Banality of being provocative
When an artist wants to be provocative and to "start a conversation" they all seem to be provocative in the same way. The banality of being provocative. Yes to push the envelop your "art" must:
- Use a crucifix in some way (bonus points for using urine or a corpus made out of chocolate)
- Substitute the people in the Last Supper with your own figures (bonus points for nudity or making Jesus a woman)
- Mock some other form of sacred art especially of Our Lady (Bonus points for using excrement preferably from a large gray animal with a trunk)
Artists are a lot of teenager who often rebel in exactly the same way and wear/pierce/tattoo exactly the same things as a sign of their "individuality."
An Italian museum has defied Pope Benedict by refusing to remove a statue of a crucified green frog clutching a beer mug and an egg.
The Vatican had condemned the modern art sculpture as blasphemous.
The board of the Museion museum in the northern city of Bolzano voted it was a work of art, however.
Of course we get the typical hyperbole with Pope's fury as crucified frog statue goes on display at Italian museum.
Known as 
Spellcheck!
As deeply as I respect the Pope and Bishop Conley there are times I think the best and most authoritarian thing to do is simply to ignore. During the BSE crisis some wally depicted a crucified cow on the wall of a trendy Episcopalian church in Edinburgh; part of me wanted to write to the bishop and part of me refused to grace the ludicrosity (is that a word? perhaps Memphis Aggie will tell me) with the effort. We need to remember that Our Lord died a banal death, a worldly death, in His human lifetime it was a death of murderers and charlatans so it's really not that awful if so-called artists want to depict cows and frogs the same way. I'm sure our bovine and amphibian brethren, let's not be speciesist about this, would be ashamed if only they knew, after all, cows were probably His first worshippers.
Oh, and when I am Queenie (just like in Blackadder) the first people I will bump off will be avant garde artists. Even before BBC producers.
A crucified frog with a beer mug and an egg? I don't get it. Maybe they were trying to start a conversation about a new restaurant. Frog legs, omelettes and beer?
It seems kind of random. How about if the artist next does a work featuring armadillo lashed to a mast being flogged by a squid who is reading Kafka?
It seems kind of random.
Indeed. Only one rule in post-modern art: avoid Beauty.
Wow... juvenile AND ugly! It IS art... It's a shame that beauty has become passé.
No doubt the same artists' parents or grandparents' made bold anti-Nazi art during the occupation. And no doubt the current artists will make bold anti-Muslim art now.
No doubt the same artists' parents or grandparents' made bold anti-Nazi art during the occupation. And no doubt the current artists will make bold anti-Muslim art now.
i agree with margi. these philistines thrive on attention -- any kind of attention -- and do not deserve the dignity of a response.
The best thing to do with these sorts of adolescent attention-seeking antics is to ignore them. The very reason the "artist" creates such nonsense is for the publicity. I said one time in a theology class that I'm going to write a heretical book, send it to Rome, ask that I be investigated for heresy, and then wait for the lucrative speaking engagements to come rolling in after the CDF smacks me on the wrist. There's nothing a ham loves more than an audience--hostile or adoring...doesn't matter.
Yeah, its much better to write an heretical book and hear nothing about it from the Vatican and then proceed to encourage 'theologians' and a certain religious order to use my book as a reference in their teaching for the next 40 years. Something about millstones and little ones comes to mind.
Reminds me of what Dante said about sins against art.
It puts me in mind of a grotesque reaction to both Lewis' Narnia Chronicles and Pullman's Dark Materials.
I have to agree, beauty is the first thing to go in modern art. That said, the frog actually looks a bit said.
Maybe what we need are some of the "radical Christians" as depected in the new movie "An American Carol."
But the Romans never crucified frogs.