Artists too frightened to tackle radical Islam

Times Online ^ | November 19, 2007

[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.”

[Badeye]

‘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.

[50sDad]

“Happy people do not need to make art.”’

[XenaLee]

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.

[durasell]

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.

[Psychic Dice]

>>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.

[durasell]

I would not classify Cormac McCarthy as a flaming liberal. He’s the closest we’ve come to Melville in quite some time.

[durasell]

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.

[Billthedrill]

Kudos to the feller for candor if not for courage. One of the things that has cheapened popular culture over the past several decades is the tendency to act self-righteous and condemnatory toward a target that never fights back, whether that be Christianity in art or American foreign policy in politics. The ability to claim courage without having to prove it is seductive, lucrative, and untimately condemns the practitioner to self-aggrandizing irrelevance.

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.

[Psychic Dice]

>>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.

[Psychic Dice]

>>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.

[RedCobra]

Maybe as a big, fat, dumb and happy nation we need to get out collective faces slapped again, no matter how tragic that may be in terms of innocent human lives, in order to wake us up and cause the responsible, so called “silent majority” to once again take the reins of this country and wage the fight against the enemy as it should be done. Something needs to be done to expose as with a spotlight the dangerous, sick, lunatic left and liberals who seem bent on ruining this country. The misplaced concern for the scum in Guantanamo and the criminal ACLU’S mission of granting rights to the terrorists, illegals and pornographers who want to corrupt, ruin and destroy this once mighty nation. We have various enemies from within who are really doing a number on us all at once. This all amounts to a more intense, and immediate threat to this nation than that which concerned us during the Cold War.

[Borges]

I would not classify Cormac McCarthy as a flaming liberal. He’s the closest we’ve come to Melville in quite some time.

Since Nabokov anyway.

[durasell]

LOL!

I think you have to be born an American and not have your wife do the translations into english to be in Melville’s class.

In all seriousness, McCarthy is good. It break my heart that hacks like the Coen Bros. are doing one of his books.

[Borges]

At their best the Coens are as good as American filmmaking gets. Have seen this film? It’s a return to form for them.

[Borges]

BTW who’s wife translated what into English? VN’s Russian novels were translated either by him or him in collaboration with his son. His post 1938 novels were written in English by him.

[A_Former_Democrat]

Typical of “artistic” types, plus liberal media. They ARE cowards. They won’t take on any organized efforts, e.g. NAACP, CAIR, ACLU, NOW, etc., nor issues at odds with their advertisers (though dwindling in number).

Instead, it’s open season on Christians, whites, males. Bombs away.

[numberonepal]

Another dhimmitized sissy b1tch - just what we need. Yes, I just made up that word.

[durasell]

There were rumors — and at least one book — about how she translated even his English books for him while at Cornell.

I’m not a fan of the Coen Bros. (with the exception of Hudsucker Proxy).

I’ll say the following with the understanding that my tastes are peculiar when it comes to movies. There are very few movies that I have enjoyed in recent years. I see a lot of directors on the verge of a new visual vocabulary, then they either back off or go down in flame. This would include the guy who did the new Romeo+Juliet, Guy Ritchie, et al. They’ll make what I consider a good innovative movie, then the next one will be a hideous stinker.

I have no beef against Hollywood other than the quality of the movies being made.

[Borges]

You don’t like the Coen Brothers and you like Guy Ritchie?

[durasell]

I though that Snatch was a really, really good movie visually.

I can’t say “I like Guy Ritchie” because he’s only made one movie I like, just as I can’t say the same about the Coen Bros. They made one movie I like.