Fundamental Illness
Religion is storming into European life, and it's an ugly business, writes Alan Riding in the IHT:
Two senior BBC executives were under police protection last week after receiving death threats. An Asian-British playwright went into hiding last month when her life was threatened. A Dutch moviemaker who ignored similar warnings was killed on an Amsterdam street in early November. The three episodes had religion in common. And in each case, the issue was blasphemy.So, have European artists been exceeding the accepted boundaries of tolerance or is religion becoming a taboo subject?
For decades, artistic freedom has seemed assured in Western Europe by a strong liberal tradition and growing secularity. Gone are the days when D.H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover" was sold under the counter here and Stanley Kubrick's "Clockwork Orange" was banned as too violent. Sex, above all, has ceased to shock, whether in art or on screen, stage or television. Expletives have become common currency in books, movies and television.
At the same time, artists and audiences alike have shown little interest in religion. Monty Python's "Life of Brian," a 1979 religious satire, amused more than it offended. More recently, French Christian groups were largely ignored when they protested that posters for Milos Forman's "The People vs. Larry Flynt" and Costa-Gavras's "Amen" abused the cross. In brief, Europeans have tended to view a militant Christian right as an American monopoly.
"Sensation," an exhibition of works by irreverent young British artists, illustrated different attitudes. When it was shown at London's Royal Academy of Arts in 1997, complaints focused on a portrait of a notorious child murderer made out of children's handprints. But when the show traveled to the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1999, it was Chris Ofili's painting of "The Holy Virgin Mary," decorated with elephant dung, that caused an outcry as sacrilegious.
Yet religion has re-entered European public life. One catalyst has been fear of Muslim fundamentalism, notably since 9/11. This and power struggles between traditional and modern currents inside different faiths have served to raise the religious stakes across the board. Today, religion in Europe is more intertwined with politics than in recent memory. And perhaps for this very reason, some artists believe it again worthy of attention.
One such artist was Theo van Gogh, a Dutch moviemaker. Working with a Somali-born Dutch legislator, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, he made a short television documentary called "Submission," which used a naked body and words from the Koran to denounce violence against Muslim women. Its broadcast last fall brought cries of blasphemy and death threats. Unlike Hirsi Ali, van Gogh refused a police guard. On Nov. 2, he was slain, and a Dutch Muslim of Moroccan parentage was held.
The killing provoked outrage in the Netherlands. It also stirred intense debate about artistic freedom. Already four years earlier, "Aïsha," a Dutch opera about a strong-minded wife of Muhammad, was canceled after the Moroccan cast and composer were pressured into withdrawing by Muslim clerics. Today, many Dutch consider their liberal values to be increasingly hostage to religious intolerance.
...Perhaps artists are taking on religion precisely because it is the last taboo. On the other hand, if charges of blasphemy are accompanied by threats of violence, artists - or BBC executives - may choose to think twice before exercising their freedom on matters of faith. Either way, religious tensions have begun spilling into the cultural arena. And, for postwar Western Europe, this is new and disturbing.
As an artist I must say that I have my "consumer" collection, then the other one that I would not let my local paper privy to at my studio show or my day time business associates.
I am already quite sure that the bapist church across the street i live from, whose "flock" that routinely blocks my driveway is trying to hang me as a witch already...
I hope you go to AndrOuet, 6, rue Arsene Houssaye Paris 8eme. Tel 01 42 89 95 00 All the courses have cheese, and of course as you know, none of it is yellow.
Sonja at January 20, 2005 3:18 AM
Thanks, but I'm about to board a plane. We did go to one of our favorites last night, Seraphin, in the 6th!
Amy Alkon at January 20, 2005 5:25 AM
Back on topic, girls:
Remember the days when "blasphemy" in art was passe? What these fundamentalists idiots are doing is putting the thrill back into it.
My own contribution to the blasphemous canon: A few years ago, a roommate of mine had a Mexican candle with a picture of the Virgin Mary on the side of it. Around that time, someone gave me a sticker promoting a movie that had just come out, and I brought it home and plastered it on the candle, over the Virgin's belly. The name of the movie was "Snatch."
The Blessed Snatch!
Lena of the Most Holy Assumption at January 20, 2005 5:50 AM