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Friday, May 30, 2008

Defacing Hitler

posted by on May 30 at 17:16 PM

From the Independent:

When the artists Jake and Dinos Chapman bought a series of paintings by Adolf Hitler for £115,000, many questioned the morality of paying for works produced by one of history’s most brutal dictators.

Yesterday, the brothers unveiled 13 of the watercolours, on which they had added psychedelic rainbows, stars and love hearts, and placed them back on the market for £685,000.

Art385_345800a.jpg

The clever dicks (who once bought Goya prints and painted clown heads on them) also recreated their installation Fucking Hell which burned, along with most of Charles Saatchi’s art collection, four years ago.

(The images are too depressing to foist on Friday afternoon readers, but follow the link if you want to see its murderous, apocalyptic glory.)

The exhibition is called “If Hitler Had Been a Hippie How Happy Would We Be.”

The site of the gallery (White Cube in London) is here.

And one of the Goya defacements, just for fun:

chapman05ui6.jpg

RSS icon Comments

1

Defacing originals: Un-cool. No matter who painted/drew them.

Reproducing them as satire while leaving the originals intact: Perfectly fine.

Posted by Wolf | May 30, 2008 5:21 PM
2

Fuck you theyre not cool. Look at all of their work and these fit in perfectly. The Goya prints are beautiful in person too...These guys are so much about the fuck you, the grotesque, the sorrow. So they could give a shit if you think its uncool...howllllllllll

Posted by Wolfistheworstamericangladiator | May 30, 2008 5:37 PM
3

Drawing rainbows on Hitler painting is actually pretty funny. No aspect of that man's legacy deserves respect.

Posted by Dougsf | May 30, 2008 5:42 PM
4

The "American Gladiator" reference tells us a lot about your taste and art knowledge.

It's *never* OK to deface an artist's work, be the artist dictator, despot or dildo. Go back to your black velvet dogs-playing-poker painting in your trailer.

Posted by Wolf | May 30, 2008 5:45 PM
5

@4 But, didn't Rauschenberg erase a drawing by de Kooning? Was that OK because de Kooning gave him the drawing?

Posted by PopTart | May 30, 2008 5:54 PM
6

Sorry Wolf you are wrong...Artists have been doing it for years and will continue. This has to do with commodity--what art is and what it can be--they bought it and they own it. They took art by a horrible man who represents a dark chapter in human history and make it funny. They make it stupid. They make it light. Its more of a collaboration than defacement... AND you do realize you are defending Hitler. You are defending Hitler.

Posted by Wolfisafuckingidiot | May 30, 2008 6:09 PM
7
Posted by daniel | May 30, 2008 6:19 PM
8

Every year, I go to London to see the finalists for the Turner Prize and poke around about 25 galleries over a week's time.

The Chapman Brothers were one of the great revelations of those visits, and when I heard that Hell had burned (hmmm....), I was in shock. It was (and now is again) a stunning work. It's huge, harrowing and immensely moving. The Goya amendments, whilst excellent in their execution, are somewhat less so. Nonetheless, god surely loves him a Chapman.

These latest works are a continuation of their stunning form. All these artists who think being clever and brash is the entire game are reminded by nearly every Chapman work that artistry, intellectual rigor and, yes, passion, are what are truly important.

Jake and Dinos Chapman are now firmly in my favorite five living artists, maybe just below Grayson Perry and just above Erwin Kneihsl.

Wow...thanks for posting this!

Posted by Jubilation T. Cornball | May 30, 2008 6:49 PM
9

@5: Its different if an artist says "oh hey, change my vision." What he may have done once has absolutely no bearing on other events.

But they didn't.

AND you do realize you are defending Hitler. You are defending Hitler.

Number one, numbnuts, Hitler is dead and has been for a few years.

Not only did you not need to say it twice...what an ignorant comment, particularly since my late lover was a Jew. Grow fucking up and learn some history. And guess what, I'm German.

As well, LAW says that the artist retains the right of what happens to their art NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS TO IT, even if it goes to a private collector. You can't change it.

So you can't LEGALLY alter a piece "just because you want to" unless the artist says it's OK.

Again, it is *NEVER* OK to alter an original artwork. And let's keep the racist/Nazi bullshit excuses out of it, shall we?

Posted by Wolf | May 30, 2008 6:59 PM
10

And #6, well, there's nothing left to say to you about art and art law except that one wouldn't be surprised to find you standing aside the interstate with a sign that says "Will work for some kind of art law realistic understanding."

Posted by Wolf | May 30, 2008 7:06 PM
11

Hitler's paintings look exactly like Thomas Kinkaid's, ever notice that?

Posted by Fnarf | May 30, 2008 7:19 PM
12

Gotta go, there's a tornado coming this way....I can hear the rain. It sounds bad.

Posted by Wolf | May 30, 2008 7:35 PM
13

The originals should have been left intact if only to show what a pantheon of mediocrity Hitler was as an artist.

If only he had some--any--artistic talent. How different, and less tragic, the twentieth century would have been if Hitler had been successful in some other field.

Posted by RainMan | May 30, 2008 7:47 PM
14

I can't help but worry that promoting Hitler's art will just lead more young artists into attempting genocide on the Jews.

Posted by eclexia | May 30, 2008 7:56 PM
15

In general, Wolf, I would agree with you that altering another person's art is crossing the line... not matter how much you hate them or what statement you are trying to make. However, this is a very special case, as Hitler is one of the worst human beings (not to mention artists) ever. I don't really think he deserves any kind of respect. Plus, as a bonus, I think his paintings very much benefit from the added rainbows, etc. Without them, they would be just typical, boring, landscapes.

Posted by citrus | May 30, 2008 8:29 PM
16

Thanks for the inspiration, Fnarf. I'm going to draw Hitler faces all over my my mom's Thomas Kinkaid collection. A belated Mother's day gift.

Posted by heywhatsit | May 30, 2008 8:54 PM
17

As long as the brothers' proceeds are donated to the PLO, all is fine.

Posted by Catman | May 30, 2008 9:01 PM
18

The paintings are much improved from both an asthetic and artistic standpoint.

Altering a painting is fine. Don't make me sing Dust in the Wind.

Posted by tabletop_joe | May 30, 2008 10:41 PM
19

I am going to make it big, buy myself a Matisse or a Van Gogh, sand it, collage it, paint it and title it WOLF is a Wrong Ass Bitch. Better yet, im gonna buy a Rodin, melt the bronze down and pour it into little "thinkers" and make a killing. Im gonna buy a Frank Lloyd Wright and put a swimming pool right in the fucking middle of it. Because. I. Can. Wolf, the moment you tell artists they cant, they will. Thats my major point. And I dont care if you fuck a Jew, a Hungarian or a Japanese, im just happy youre having sexy time. Its good that artists bring up these points, these questions, these ideas...

Posted by Wolfisboringmenow | May 31, 2008 2:31 AM
20

Yes, editing/vandalizing a work of art is perfectly fine from a moral standpoint. However, the public does have a right to ridicule/lynch the artist if they don't leave it in better shape than before, which clearly is not the case here. Rainbows make everything better.

Posted by Chris in Tampa | May 31, 2008 3:26 AM
21

@19. Wolfhater, you're my hero. Too much of it to quote... No, wait, there's not.

"And I dont care if you fuck a Jew, a Hungarian or a Japanese, im just happy youre having sexy time."

Beautiful. Are you Eddie Izzard?

Posted by MR. Langauge Person | May 31, 2008 2:14 PM
22

@19: You can do whatever the hell you want with your property, but you can no longer claim ignorance of the law:

Rights of integrity allow the creator of a work to protect the work against destruction or against distortion (by addition, alteration, amendment, deletion) even by the rightful owner of the work.

"Creator" also encompasses heirs/estate.

Here's another lump for you to get hot about: Did you know that if you buy an original work of art, the artist has the legal right to ask you to return it, at no recompense to you, for whatever period they want, and you have to do so as long as you're guaranteed to get the work back in the same condition as it was when you bought it?

We did this twice: Once for 6 weeks to have a print made from a sold painting, and once for 4 weeks to include a piece in a one-time exhibit.

If either collector had said no, we were prepared to drop it, but I think they were both kind of flattered.

Not saying I necessarily agree with any of the art laws, but they're on the books.

Posted by Wolf | May 31, 2008 4:54 PM
23

Oh, and @5 (sorry I didn't reply to you last night)

didn't Rauschenberg erase a drawing by de Kooning?

Yes, he did. But he had de Kooning's express permission to do so. That's the difference.

Odds are, nobody would ever know you'd altered a work unless you posted it online and got thousands of hits. Prosecutions in art crime cases are very, very rare...mostly because A) artists don't really usually know what happens to their works, and B) most artists don't have the money to pursue individual cases.

I threw some of T's art into the trash today, simply because I still have SO DAMN MUCH of it. Can I be sued for destruction?

No. Because I'm the heir to the creator by legal document, so I'm considered kind of an "extension" of the creator and acting in his interest since he's not capable of his own decision-making (read: dead)

Posted by Wolf | May 31, 2008 5:16 PM
24

Wolf, I'm curious as to what law you're citing. Is it international law?

Posted by Chris in Tampa | May 31, 2008 8:33 PM
25

You know, as a matter of fact, I'm not sure if that's international law or not, I've always kept up on US law. I would have to guess that it's also generally accepted everywhere, but I can't tell you that for certain. We never had any "international" buyers, save for one guy who was a US citizen who had his piece shipped from St Louis to somewhere in South America.

Posted by Wolf | June 1, 2008 5:22 AM
26

Wolf, you must absolutely despise Rauschenberg.

As an artist & teacher, I love this project.

Posted by F' Hitler | June 2, 2008 10:26 AM
27

From how I remember the interviews, de Kooning personally gave Rauschenberg an etching, and he had a hunch that he was up to something like this, but didn't actually give him permission to to do anything with it. it was just a gift.

At any rate, defacing Hitler art is still funny.

Posted by Dougsf | June 2, 2008 12:21 PM

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