From the ‘Wankers & Flakes’ Department: dung Madonna, chocolate Jesus, cross in urine, etc, etc is OK. Depicting Muhammad is not…
Artists too frightened to tackle radical Islam
Artists, many unable to make a living were it not for government handouts, are courageous when it comes to offend and to ‘shock’ those who don’t react violently, something we have seen over and over again in the past. After Theo Van Gogh’s murder in the Netherlands Dutch movie makers were asked whether they would come out in support and make the sequel to his movie ‘Submission’- but all of them had the flimsiest of excuses, like ‘I have two small children’- or ‘I don’t want to rob my children of their father’ etc.
A rather shortsighted view, because what kind of a world are they bringing their children into when they refuse to defend freedom of speech and expression?
Ben Hoyle, Arts Reporter
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.”
* Some kind of hero, that one…
The fate of Theo van Gogh, the Dutch film-maker who was murdered by a Muslim extremist in 2004 after he made a film portraying violence against women in Islamic societies, is the most chilling example of what can happen to an artist who is perceived to have offended Islam. Perry said that he had also been scared by the reaction across the Islamic world to Danish cartoons deemed anti-Muslim in 2006 and by the protests against Salman Rushdie’s knighthood this year.
* Last year, Dutch artist Tjalling Houkema saw how his drawing of a Qu’ran splattered with blood and with a gun inside was removed from an exhibition in a library in The Hague after Muslims complained and made threats.
Across Europe there is growing evidence that freedom of expression has been curtailed by fear of religious fundamentalism. Robert Redeker, a French philosophy teacher, is in hiding after calling the Koran a “book of extraordinary violence” in Le Figaro in 2006; Spanish villages near Valencia have abandoned a centuries-old tradition of burning effigies of Muhammad to mark the reconquest of Spain, against the Moors; and an opera house in Berlin banned a production of Mozart’s Idomeneo because it depicted the beheading of Muhammad (as well as Jesus and other spiritual leaders).
In Britain the most high-profile examples have also been seen in the theatre, with the campaign by Christian fundamentalists against Jerry Springer: the Opera and the protests in Birmingham that forced the closure of Bezhti, a play about rape and murder in a Sikh temple.
Tim Marlow, director of exhibitions at White Cube, the London gallery, welcomed Perry’s admission. “It’s something that’s there but very few people have explicitly admitted. Institutions, museums and galleries are probably doing most of the censorship. I would be lying if I said of course we would show something like the Danish cartoons. I think there are genuine reasons for concern. Fundamentalism is a really complex issue and one of the things artists can do is to help us through that complexity. Whether or not it’s their responsibility to do that I’m not sure though.”
* I would say it is. What say you?
* Shiva has a fair bit of uncensored Islamic art right here and here
Pali Art:
With those two together the victory has been achieved.
Just in from South Africa:
Cartoon upsets Muslims
Cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro — better known as Zapiro — has riled Muslims with a cartoon that portrays Allah, but he is unrepentant.
“I do these things because I believe in freedom of expression,” Shapiro said, acknowledging that his cartoon in the Cape Times yesterday had landed him in hot water.
He said he understood the cartoon had provoked a flood of angry SMS messages from the Muslim community.
Shapiro, who is being sued by Jacob Zuma over his cartoons, said he was not surprised that people had gone “ballistic”.
Devout believers should “take a step back” from their religious fervour and realise belief systems were created by humans, he said
