Zvi Mazel Tov

Israel's ambassador to Sweden goes berserk, smashes art exhibit:

"The art installation, called Snow White and located in the museum's courtyard, featured a basin filled with red water, designed to look like blood.

A sailboat with the name Snow White floated on the water, and placed like a sail was a photo of a smiling Hanadi Jaradat, the female lawyer who blew herself up in the Haifa suicide bombing attack in October which killed 21 Israelis.
"For me it was intolerable and an insult to the families of the victims. As ambassador to Israel I could not remain indifferent to such an obscene misrepresentation of reality," the ambassador told Swedish news agency TT.

According to museum director Kristian Berg, the ambassador went berserk in front of the 400 specially-invited guests when he saw the piece.

"He pulled out the plugs and threw one of the spotlights into the fountain which caused the entire installation to short-circuit and made it totally life-threatening," he told TT.

Y'know, I'm all about artistic freedom.

And sometimes, art offends public sensibility. Sometimes that's a good thing.

But there's something about some artists - especially in places like Sweden and Minneapolis, where much art is heavily subsidized (disclaimer: I don't know if "Snow White" is subsidized) - that fairly defines "self-indulgence"; they go beyond challenging community perceptions, and swerve past insensitivity into the indulgence of hatred.

One of the two artists who created the work, Israeli-born Dror Feiler, told AFP the ambassador was "totally unreasonable and undiplomatic" and would not listen to his explanations.

"He said he was ashamed that I was a Jew," Feiler said. "We see this as an offensive assault on our right to express our thoughts and feelings."

And what were those thoughts and feelings?

The other artist, Feiler's Swedish wife Gunilla Skoeld Feiler, told daily Expressen that the work was "not a glorification of the suicide bomber."

Here's something artists - especially the habitually obtuse ones - might want ot remember; when you're "expressing your thoughts and feelings" about things in which people are heavily emotionally invested, like their religion (Serrano will never do lunch in Vatican City again) or, say, ongoing eliminationist anti-semitism, don't be surprised if they "express" their feelings right back.

Mazel's only mistake - not calling his actions "performance art."

Powerline has four excellent pieces on the subject - start here and work your way back.

Posted by Mitch at January 19, 2004 06:55 AM