The Islamic State has sensationally won the prestigious 2015 Turner Prize for its conceptual art piece ‘Smashing Mosul Museum To Pieces: Death To The Infidels.’
“By demolishing priceless 3,000 year old statues with sledge hammers, ISIS is asking: ‘What is art?’, while retextualising normative art as transgressive, daring and counter cultural,” said the chairman of the Turner Prize jury, Sir Nicholas Serota. “I was very moved by their performance.”
The pulvarised pieces of rock left by the Islamic State were later purchased by modern art collector Charles Saatchi for $5 million for an installation entitled: ‘Lumps Of Rock In A Wheelbarrow, 2015′.
The Turner Prize, considered the greatest prize in modern art, has previously been won by artists using elephant dung, a dead shark and a garden shed reimagined as art.
A civilization (if IS can be called that, which I do not think it can) which destroys its own cultural heritage cannot long last. And I may add that the saddest thing is not that IS will destroy middle eastern culture, since I could take or leave that. It's not even that, if they are victorious over the decadent west, that they will do the same to our culture (which would be very sad). No, the saddest part is that this commentary works as a comparison of our culture's modern arts to the terrorist group bent on destroying civilization. It's as much a commentary against the West's cultural fixation on suicide (or euthanasia) as anything else. In this case, it's cultural suicide.
No comments:
Post a Comment