And here we go again. The Prime Minister’s nephew, who describes himself as an ‘artist/activist’, is in several kinds of trouble over a picture which shows Ronald McDonald carrying an Olympic torch and running happily past a Buddhist monk in flames.
Deep.
Juxtaposition is the method for the gormless dauber. It allows the cognoscenti to savour the politically OK interpretation (US = evil) while maintaining (of course) the spectator’s freedom to interpret. It saves artists the trouble of arriving at an intelligible or defensible position about anything whatsoever and leaves them free to sloganeer.
Now that the concept of vulgarity has been overtaken by progress we need another to capture work which cheapens human sacrifice. I couldn’t care whether Rudd’s work ‘references’ Banksy (‘reference’ is evasive cant). I do care when an image of ultimate human commitment and suffering is exploited to make childish political noises.
And I care that because of Rudd’s connection with the PM the dreary little episode will circulate for days in that murky asteroid cloud where celebrity merges with creativity. Art school students look on and learn: this is how to build a career.
The last self-immolation to make the news was, wasn’t it, that of a monk in Tibet?