-Caveat Lector-
From
www.sfgate.com Return to regular view
The art of terror
Charles Paul Freund
Saturday, October 6, 2002
©2002 San Francisco Chronicle.
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?
file=/chronicle/archive/2002/10/06/IN225021.DTL
Damien Hirst, one of Britain's most celebrated artists, told the BBC last month that
the Sept.
11 attacks were "visually stunning" artworks and that the perpetrators "need
congratulating." He's sorry for that now.
"You've got to hand it to them on some level," he originally said of the murderers,
"because
they've achieved something which nobody would have thought possible." Best known for
his
series of art pieces involving neatly sliced animal carcasses, Hirst now has issued a
regret-
filled clarification insisting,
"I value human life."
Meanwhile, as Hirst was slapping al Qaeda on its collective back, a New Zealand artist
named Gail Haffern was telling the Auckland art press that the destruction of the World
Trade Center while filled with people was "wonderful .
. . because it was a new idea."
Haffern's only notable achievement is that she holds New Zealand's first- ever
doctorate in
fine arts. "Being an artist," she says of her reaction to the attacks, "I thought what
if this
had been a performance piece and Osama bin Laden had declared himself an artist, how
would the world have seen it then?" Her answer is a sculptural installation involving
representations of the trade towers, surrounded by blocks featuring such "wordplay" as
"Pentagone. "
As it happens, Hirst and Haffern were echoing sentiments blurted out a year ago by
Karlheinz Stockhausen, one of the world's best-known composers. Stockhausen was
speaking to journalists in Hamburg, Germany, a few days after the attacks, and called
the
destruction "the greatest work of art ever." Stockhausen immediately asked the
interviewers not to report what he had said. However, a juicy quote is at least as
appealing
to reporters as mass murder is to certain artists, and the composer's remarks resulted
in
an uproar.
What's this about? Haffern, the obscure New Zealander, might be dismissed as seeking
cheap notoriety. Hirst and Stockhausen, on the other hand, are acknowledged leaders in
their fields; they're hardly in need of bad publicity, as the German composer
realized. A
reasonable conclusion is that all three meant what they said: that the Sept. 11
attacks had
great aesthetic significance, were "visually stunning," "wonderful" in their
originality, and
even "great works of art" that deserve recognition and "congratulating."
One conclusion is that these artists represent an aesthetic barbarity not evident
since the
painters and writers of prewar Italy and France celebrated violence, destruction and
martial
strength as necessary to create a fascist order. These, too, saw something positive --
something wonderfully aesthetic --
in force, blood and mayhem, which is why the German critic and philosopher Walter
Benjamin charged fascism with "aestheticizing" its repellent politics.
In that sense, these artists and those for whom they speak may be "aestheticizing"
their
own politics as well. Until such time as these artists applaud the obliteration of
Hiroshima in
a wonderfully novel burst of light, or celebrate Hollywood for its beautifully
choreographed
violence, or embrace the American right to bear arms for its aesthetic potential --
until
then, we can justly speculate that it is only when Americans are murdered that the act
is
revealed as grand art.
What really stands out about these various remarks, however, is their breathtaking
banality.
Stockhausen, for example, placed the acts in the context of cheap melodrama. He told
interviewers, "That characters can bring about in one act what we in music cannot dream
of, that people practice madly for 10 years, completely fanatically, for a concert and
then
die. That is the greatest work of art for the whole cosmos."
But that sounds less like a vision of cosmic art than it does a cynical MGM tearjerker
from
about 1948. Stockhausen successfully evoked the moody, misunderstood musician, played
by an unkempt Louis Jourdan. But where is the fatherly character played by Oscar
Homolka,
urging Jourdan to end his 10 years of mad practicing and instead marry Olga Baclanova
and
live a life of small pleasures? No matter, the last scene writes itself: The concert
is over,
the audience's sneers have become an ovation, but Jourdan lies dead behind the curtain
in
the arms of a tearful Baclanova who only now understands art's demands.
Hirst and Haffern are younger than Stockhausen, and express a more modern banality.
Hirst envisions "congratulating" the terrorist/artists, as if they were gathered for a
London
gallery opening. What has earned this peer recognition? The work? Of course, but it is
the
scandal that is unparalleled. These artists have not merely offended their middle-class
capitalist audience, they've murdered its members by the thousands. Their art
reputations
are as assured as their auction prices. Congratulations indeed.
Seeing murder as art is nothing new. The writer and opium-eater Thomas De Quincey
identified murder as a fine art in 1827. But De Quincey's interest was in the appeal
that
notorious crimes held for common people, not in the mass murder of common people. That
refinement has waited until now.
Charles Paul Freund is a senior editor at Reason magazine.
©2002 San Francisco Chronicle. Page D - 6
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