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ARTIST EXPRESSES OPINIONS
How might a sensitive leftoid peacenik artist depict the slaying of Nicholas Berg? Like this:
See, the cap is removed from the Evil American Beer to represent Berg’s decapitation! Pretty clever, don’t you think? It’s by Monika Behrens, whose work is currently on display as part of the “Primavera” exhibition at Sydney’s Museum of Contemptible Art. Reader TonyT recently attended, and reports that the exhibition is sponsored by Deutsche Bank, Telstra, and the Sydney Morning Herald. Here’s the SMH review (art links added):
Sydney artist Monika Behrens, who has also been chosen for the exhibition, revels in rendering her landscapes and still-life paintings political. Take her large oil painting Commonwealth of Turdralia, which is a comment on last year’s federal election. It shows yellow toy houses clustered around a spray can sporting a smiling Mr Sheen, who has more than a passing resemblance to the Prime Minister.
Take her large oil painting and set it on fire. Please.
"Mr Sheen is about self-centred voters thinking about their own mortgages,” the 29-year-old artist says. “I’ve always been quite political. I suppose it’s just because of the current state of the world and how we’re bombarded by what’s going on."
Like, you know, the current state of the world? And, you know, how we’re bombarded with what’s going on and stuff? Monika is the Paris Hilton of the leftoid art community.
She’s also painted Guantanamo, which features an American superhero battling bright orange prawns, representing Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks and former detainee Mamdouh Habib, and Hostage Crisis in Beslan showing Russian dolls with eggs broken among them.
Monika uses a Budweiser bottle to represent a murdered American. And to illustrate Russian suffering over Beslan, she uses—inspiration!—some Russian dolls! This, my friends, is Art.
Behrens researches her current affairs and formulates her opinion, which she says doesn’t change.
Artists are always open to new ideas.
Response to her work has mostly been positive.
Well, of course. Sane people rarely bother examining Monika’s style of spaz-modernism. Here are some further examples:
* Baghdad was a lovely city of flowers before the degenerates arrived.
* The London bombings might have killed a bunch of people, but it’s cuter to think of them as a delightful collision of hot dogs, Thomas the Tank Engine, and foam!
* Join the happy coconut people as they feast on raw meat—which in this case represents those murdered at the Sari Club in Bali two years ago. It makes you think! Reviewer Sebastian Smee was among the minority of those unimpressed:
The grossness of these images—their colour schemes as well as their content—is deliberate. But when you become aware of your brain saying, “This plus this plus this equals what? Oh, that!” you can be fairly sure you are not looking at art.
How unfair. I hope Smee doesn’t review my own MCA exhibition, which will feature a piece in which Monika is represented by a Victoria Bitter can (because she’s Australian!) being attacked by foam coconuts during a rail journey from London to Bali.
I want to talk about real artistic talent . . .
Does Michael Challen have a current exhibit in Sydney or anywhere else in Australia? Does the Australian press do any write-ups on him?
What a treasure y’all have in him. When I win the lottery, I’m going to by an original landscape by him. Right now, I’m saving up in order to afford one of his prints.
Does Michael Challen have a current exhibit in Sydney or anywhere else in Australia? Does the Australian press do any write-ups on him?Here’s a Google quickie:
Challen articlePW,
Gawd, judging from the “artwork” this woman has the emotional makeup of an eight-year old.
Make that a spoiled, self-centered eight-year old.
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2005 10 08 at 04:06 PM • permalinkAlas, art like this is uncriticizable--especially to conservatives. The more public anger that is directed against it, the more artistically bulletproof it becomes, since no good bohemian intellectual wants to criticise a piece of art that has successfully enraged the wicked bourgeoisie no matter how objectively inane and brainless it may be. Witness, for example, ‘Piss Christ’, which went from tiresome production line wank-piece from some talentless hack to cultural icon by sole virtue of having made Jesse Helms mad. I would actually love to see some famous leftist bogeyman (such as Helms used to be) intentionally misread this art as a conservative masterpiece and very publically and plausibly praise it. Hell, I’d love to see Rupert Murdoch buy her entire ‘oeuvre’ and hang it in the Fox News corporate headquarters. This ‘artist’ would never get her career back, even if the sainted image of Edward Said appeared in a dinner roll at her next gallery opening.
Dear Monika… “prats”, dear, now “prawns”. Does Margo write your captions?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 10 08 at 04:08 PM • permalink”...self-centred voters thinking about their own mortgages”.
What an obscene bitch.
She’ll have a life of leasure, pampered by cushy “jobs”, commissions, grants.Posted by Honkie Hammer on 2005 10 08 at 05:05 PM • permalinkhappy coconut people as they feast on raw meat—which in this case represents those murdered at the Sari Club in Bali two years ago.
Isn’t depicting Indonesions as cannibalistic coconuts racist? Am I missing something?
Posted by Bruce Rheinstein on 2005 10 08 at 05:09 PM • permalink"now” = “not”
Margo got to my post. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 10 08 at 05:11 PM • permalinkThe Australian’s Review section recently contained an article about the exhibition discussed in the post.
The gist was that quality was being surrended to the desire to be “political”.
Note the way the leader of the little figurines is standing tall on the beer cap with his flag, while he alerts his tiny followers - the artist is obviously a big fan of strong leadership unless it comes from the West - to their “victory”.
The artist would have been right at home in the Soviet and/or German school of propaganda painting.
I plan to stand in Collins Street with a doily on my noggin and my norks on display to make a statement about everything.
While it will not be art, a government grant and a fawning artistic community with more money than brains will surely celebrate my, ummmm, statement.
Posted by Major Anya on 2005 10 08 at 05:52 PM • permalinkThe comment about ‘colouring between the lines’ may not be that far off the mark.
The Mr Sheen item has every appearance of having being prepped in PhotoShop then printed and painted over.
What a silly little child.
-- Nick
The works are really derivative pap.
Importantly any protest against Moronika has to be a critique on her ‘art’.
As Aloysha points out, any political protest against it will only serve the purpose of giving it a monetary value above that which the artist arbitrarially endows it.
I have to question her assertion that her works are genuine oil on canvas. I believe it is hastily conceived mixed media that anyone can do in a couple of hours.
It’s about time we started saying to the ‘yarts’ community The Emperor Has No Clothes.
-- Nora
PS should Bud or Mr Sheen sue for infringement of copyright?
Posted by The Thin Man Returns on 2005 10 08 at 06:03 PM • permalinkClassicly stupid quote on her homepage:
Like many artists before, Behrens plan to use her medium of choice – art – to make a statement about the state of the world and provoke thought and interpretation.
Gosh, an artist who happens to work in art! Good thing they clarified that between the dashes, or I never would have known.
FRED: High school art? Looks more like infants school collage to me.
At any rate, next time Ms Behrens feels the urge to get out the scissors and glue, I have a few suggestions for topics she could make juvenile fun of: say, the Holocaust; the Gulag; maybe the “careers” of John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy or Fred & Rose West; or she could always pick her own murderer. Extra points if the victim was somebody she knew; because, you know, Art takes precedence over any other human value.
(BTW a friend of mine was on one of those trains that the splodeydopes hit, which our dear Monika thinks are soooo cute. Excuse me if I don’t share her little joke.)
Not only does the king have no clothes it should also be pointed out he has a very small willy!
Apart from having her mindset stuck on stupid, the art is crap.
It looks juvinile, the background is “muddy” which is generaly a problem with begginer painters who work in oils. Id call it a pretty crap piece of art.
That they see it neccessary to mention her politics at all seems to indicate that they are worried it is obscure enough that other “trendies” might miss it.Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2005 10 08 at 07:32 PM • permalinkClassicly stupid quote on her homepage:
Like many artists before, Behrens plan to use her medium of choice – art – to make a statement about the state of the world and provoke thought and interpretation.
Gah. GAH! It’s parody. It’s got to be parody.
It can’t be real! No one talks like that and takes themselves seriously! It’s like that time that Cindy Sheehan complained about the hurricanes taking attention away from her… Oh, wait. That was real.
There are times on this site and others that I see commenters jump all over someone who was being obviously sarcastic without getting the joke… but… well… I think I understand why it’s so hard to tell now.
Beats me how some kid with no life experience suddenly becomes an insightful commenator on world events, as a result of sitting through an unfailable ‘prac arts’ degree course. But even people who should know better have trouble: last week I attended a lecture by an eminent art historian. He was discussing imagery that was used to demonize minorities, especially Jews, in the sixteenth century. Guess where the lecture ended up? Talking about Abu Ghraib.
The label on the Budweiser bottle’s crooked.
The soldiers are supposed to be toy soldiers of some sort—see the bases underneath? I’m far, far from an artist, but I can paint a miniature that looks more life-like and evocative than this supposed artist.
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2005 10 08 at 08:27 PM • permalinkThe readers of this blog are a bunch of phillistines! You are clearly not attuned to the avant garde. This lady is obviously way ahead of her time, and when you look back many years from now, you will see and appreciate her true greatness.
Posted by Mystery Meat on 2005 10 08 at 08:37 PM • permalinkI see the possibility of a subliminal exegesis, a battle which could be described as Manichean.
We see the duality offered by the Budweiser bottle – a life alternative involving some indulgences forbidden in a culture dominated by paternalistic death-bots - in short, beer and sex. The ejaculation of frothing ale bodes ill for the straight-laced theocratic franchise.
The figures in the landscape are disparate in their responses to this offer. Some are gladdened and would partake. Others see danger and raise weapons against their countrymen. One figure rises above all the others, and blows the horn to summon support for Freedom & Frothy Ale. He is the standard-bearer for the future. He has opened the vessel and allowed thegindjingenie to escape.
Even as we watch, it is soaking into the soil and can never be gainsaid. And there is more, much more, where that came from.
Art? The MCA should know better. And if it does not, it simply confirms that it is a waste of time, space, and money.Like Nick and Nora, I suspect that these “works” bear more resemblance to Photoshop or paint-by-numbers than proper oil on canvas.
To me it looks a lot like she’s taken photos of models and objects, used Photoshop effects on them, and then carefully copied them onto canvas.
I’d like to see her studio in action.
Posted by Evil Pundit on 2005 10 08 at 08:45 PM • permalinkin the arts universe, there is one breath of sanity, playwright Louis Nowra. In Weekend Australian oct 8-9 p3 find this quote, a breath of fresh air!!!!!!!!!!!!
"The problem with Australian contemporary fiction is that a lot of it is straining for significance,” he says. “I think a moratorium should be placed on using asylum seekers in plays and novels. There must be another topic, surely. It’s really an anti-Howard thing."We’ve been falling for this stuff since Gough purchased Blue Poles (apparently now in need of restoration). As someone implied, I’ve seen HSC/VCE students turn out better art than this.
Posted by walterplinge on 2005 10 08 at 10:47 PM • permalinkSo her formula is something like this:
- Sees big news event.
- Despises the reaction of the unenlightened masses to aforementioned event.
- Is unable to think of an intelligent criticism of the unenlighteneds reactions.
- Try to trivialise event by dehumanising participents involved.
- Collect money from gullible philistine.So for example is she were to to a piece on 9/11 it might consist of a lego tower on its side with a toy King Kong figure sitting on a pile of bananas. She will then pick up a large amount of money from some mindless twat.
This stuff drives me nuts. I have a houseful of moden art that Tim and most of your would hate, things that look like pavement or stainless washing machines. I have a strong arts background and enjoy austere modern pieces very much and understand the inaccessiblity of some art and the downsides of that for the art world in general.
So here’s the thing about this kind of “art.” It’s just a screech, there’s no elegance, there’s no subtlety, and in about 10 minutes it will begin to be meaningless, and in 100 years it will absolutely be discarded. There is nothing in these pieces that could be regarded as any kind of unique or special insight of lasting value.
I like revolutionary art. A lot. Jasper Johns painstakingly crafting a dirty beer can out of bronze? Brilliant, for reasons far beyond I can convey here. Painting your “revolutionary” political opinions in a very overbearing, but stylistically banal way? Just stupid.
Posted by Matt in Denver on 2005 10 08 at 11:07 PM • permalink#33 I think the toy soldiers are copied from figures in an Airfix pack of Muslim Warriors.
Posted by Susan Norton on 2005 10 08 at 11:23 PM • permalinkThat’s a good point, Matt in Denver. I’ve got a lot of time for modern art of one sort or another, but I baulk when it becomes patronising, cliched, or when the artist makes a cowardly attempt to express his or her political opinions in a way that precludes debate or criticism.
I’d be interested to know, does anyone on this thread have a favourite artist? Are you aware of other examples, like Louis Nowra, who leave this sort of crude politicking out of their art, and who don’t automatically align themselves with the far-left of the political spectrum?
Well, TimT, my favorite artists seem apolitical in their artistic output. Richard Serra is one of my favorites, I can’t get enough of his stuff. However, I have avoided meeting him, hearing him speak, or reading anything he has to write because I’m not interested in his politics (nor do I agree with his politics).
Interestingly, the night of 9/11 I pulled a bok of his Icelandic scuptures off the shelf and found great solace and comfort in his seemingly permanent monoliths placed in the wild landscape. That night those works did my soul a great service.
His work is really incredible, but that doesn’t make me a follower of him or anything. It SHOULD be that the aesthetic transaction that takes place between the artist and the viewer take place on personal terms and acknowledges the role of the viewer, and not be a purely one-way experience where the artist trys to jam something down your throat.
Posted by Matt in Denver on 2005 10 09 at 12:16 AM • permalinkThe most graceful no-bullshit essayist I know in Australia is Peter Ryan, former publisher of the Melbourne University Press. His book
Brief Lives is a delightful sketch of many of the big names in politics/arts/letters, eg Paul Hasluck, whom he knew personally.
Also try Les Murray, poet, eg Subhuman Redneck Poems: as he writes of it (in prose)
... all my names were fat-names, at my new town school.
Between classes, kids did erocide: destruction of sexual morale.
Mass refusal of unasked love; that works. Boys cheered as seventeen-
year-old girls came on to me, then ran back whinnying ridicule.Referring to an earlier posting on this site regarding “peace terms” with the Islamofascists, here’s what I’m willing to concede:
Firstly, that “women” like Virginial Trioli, Libby Price and so-called “artist” Monika Behrens be banished from the workplace and from society in general. They should have their ungodly heads and bodies completely covered and made to live in complete seclusion within their homes and only permitted to leave for short periods of time, and ONLY when accompanied by a male relative. They should NOT ONLY step aside when they see other men approaching, but look away and prostrate themselves like the women in Taliban controlled Afghanistan were made to do. Disobedience should be met swiflty with public flogging and/or stoning. Failing to comply with strict dress and behaviour codes should result in gang rape Pakistani-style and the inevitable honour killing Jordanian-style. Of course female genital mutilation is COMPULSORY!
BEHRENS YOU’RE ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING, AND I WOULD ACTUALLY ENJOY SEEING YOU BEING HELD DOWN AND WATCHING YOUR VILE HEAD BEING HACKED FROM YOUR BODY BY THE VERY SAME CRIMINALS YOU ENDORSE AND GLORIFY!
YOU NASTY BITCH!#25, Quentin George: “Bah! This is the only true art.”
Reminds me of a quote I read many years ago, by Al Capp: “Picasso’s a phony. Me and Chester Gould [Dick Tracy] are the world’s greatest artists.”
Posted by Bruce Lagasse on 2005 10 09 at 12:32 AM • permalinkI’ve been trying to put into words why this woman’s “art” just sucks and is amateurish in a way that other modern artists, primitives, and the like are not. (I can’t even place her style—is it Fauvism? Neo-Fauvism? She seems to be trying to use the colors the way the Fauvists did but she’s so inept at it that she makes that guy who does greeting card images of fat felines look like Leonardo.)
The crooked Budweiser label that Rob Crawford mentioned is what gets me. It’s not like things have to be symmetrical in art; it’s just that here you can tell—I can’t explain how, you just can—that she didn’t deliberately paint the label crooked, or make the foam look more like congealed plaster, in order to help make her “statement”—it’s just that that is the limit of her grasp of “technique.” She really can’t make beer foam look foamy or paint a straight line.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2005 10 09 at 12:41 AM • permalinkIt’s definitely possible to produce political art (left-wing or otherwise) that isn’t hopelessly pedantic—but this definitely isn’t it.
“Guernica” leaps out as an obvious example.
A more direct comparison would be the work of David Wojnarowicz. Most of his best work isn’t online, but at it’s best, his work starts with a very angry political message, but channels it through strong, aesthetically well-developed imagery—just as an artist would do with any subject matter.
She’s done 6 or 7 years worth of tertiary study. Some people become doctors in that time, and others, well, others produce colorful pictures of toy soldiers and giant fruits. And to think we’re currently suffering a skills shortage in this country.
I saw the pictures, and read the comments. What you said, people. Ugh. This “art” just sucks. I’ve seen better crayon scribblings from 5 year children.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2005 10 09 at 01:40 AM • permalinkI hope that airhead isn’t sponging off any taxpayer subsidies. I despair when I ponder the amount of public money invested educating these “artists”. She goes after “self-centred voters thinking about their mortgages”. Yet if it weren’t for “self-centred voters” in the suburbs doing real work that generates economic value, there wouldn’t be any publicly subsidised arts. Mr and Mrs Jones toil away at work each day to fund lazy slouches (sorry, artists) who repay them with insults. The cultural elite in this country needs to remove its head from its arse sometime.
Remember this episode a few years back?
I say send in Zvi Mazel over to Syndey to tear the whole f-art-astry shit house down.
What is the biggest source of inspiration for your work?
[MB] The main sources are international relations, terrorism, and civil unrest here in Australia. There is injustice and violence all around us, and this horrifies and repulses me.
My paintings express concern about short-sighted political policies, and violence as both a barbaric way to deal with conflict and a senseless form of self-expression. Our past is littered with war and oppression, our present is said to be the era of post-modernism and post-feminism, and we are said to have become civilized and liberalised. My works refute these contentions. Our past remains our present. My work employs vibrant colours, symbolism, confrontational compositions and a style not usually associated with political art using organic materials and toys to contrast perpetrators with victims; violence with peace; and destruction with sustenance.
Oh goody. Another whiney art school girl shoving her neuroses down our collective throat. The only light at the end of this tunnel is that once she’s run out of study options she’ll either take up a lecturing post and thus rarely paint again (she daren’t because her students will see her for the fraud she is), or daddy - who’s underwritten six years of this crap - will put his foot down, cut her off, and force her into a proper job (she’d probably do okay in an advertising agency or glossy zine touching up photos). If I had to make a prediction? She’ll be redesigning Maggie Instant Noodle packets for a major ad agency within three years.
While I couldn’t agree more with the general consensus that this work is insufferable, immature, talentless crap, I really must take exception to the two comments so far advocating the “artist” herself’s decapitation by the Jihadists. While it’s appealing to imagine a kind of brutal comeuppance for her stupidity and total lack of respect, I don’t think anyone should say that.
I don’t believe anyone, anywhere, no matter what they did, deserves that kind of treatment. Even the head-hackers themselves - I don’t want to see them decapitated. Dead, sure, but no-one should die like that .. what they did is just sick and has no place, at all, in any civilised society.
Young Monika should perhaps be sat down to watch, in full colour and high definition, some of these decapitations. Maybe meet some of the victim’s grieving families. One would hope that experience might at least give her pause the next time she tossed off some of this garbage. It’s the casual disrespect for the dead which really gets to me ...
I like the Commonwealth of Turdralia as it illustrates exactly how bitter and how much contempt leftoids have for middle class Australia. Their complete failure to engage with the simple pleasures of life ie a BBQ, a home and cleanliness shows Behrens to be twisted and anhedonic.
Please leftoid idiots, continue to reveal your subconscious pains to entertain us.
The MCA is one of the most depressing museums in Australia. Whenever I’ve gone there, I’ve found myself in some room full of crap like Moronika’s, alone except for two or three of the MCA ‘attendants’: these are usually groovy young things, bored our of their tiny minds and discussing loudly and at length the party they went to last night, or the one they’re going to tonight. Behind the scenes, you can practically hear a background white noise of sibilance, until you realize the MCA is, even by the standards of Sydney and the Yartz, a gay enclave. Artist friend of mine was approached to do a show for the MCA, and had to give up when he found they were only interested in playing to gay audiences. I had the misfortune to hear its director on the radio yesterday. Typical smug airheaded ninny.
Feral lefties like Behrens still don’t understand why Howard won so resoundingly. They don’t comprehend that the majority of Australians were (and are) left cold by the 3 R’s (Republic, Reconciliation and Refugees) that are the major concerns of the FL.
Could it be, perhaps, that Aussies have watched millions of dollars being thrown at aboriginals, yet they are still not much better off than they were in the 1960s. The money has been wasted and embezzled. So whats the answer from the FL? Why, more of the same. More money will make the unworkable work. More of *our* money, that is.
And could it be that a ‘rebublic’ is far down the concern-list of most people, say 3 on a scale of 10. It will probably happen one day, so what.
And refugees - well if you take the Bakhtiaris as an example, the Australian public was 100% correct to be deeply suspicious of ‘asylum seekers’ without documents.
Since the FLs don’t have a clue, they imagine it must have been ‘mortgages’ or something equally unworthy. I think thats what they can’t handle, why they’re getting more and more vicious. They know deepdown that the ordinary Aussies they so look down on were right. But dont anyone hold their breath waiting for an admission.
One can only hope that one day, this fraud (well surely she’s not an ‘artist’) will get kicked off the govt. teat and lose her house cos she can’t pay the morgage.
JeffS wrote:
I saw the pictures, and read the comments. What you said, people. Ugh. This “art” just sucks. I’ve seen better crayon scribblings from 5 year children.
The 5 year olds are putting better effort in it, and their hearts aren’t poisoned by hatred.
Posted by Patrick Chester on 2005 10 09 at 05:50 AM • permalinkWhile we’re rubbishing modernist art I’d like to throw in another criticism: Aboriginal ‘dot’ paintings are merely nice graphics that take little skill or imagination to produce. They’re done by people with lots of time on their hands (due to having no productive employment) and who have mastered joining-the-dots. People (including many in the US) who pay $000s for this stuff have been conned. The art luvvies love the stuff.
Albert Namatjira could could paint. He could depict the Outback in all its majesty with skill and emotion. Dot paintings make nice tea towels; $2 at the cheap sourvenir stalls at Victoria Market is about the measure.
Posted by walterplinge on 2005 10 09 at 06:10 AM • permalinkThe Smee article picks up the point that many posters here have already made:
I desperately wanted to like this show, but I struggled to find a single work that lifted itself above the standard of competent but cloyingly over-determined Year 12 art. It is the sort of work that is just one layer of superficial understanding laid on top of another, none of it relating internally or showing the least sign of deepening.
Posted by Art Vandelay on 2005 10 09 at 06:50 AM • permalinkSo, um, speaking of insufferable prats who are so incredibly much less intelligent that they think, stringing together up-town-pearl-necklace-set cum art-house-trendoid vapid gobbledegook interspersed with all the tired Leftist political talking points (we hate Christians - check, Global warming - check, right wing columnists are stupid - check, et-f#ckin-cetera), and they’re, y’know, so painfully obnoxious that you really really want to smack them in the teeth, but you can’t…
...did anyone else catch John Doyle giving the Andrew Olle lecture tonight...?
(I managed 5 minutes of it. Thank goodness for polished floorboards and Dettol).
Yay! Dogs playing cards! Now that’s what I call art!
JF Beck - that’s a winner, meboy.
Posted by James Waterton on 2005 10 09 at 01:35 PM • permalinkWhats worse? The immature, childish rubbish that Behrens has ‘created’ or the luvvies in the art world that promote such effluent?
Her name has been headlined, she has been spoken of in a major newspaper, and has received funding from major corporations. These are ones I blame.
Posted by NicExactly. The most basic principle of psychology: “Whatever behavior is rewarded, you’re going to get more of.”
Patrick Chester—“their hearts aren’t poisoned by hatred...” well, give them a minute, between their schools holding
hate-Bush art competitions and the Belgiums airing Smurf Snuff, as per the thread above.Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 10 09 at 04:26 PM • permalinkSome of you are too generous with your comments!
This was an oil painting?
She *needs* a studio, not just a Photoshop and a playpen?It takes as much as 10 minutes to assess it is worthless?
In her own words: MB: ‘we are said to have become civilized and liberalised. My works refute these contentions. Our past remains our present.’
She’s self-described as a neanderthal primitive and an uncivilised Nazi barbarian.
That goes for her benefactors and boosters too.MB: The main sources are international relations, terrorism, and civil unrest here in Australia.
Note the studied parochialism and selectivity. That’s essential for ‘relevance’.
Look people, you are all nothing more than philistines. Art in an interpetative, subjective thing. What you see as vile perverse crap, the artist sees as a beautifully configured expression of an idea and an ideal. Who’s to say she is wrong?
And in turn if I was to take out the big guy and piss all over her art, who’s to say that that also isn’t a perfectly legitimate expression of my idea and ideals?
Posted by wronwright on 2005 10 09 at 08:39 PM • permalinkHer art is puerile, plain and simple!
Yes kipwatson #76, I saw John Doyle deliver the Andrew Olle lecture!
It had everything:
- Fox News bashing,
- Iraq and terror links,
- Doyle asking...you guessed it..."why" are the terrorists targeting us?
- America bashing,
- Blogger bashing,
- Katrina’s unmistakable link to global warming,
- Evangelical Christian bashing,
- Our reprehensible treatment of Asylum seekers,
- Our marginalisation of Moslems,
- Our selfish “economy is everything” voters...well we’re not ALL obscenely rich like you Mr. Doyle!
- Excessive praise for the ABC and its various personalities, and why not, they dole-out taxpayers’ money buying Doyle’s pretentious headscarf dramas!
- Praise too for the ABC’s and SBS’s courageous “diversity” of views...yeah I know, I laughed too!
- A contempt for fear-mongering and “spitting and clawing” journalists, I don’t know what he thinks the ABC does then. He then proceeded to spend the next 45 minutes spitting and clawing at anyone and everyone himself, and harking back to a golden age that never existed. I thought only Republicans were supposed to do that???
And all in front of a rich, white audience, containing the likes of puckered, old bastard, Kerry O’Brien, Jennifer Byrne, Peter FitzSimons and that wife of his, and all manner of ABC ‘personalities’ applauding enthusiastically! Oh, there was one ‘brown’ person there...a waiter!Brian,
And also from the guy who wrote that inane TV musical ‘Changi’. I don’t know what that was trying to be, comedy or drama, but what is was, was a f#cking insult to our WWII history.
( NB. I used to occasionally enjoy the ‘Roy Slaven’ character on JJJ, because I thought he was having an affectionate leg pull - a bit raucous* but sometimes funny. But the feeling I get now is like you have a brother-in-law who pokes a bit of fun at family get-together, and you have a laugh because you’re all family, but then you find out later that he’s been going round town calling your sister a sl#t and the rest of you a bunch of in-bred rednecks. Some jokes are only funny when you really are one of the family. )
(*and a little too fond of ar$e, poo and sodomy jokes - I was reading the transcript of Olle lecture, it’s full of them too )
There are a lot of Australian celebrities well deserving of a good hard smack in the chops, but none more than that supercilious prat John Doyle.
“a delightful collision of hot dogs, Thomas the Tank Engine, and foam” is actually Thomas and friends atop a pile of bangers and mash. But that’s what it is.
Foam, mashed potatoes, toothpaste, who the hell can tell?
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2005 10 10 at 10:40 AM • permalinkShe’s also painted Guantanamo, which features an American superhero battling bright orange prawns,
Marvel Comics should probably sue her ass off over this one.
Posted by Stoop Davy Dave on 2005 10 11 at 03:36 PM • permalinkErm, might I all remind you that this blog was started with the words:
See, the cap is removed from the Evil American Beer to represent Berg’s decapitation! Pretty clever, don’t you think?
and that these were the words of Tim Blair, NOT Monika Behrens. You have assumed that Behrens is glorifying Berg’s horrific decapitation, but that is only because Tim Blair led you in that direction. Bad Tim!
And as for Sebastian Smee of The Australian, why on Earth did they get him to review Primavera? He stated himself that he wasn’t really that into painting, and much preferred video-art. Brilliant! Primavera is, this year at least, an exhibition of paintings!
I first saw this painting (Nicholas Berg) in person, at another exhibition, before it was on display at the MCA. Firstly, yes, it is a real oil painting—attempts to criticize Behrens’ technique, or suggestions that some objects don’t look realistic in her paintings, should be tempered by remembering that you are looking at a small matrix of coloured pixels on a computer screen, representing a photograph that was taken of an oil painting. You are not actually looking at an oil painting! Secondly, when I first saw this painting, I was not outraged, but rather, struck by the bleakness and sadness of Behrens’ response to the horrific video footage of (supposedly) Al-Zarqawi beheading Berg.
You can argue all you like about Behrens’ paintings being a childish response to some extremely violent or controversial events portrayed in the media. But to me, that is at least part of the point Behrens seems to be making. For some people, sometimes horror, injustice and violence can elicit no other response. But clearly, Behrens’ art isn’t for everyone.
You can also argue that most of this blog on Behrens is a rather childish attempt at left-bashing, thinly veiled as art criticism. Parts of it certainly seem well below HSC standards. Oh well, at least it’s mainly only you bunch of assorted rat-bags who read it.
Have a nice day.
pinko says it all:
You can argue all you like about Behrens’ paintings being a childish response to some extremely violent or controversial events portrayed in the media. But to me, that is at least part of the point Behrens seems to be making. For some people, sometimes horror, injustice and violence can elicit no other response. But clearly, Behrens’ art isn’t for everyone.1. Don’t tell anybody that you are doing childish art, say it is radical political.
2. Do childish/very offensive/totally insensitive, ugly art.3.If anyone says it is childish/etc, say that you were very subtly illustrating a paranoid, morally-deficient childish response to a serious atrocity. Tell these critics they are unsophisticated modernists who take things for what they seem, just like the public do.
4. Finally, escape into postmodern claptrap, which deflects all meaningful criticism as ‘right-wing’ and calls itself ‘art criticism’.
In response to Barrie (99):
1) I read somewhere that Behrens, herself, merely describes her paintings as “still lifes”, which is obviously a bit coy, even to my open, and oh-so-modest mind. Most critics have described it as political, and some even radical. I’d call that a small triumph for her art. Would you rather mainstream political art? How dull! And who is to say that a childish response is invalid, when the event being responded to is so dreadful and mad? We were all childish and innocent once, it’s just that some of us remember it better than others.
2) Yes, art is a very subjective thing. It’s important not to like everything. Well done.
3) Hey, wait a minute, I’m a member of the public! Don’t put us down like that! That’s so rude!
4) Thanks Barrie, but I’m undeserving of such praise. I was neither spouting art criticism, nor accusing anyone of being right-wing. I’m not that rude. I was simply calling you all a bunch of rat-bags.
pinko, you are reading challenged. Behrens describes *herself* as radical political.
Only a very morally deficient or childish adult could, after *reflection*, be *restricted* to a childish reaction to a serious atrocity.
Nowhere does Behrens justify her insult to the atrocious death of the Jewish journalist. So she’s morally deficient, along with anyone who defends her. QED.
Re
4. What were you doing here, then?Barrie, I was reading Behrens’ own website (linked at the very top). It doesn’t say “radical political” there. People generally don’t consider their own politics to be that radical. The radical tag is normally left for the opposite side of the political spectrum to apply (or perhaps by an angle-seeking journalist). And once that happens, it can often become a “badge of pride” for the receiver. Politics is so divisive, no?
I also think you must be confusing Daniel Pearl with Nicholas Berg. Berg was not a journalist. Do your research, man! I am no longer convinced that you know anything about anything. You are no better than a knee-jerk respondent to a talk-back radio show, who accepts without question, the unethical, contorted versions of events reported by the shock-jock (in this case, Tim Blair), and feels compelled to express his outrage in a highly uninformed manner.
Re 4: How many times do I have to tell you before you get it? I’m calling you all a bunch of rat-bags! You can take it for what it seems, mate.
Yes, thank you, I soon realised I got the wrong atrocity. What’s a *couple* of beheadings to a radical artist? Behrens is just a shock jock among ‘artists’.
But you *are* reading challenged, because you can’t or won’t read the whole thread, or learn from it. Here, I’ll make it easy:
[MB] The main sources are international relations, terrorism, and civil unrest here in Australia. There is injustice and violence all around us, and this horrifies and repulses me.
[NOTE ‘the unrest here in Australia’. Nice touch that, for a non-radical?]
Ironically, she herself is trying to prove her own point about not being liberal and civilised. She’s almost incoherent, and so the result is childish too. She goes on and on with postmodernist political drivel, and I just had to read the thread too!:My paintings express concern about short-sighted political policies, and violence as both a barbaric way to deal with conflict and a senseless form of self-expression. Our past is littered with war and oppression, our present is said to be the era of post-modernism and post-feminism, and we are said to have become civilized and liberalised. My works refute these contentions. Our past remains our present. My work employs vibrant colours, symbolism, confrontational compositions and a style not usually associated with political art using organic materials and toys to contrast perpetrators with victims; violence with peace; and destruction with sustenance.
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There isn’t an ounce of maturity or empathy in her products, which are not art, which is generally understood to involve creativity.