Blood Art

It's gotten little coverage, but a few days ago the Israeli ambassador to Sweden literally pulled the plug on a piece of artwork called "Snow White and The Madness of Truth." The piece was shown in Stockholm and featured an oddly rendered image of a female suicide-bomber floating on a white boat in a sea of blood.

The work almost sounds kind of powerful but the context of the work, as provided by the artist, mockingly glorifies innocent death. It was wrong of the ambassador to deface the artwork, despite its pretenses. But it's also a sad commentary of contemporary art that this is all we get anymore. Needless to say, I'm pretty down on art this year.

(In writing this, I realize critics may point out that my last post makes comparisons between films and the Holocaust. But in "The Women," or in "The Wizard of Oz," the texts of the films were not subject-specific and each devised its own language to speak about the world's complexities, including issues of race and violence. In the "Snow White" piece, artist Dror Feller does the opposite.)

Posted by Andrew at January 20, 2004 4:05 PM