A HARD JUDGEMENT?
Wednesday, September 3, 2008 at 08:48AM What is to be made of the news that representatives for a gallery in Gateshead have appeared in court yesterday charged with outraging public decency, after featuring a statue of Jesus with an erection? The artwork was part of the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art's September 2007-January 2008 exhibition Gone, Yet Still, by the controversial Chinese artist Terence Koh, which featured dozens of plaster figures including Mickey Mouse and ET - all in some state of arousal.
Lawyers for Emily Mapfuwa, a 40-year-old Christian who was offended by the artwork, launched a private prosecution against the gallery for outraging public decency and causing harassment, alarm and distress to the public. Mapfuwa, of Brentwood, Essex, argues the Baltic would not have dared depict the prophet Muhammad in such a way. She complained in writing to Northumbria police earlier this year, asking for an investigation, and was informed in May that there was no case to answer. But the Christian Legal Centre - an organisation that aims to "promote and protect the biblical freedoms of Christian believers in the United Kingdom" - agreed to pay her legal costs.
Now I do understand the offense this sort of "art" creates for Christians. I find it more pathetic than anything else and Ms Mapfuwa has a point when she says that the brave hearts behind this exhibit at the Baltic Centre (Nice place, btw, I have been there!) would not DARE to show us Mohammad with an erection. But that just shows how cowardly they are. I think Christianity is bigger than some sordid little progressive art collection and so personally I would just ignore it. I also happen to think that they should have a right to put on such shows, regardess of how inane or offensive they are. We live in a land where liberty includes the right to offend!! Quite WHO wants to go and see an aroused Micky Mouse escapes me - apart from possibly Minnie Mouse!
View Printer Friendly Version
Reader Comments (18)
You are right David. It's well established by now that such artists are looking for controversy but not risk. We shouldn't play their game.
Some parts sort of jumped the gun with the resurrection, so to speak.
Chase the Money - who funded this "show" - if private then it's freedom of speech, if public then it's a very different matter (outrage even). The trust's web site states:-
"BALTIC receives funding from The National Lottery through Arts Council England, Gateshead Council, Northern Rock Foundation and is supported by the European Regional Development Fund and One NorthEast."
We live in a land where liberty includes the right to offend!!
Really
Oxford’s Christians apologise to Muslims for daring to pray during Ramadan
Ryan,
Excellent point. For the State to fund such an offensive display is entirely another matter. I would suggest taking the National Lottery to court.
Heres a better example of being offended.
Boots pull union jack t-shirts after complaint
here
Thats a great one! I'm still laughing......
"To be fair, it was blue and grey, there was no red on it, but it was still basically a union jack.
But it wasn't then was it?
And just think. The artist will be a double-dipper, so to speak when he sells the "work of art" to a Michlin 5-star restaurant to be used as a hat rack.
Henry, its more to do with sectarian symbols in the work place me thinks.
Good. About time people who have the 'daring' to only cause the kind of needless offence they think they can get away with faced some consequences for it. And funded by the Northern Rock Foundation - that's like Taxpayers Money Squared.
Ryan makes a good point and happily such legal safeguards, albeit ancient, do exist in Britain still. Unfortunately the artist now has blog pieces etc celebrating his nonsense and has achieved the notoriety he sought.
DSD, Yes - I saw the Northern Rock angle. Surreal,
Quite WHO wants to go and see an aroused Micky Mouse escapes me - apart from possibly Minnie Mouse!
Nice on David. Got me laughing.
On the other hand, I'd half wonder if the Disney Corporation might sue this artist for copyright violations. Disney is very protective of its properties. Such a suit could wipe out all the gains the artist hoped to accrue.
They lurve all these statues with giant erect wangs on them in Greece and Africa too. Terence's version is some serious rubbish. At least the Greeks and Africans got the extrusion at the right angle. Jesus' wang is coming out of his thighs. I think he should be prosecuted for being a crap artist.
Terence if you're checking the blogs for all the attention you got: you suck. Probably literally.
Eagle: Good idea, Disney will protect Mickey's mickey.
David: This is a category of shock art which has little real artistic merit and simply seeks publicity by creating offensive images. Less attention to them the better.
Art such as this requires a hard response and then a firm approach should be taken by upright citizens about it, but I fear that any complaint would not stand up in court and attempts at censorship will simply flop !
PS - Surely the exhibition should have been sponsored by Pfizer ?
More childish graffiti, like the frog thing.
I don't mind any thoughtful work of art which seeks to ask questions or portray Christ in a different way than traditional religious art (such as, for example, Dennis Potter's BBC play "Son Of Man", which I remember watching when it was repeated on a Potter series, oh, must be approaching 20 years ago now. I recall thinking "that was certainly...different, thought-provoking, perhaps not 'reverent' yet probably honest"), yet these silly representations are nothing more than the equivalent of naughty schoolboys scribbling on the back of their exercise books, or defacing the images in their textbooks.
Like wotsisname who exhibits a horse's head in formaldehyde, or an old mattress and a pile of bricks, I just think, "that's not art; it's just an old mattress and a pile of bricks". Such "art" should be banned, but not because it's blasphemous, simply because it's rubbish.
TOM
I agree with you, there is so much pretentious rubbish about Art. The Times has a feature each week in which they ask for opinions on an iconic art piece. This week it was a famous abstract painting (can't remember the artist) which was essentially a rectangular red blob with a yellow outline and I think a brown top border, yet if you were to read some of the ridiculously hyperbolic comments. about it's genius .