If Orwell really said 'Some ideas are so stupid that only an intellectual could believe them', he might have added that there's no notion so inane that some artistic person won't come up with it. On the front of the Sunday Times magazine today there are photographs - 20 of them - of young children crying. They were made to cry by the photographer, Jill Greenberg, arranging for their mothers to give them lollipops and then take the lollipops away. And for why?
[She] intended her images of sobbing babies to be a metaphorical commentary on what she sees as the evils of the Bush administration and the dangerous influence of the evangelical religious right.What a bold concept. And the best way of achieving this aim:
I was trying to make images that made you feel something, because we are so inundated with images in our culture that oftentimes people don't feel anything.We've all got deadened feelings, so... I know, I'll distress a whole lot of kids. And what else should their distress stand for but - all together now, assembled progressives and sound-thinking well-meaning folk - 'the Bush administration'.
This, from James Lileks (via InstaPundit) and although in a different connection, seems apt:
Of course, one could make the case that the greatest threats to the freedoms of the West are posed by the head-choppers, plane-exploders, their many merry supporters, and the nuke-seeking state that supports them.But don't expect the artists to make the case. They saw what happened to that Theo Van Gogh fellow...