Do you think political correctness is the death of art?No, it isn't and it won't ever be. What is and isn't PC changes over time. Art remains art and can ride out the vicissitudes of changing opinion with no problems at all, thank you very much.
Last year, or the year before, an exhibition of work by British women artists was shown here in Wellington which included a small plastic Virgin Mary statuette encased in a condom called, prosaically enough I guess, "Virgin in a Condom". In the same exhibition there was a fifteen foot-long photo-montage mural called "Wrecked Last Supper" which portrayed Christ as a topless woman in a parody of da Vinci's "Last Supper". Instead of the adoring disciples, the "disciples" in this picture were all totally self-absorbed and disinterested in the fate of the central figure.
"Virgin in a Condom" had little direct artistic merit - it was a statement, of course. "Wrecked Last Supper" I would
love to have on my wall as a conversation piece.
The thing was, the amount of controversy it stirred up was absolutely brilliant. The Christian Heritage Party (for whom a theocracy is not only a goal but an absolute pre-requisite - they're called "the Taliban" around here) went absolutely bonkers - well, more bonkers than usual, anyway, and they're a pretty sad lot under the best of circumstances. They said that we would all face eternal damnation if these works were displayed and that they should preferably be destroyed. Several of them tried to seize the virgin and oh, joy, the fun and games. Can you imagine security guards hovering over a small piece of moulded plastic covered in latex for 24 hours a day? Believe me, the irony didn't escape me!
And the most ridiculous part of it all was that the majority of the people who were arguing for and against the works
had never seen them ! Graham Capill, the leader of the CHP, makes the Grand Wizard of the KKK look as offensive as Kermit the Frog. He's somewhere to the right of Ghengiz Khan (or Dubya, but I repeat myself). He was almost foaming at the mouth on TV when he was being interviewed about the exhibition. And, at that time, he hadn't seen them either.
As a result, thousands went to the exhibition who would probably never have bothered otherwise.
PC, the death of art? Nah! Don't make me laff - it's the staff of life to art!
