Posted on 11/19/2007 4:27:00 PM PST by ddtorquee
Britain’s contemporary artists are fêted around the world for their willingness to shock but fear is preventing them from tackling Islamic fundamentalism. Grayson Perry, the cross-dressing potter, Turner Prize winner and former Times columnist, said that he had consciously avoided commenting on radical Islam in his otherwise highly provocative body of work because of the threat of reprisals.
Perry also believes that many of his fellow visual artists have also ducked the issue, and one leading British gallery director told The Times that few major venues would be prepared to show potentially inflammatory works.
“I’ve censored myself,” Perry said at a discussion on art and politics organised by the Art Fund. “The reason I haven’t gone all out attacking Islamism in my art is because I feel real fear that someone will slit my throat.”
Perry’s highly decorated pots can sell for more than £50,000 and often feature sex, violence and childhood motifs. One work depicted a teddy bear being born from a penis as the Virgin Mary. “I’m interested in religion and I’ve made a lot of pieces about it,” he said. “With other targets you’ve got a better idea of who they are but Islamism is very amorphous. You don’t know what the threshold is. Even what seems an innocuous image might trigger off a really violent reaction so I just play safe all the time.”
(Excerpt) Read more at entertainment.timesonline.co.uk ...
I believe the English term for this is Coward.
Good little Dhimmie he is.
If the art carries a message then it isn’t art.
Not much of an artist, then.
The medium is the message (England is finished).
So much for “brave”, “controversial” artists.
It’s OK and “laudable” to insult and saterize Christians, white men, capitalists, etc., but everyone is too chicken to “offend” the Islamofascist Nazis.
It’s the new chicken art.
I guess they’re afraid of being too “cutting edge” or just afraid of the Islamofascist real, throat cutting and head loping cutting edge.
They do not want to part with their heads.
Somebody will eventually create a fictitious artist who specializes in anti-Muslim art guaranteed to make them froth at the mouth and threaten. With the publicity from the death threats to the non-existent artist, they will be able to sell the “art” at high prices to private collectors.
This kind of scam has been used for years.
That last time I heard of it, some NYC artist created some homoerotic “art” featuring Batman and Robin. He knew that DC Comics will sue *anybody* who uses Batman without permission. Then as soon as they threatened to sue him blind, he publicly destroyed “all” of his works, which killed the lawsuit. Then he had a buddy sell off a half-dozen of them to private collectors, on condition that they not tell anybody.
The whole art market is full of such con artists. They have pulled endless scams to sell their product for over a hundred years, and probably much, much longer. It just goes with the territory.
Artists, art dealers, museums, collectors, thieves, insurers, everybody involved have their own angles to rip somebody off.
Could be,,if I knew how to post a picture ,I’d show some art I’ve collected..
They don’t want their heads taken off with a dull machete.
From the horse's mouth.
There are enough mohamdedans in England to pose a credible threat.
'Epater the bourgeoisie' (to shock or insult the middle class, a clarion call since the Surrealist movement) is not the right approach.
Well crafted, respectful depictions of the big Mo's life would still inform and illuminate the ignorant. For example, a series illustrating Mo's 'marriage' to Aisha, or the murders perpetrated against the Jews in Medina.
Those events could be depicted without violating, at least technically, mohammedan proscriptions. Verses could be added as captions, and people might be made wiser.
But according to the likes of Rosie O’Donnell and Elton John, Christians are “just as dangerous” as Muslims...
Such is the “bravery” of so-called artists fighting for “the cause.”
Hypocrites.
Everywhere they go, Muslims sing, “Yakity-yak. Don’t talk back,” which they enforce against their women and would like to the rest of us.
Art was a huge organ of the 60s counter-culture. Everybody who protested, everybody who wrote and sang protest songs, everybody who wrote, directed and produced protest movies knew that they could shake their tusches in the face of the establishment and call it an expression of conscience.
However, the artists that have followed that generation obviously today fear Muslim bitch slaps and they Yakity-yak do not talk back - not to Islam.
If the 60s artists were their mentors, the truth is coming out. They weren’t about conscience. Try sex, drugs and rock and roll.
Well, here's at least one coward who's willing to admit it.
“. . .contemporary artists are fêted around the world for their willingness to shock but fear is preventing them from tackling Islamic fundamentalism. Grayson Perry, the cross-dressing potter . . .”
He thinks his “lifestyle” doesn’t already offend the ROP? He thinks he’s safe as long as he doesn’t tackle Islamic fundamentalism? Ignorance is bliss, I guess.
Yep!
I dont think the current style of Christians permitting trashy artists wannabes to drag Christianity and its closly held beleifs through vulgarity and mud to be wise either.
Hey, the guy’s a cross dresser. How fast can a man run in stiletto heels and a miniskirt?
You don’t have to look to England to see it.
Governments, businesses, newspapers right here ‘in river city’ are doing exactly the same.
Funny, before the Muslims ‘invaded’ this Country there wasn’t the furor over Christian holidays, emblems, etc.
Did Jews demand AND GET Kosher food in public schools? Demand AND GET all symbols of Christianity removed from the public AND PRIVATE businesses? Demand AND GET prayer rooms in schools? No, but the Muslims have.
A few Jews and atheists sued to have some symbols removed but that’s about as far as they went .
The Muslims threaten to kill, blow up, destroy if their demands aren’t met.
Bottom line... the government, newspapers, artists, film makers and businesses are AFRAID of the Muslims.
bump
I grew up in S. Fla.,large Jewish population.
In school we celebrated both religions. Used to sing Jewish Holiday songs.
Jewish Holidays many of the kids stayed home. It was as natural as sunrise.
The difference is Muslims want to dominate or destroy us. That simple.
bump
Could it be that artists “tackle” those things in their own lives, i.e. the religion they were raised in, their own country, etc.
This seems like a good place for the old saw "Cowards die a thousand deaths, the brave but once."
>>Could it be that artists “tackle” those things in their own lives, i.e. the religion they were raised in, their own country, etc.
Right now, Muslims aren’t just in the lives of the Europeans; they’re in their faces.
Modern artists know that they can piss/Christ and burn the flag and that their right to do so will be defended to the death – but not by them. Their acting out doesn’t push the envelope, nor is it brave. They shake their tushes for the attention which gets them money, power and laid.
The 60s produced great sounding music that was ideologically irrational, crass and corrupt. The artists who came after them through the 70s, 80s, 90s and into the 21 Century amplified the self destruction with an ideology that flatlined through all those decades as rehacked 60s dogma.
I’ve been wondering for some time now when that would change, when the genius would emerge whose art both critiques the lazy, uninspired mediocrity that is currently the backdrop to our children’s youth and points to the obvious truths that no one has been willing to admit.
Will Islam will force a confrontation that will require that rethinking? Looks like it. However, it also looks like there is no way that the current stagnant castrati are up to the challenge.
In the meantime, I’ll be singing: “Come senators and congressmen, please heed the call. Get out of the doorway. Don’t block up the hall. … For the times they are a changin.”
Imagine courageous artists of history like Fransisco Goya, Honore Daumier and Kathe Kollwitz being this cowardly. Kollwitz, for one, openly defied the Nazis with her art and Daumier went to prison in 1870’s France. Today’s artists, for the most part, are glad to harpoon Christianity, or our war effort, just like our cowardly “entertainers” in music and hollywood. None have the guts to tackle Islamofascism.
bttt
So, a cruicifix in urine is a “bold artistic statement” and a cartoon of Mohammed with a bomb on his head is “going too far.” What’s the difference, do you think? (Probably that My People stopped killing people to force conversions FIVE CENTURIES AGO.)
Ever meet an ‘artist’ that wasn’t a wimp?
Me neither.
Dude! Remember when the Amish hijacked those planes and flew them into the World Trade Centers? Oh, no...wait...OK, remember when the Quakers beheaded those journalists? Ummm, sorry. Oh, what about when the Southern Baptists implied that there may be several Scriptures in the Bible that say "sin is bad and Christ wants people not to do it"? Those bastards!!!!
bttt
Garrison Keillior, a Lefty who is none-the-less a clever person, once said: “Happy people do not need to make art.”
I have to wonder if this crossdressing potter Grayson Perry’s grandparents’ had been as cowardly during WWII would he be Gustave instead? What has happened to the British people?
‘Garrison Keillior, a Lefty who is none-the-less a clever person, once said: “Happy people do not need to make art.”’
He’s so ate up with Bush Derangement Syndrome he couldn’t write a column about Pavarotti without inserting a nonsensical cheap shot at the President.
He’s so ate up with Bush Derangement Syndrome he couldn’t write a column about Halloween without a cheap shot at Bush, Cheney, Rice, and Richard Nixon.
Both columns appeared in our ‘free’ local county paper in recent months.
On top of it, he’s a first rate hypocrite. This is a guy who turned a ‘retirement tour’ into a TEN YEAR JUNKET.
Woebegone my ass.
“Happy people do not need to make art.”’
It’s just the usual. Today’s cowards and traitors (mostly leftist/socialist DemocRats) use the very freedoms we have against us. They take full advantage of America’s democracy and use it to attack America. And nfortunately, about half of the nation apparently has no problem with what they’re doing. The olde truism “United we stand, divided we fall” is about to be sorely tested. And I’m afraid we’ll find that it’s just as true now as it’s always been.
Americans had better wake the hell up! I truly believe that the upcoming election results will either make or break America. We’ve been on the verge up till now, but never as close to utter destruction as we will be if America elects a Marxist/leftist DemocRat for President.
I already have a very bad feeling about which way it’s going to go.
I’ve been wondering for some time now when that would change, when the genius would emerge whose art both critiques the lazy, uninspired mediocrity that is currently the backdrop to our children’s youth and points to the obvious truths that no one has been willing to admit..
Turn on the TV. Pop culture is a mirror. It is it’s own critique.
>>I’ve been wondering for some time now when that would change, when the genius would emerge whose art both critiques the lazy, uninspired mediocrity that is currently the backdrop to our children’s youth and points to the obvious truths that no one has been willing to admit..
>Turn on the TV. Pop culture is a mirror. It is it’s own critique.
Sure, but it’s a critique that leads itself and the public in a self-perpetuating circle. Right now, all the media attack the USA, our military, our corporations, our religions and our families.
Just came back from No Country For Old Men. A Texas welder while on a hunting trip comes across a heroin deal gone bad. He finds $2,000,0000 and spends most of the story battling the hired psychopath sent to retrieve the cash.
Nearly all the bad guys are Mexican or Indian. Instead of MS13 or Zeta thugs as the kingpins, the drugs are owned by a corporate American.
The film is framed with scenes at the beginning and end with Tommy Lee Jones as an aging sheriff who is too tired to prevent all the collateral damage as the protagonist and antagonist shoot at each other.
One way to read the film - one of the strongest suggestions - is that American law enforcement is too old to prevent the Mexican criminal avalanche.
Let’s hear a round of applause for the Coen Brothers as refuse to suggest America’s way to better days. Instead, in keeping with their 60s world view, they wring out a slow moving funeral dirge.
I would not classify Cormac McCarthy as a flaming liberal. He’s the closest we’ve come to Melville in quite some time.
oh yeah, that said, nobody should try to make a movie out of McCarthy books. His books are equally about language as they are plot — there’s no way for today’s Hollywood to portray his use of language in the same manner as they did, say, Chandler or Hammett.
I do wish someone would translate this sentence into English for me, though -
One work depicted a teddy bear being born from a penis as the Virgin Mary.
I don't think one can create art by mixing random emotionally-loaded abstractions, but then I'm neither artist nor critic. Possibly this is simply too profound for me. Possibly it's crap.
>>I would not classify Cormac McCarthy as a flaming liberal. He’s the closest we’ve come to Melville in quite some time.
I haven’t read any of his books and realized that he might have had completely different use for his story than the Coen brothers did. If corporate America is also the heroin kingpin in his novel I’d be suspicious.
>>I do wish someone would translate this sentence into English for me, though -
>>One work depicted a teddy bear being born from a penis as the Virgin Mary.
>>I don’t think one can create art by mixing random emotionally-loaded abstractions, but then I’m neither artist nor critic. Possibly this is simply too profound for me. Possibly it’s crap.
All I am certiain of is that the teddy bear, the penis and the Virgin Mary can’t complain.
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