> 31, British artist, received hordes of free publicity when his collage,
The
> Holy Virgin Mary, which featured a black Virgin Mary with elephant feces
on
> one breast and cutouts from pornographic magazines glued in the
background,
> was part of the Brooklyn Museum of Art's October exhibit, "Sensation:
Young
> British Artists from the Saatchi Collection."
I'm going to be argumentative. While your description of this work was
interesting... it said nothing of painting. It sounds as though this work
received attention because of the *content* (Virgin Mary/Christ + dung +
porn), not *form*. Could this content have been equally provocative as
writing, as photomontage, as video, as performance? I don't believe that
form should be incidental/secondary to content. In fact, I would say form
*is* the primary content of really great work. Simply pissing people off
with contentious content seems simplistic. But, it is difficult to imagine
painting as newly invented. Newer media doesn't have the history to contend
with - but can also suffer from this "advantage". That's the problem I'm
grappling with here (as a painter).
