued that this same religious fervor that drove Moses to break the statue is similar to the drive behind most art crimes today. Discounting attacks on art that are directly related to religious iconography. Controversial artworks have been produced by artists throughout history that really test the tolerance level of the society. Some parts of society lay scorn and criticism on these works, unable or unwilling to appreciate the artist's vision. In a free society, artists should be able to create any type work that their talent, means and imagination they can come up with, whether it offends certain people or not.

Many critiques(?) of Hussain were wondering how people would have reacted if Jesus or Allah were expressed in art in a way which is not familiar to the popular assumption of the same. The prophet cartoon example is so notorious that it doesn’t need to be reminded again. Here are a few other works of art, caused quite a bit of controversy in recent times for religious reasons in Christianity which many think is a more tolerant religion.

Piss Christ

1.Piss Christ is a controversial photograph by U.S. artist Andres Serrano. It shows a small plastic crucifix supporting the body of Jesus Christ submerged in a glass of the artist's urine. The piece was a winner of the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art's "Awards in the Visual Arts" competition.The piece caused a scandal when it was exhibited in 1989, with detractors accusing Serrano of blasphemy and others raising this as a major issue of artistic freedom. However, art critic and Catholic Nun Sister Wendy Beckett actually approved of "Piss Christ".Piss Christ is often used as a test-case for the idea of freedom of speech, and was described in the journal Arts & Opinion as "a clash between the interests of artists in freedom of expression on the one hand, and the hurt such artworks may cause to a section of the community on the other."

Yo Mama’s Last Supper

2.Renée Cox's Yo Mama’s Last Supper is a 15-foot-tall photograph of a nude African-American woman portraying Jesus, surrounded by 12 black men portraying the disciples.

Chris Ofili's "Holy Virgin Mary"

3.Chris Ofili's "Holy Virgin Mary"

In 1999, the city-funded Brooklyn Museum of Art came under fire when it exhibited a Chris Ofili painting of the Virgin Mary that featured sexually explicit cutouts covered with elephant dung. The Catholic Church, as well as New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, were outraged. Giuliani denounced the exhibit as morally offensive and threatened to cut off funding to the museum and terminate its lease if it did not cancel the exhibit that included Ofili’s painting. The city followed through and withheld the museum’s rent payment for October and filed a state lawsuit to get the lease revoked. As a countermeasure, the museum filed a suit in federal court against the city claiming violations of the first ammendment, and seeking a permanent injunction against the city to keep it from withholding funds. U.S. District Judge Nina Gershon, sided with the museum, and granted them a preliminary injunction. The city was also ordered to resume the museum's funding, and to stop any eviction proceedings.

the list goes on..

Related post: Art attack 1