Art and Evil

FATHER FRANK’S RANTS

Rant Number 306 4 June 2008

Art and Evil

What an artist perishes with me! Emperor Nero lamented, before thrusting a dagger into his throat. Despite historical taunts about his singing, fragments of his verse evince a certain lyrical quality. Where Nero failed was as a human being – no man who has his own mother murdered can be anything but an unnatural monster – and as a ruler. Roman generals rose against him. Perversion and cruelty married to incompetence caused his downfall. A kind of artist he may have been – an intelligent and good leader he was not.

Of Adolf Hitler’s merits as a statesman I need say nothing. But his early exercises as a painter still attract. Certainly they grabbed two young British artists, brothers Jake and Dino Chapman - so much so they expensively purchased the Fuhrer’s watercolours. And painted them over with their own schmaltzy pictures. If Hitler had been a hippy how happy would we be is the outcome. An exhibition at the trendy White Cube Gallery off Piccadilly. I noticed the brothers left quite visible the little, black ‘A.H.’ signature. The lure of evil? Something like that. Any book displaying either a swastika or a naked female on its cover will sell, they say. Groan…sad.

A.H.’s presence is not limited to watercolours, however. He also stars in the Chapman’s F…ing Hell. Nine sickening tableaux in large glass cases. Depicting a war-ravaged world. Teeming with hundreds of tiny, plastic toy figures. Mostly helmeted SS guards. Bloodied and mutilated. Also, freaks. Hermaphrodite creatures, their disparate parts fused into one body. Engaging in sadistic, unmentionable acts. Forests of severed heads stuck on pikes. Ponds are blood pools, with floating human remains. Vultures hover, while ravenous wolves feed on corpses.

One ruined edifice is meant to be a church. From the windows, the viewer glimpses blasphemous, obscene parodies of the Christian sacraments. Outside, pigs are nailed to crosses. It’s sick, sick, sick.

In this hideous hell, it is hard to tell guards from prisoners, tormentors from tormented, victims from executioners. Everybody is equally brutalised. Nazi guards are stripped of their trousers, strangled, beheaded and ripped apart, just like the innocent. All around rages an orgy of bestiality and sadism and vile sexual acts. Nature too partakes of the general violation: plants sprout human skulls. And, in a corner, amidst all the impossible carnage, the Fuhrer sits serene at his easel, painting an idyllic landscape.

Britain’s greatest art critic, Brian Sewell, way back praised the Chapman brothers as ‘genuine’. Others have compared them to Goya. I myself might recall Hieronymous Bosch’s grotesque Temptations of St Anthony. (Although I discern very little of Bosch’s humour and satire in these stomach-turning vitrines.) Entering the tedious and sterile debate whether this is art or not would be pointless. Anything exhibited in an art gallery is ipso facto art, the pundits pontificate. What interests the priest is what kind of art our Dino and Jake are into. What responses, what feelings, what emotions does it elicit?

Images of violence and pain are guaranteed a full house, for our fascination in the sufferings of others is limitless, like human malice. Still, a sane and decent person’s reaction will be above all one of compassion. A sense of pity, accompanied by an inclination to help and be merciful. Things all great religions indeed advocate. Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, the Awakened One, was moved to begin his ministry by compassion at the sufferings of both human beings and animals, even insects. Once enlightened, instead of entering Nirvana, the Buddha chose to stay on amongst men, so to help them on the way to release. The Quran regularly invokes Allah, ‘the Compassionate, the Merciful’. ‘Come to me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest’ says Jesus, the Good Shepherd who healed the sick, cast out demons, raised the dead and died on a cross. But amongst secular thinkers, it was Arthur Schopenhauer who based his philosophy of art on compassion. That great German contentiously argued that life itself is intrinsically suffering. Because dependent on willing - our constant, ever-arising yearnings and desires. Like Ixion, fastened by Zeus to a wheel on which he was to turn forever, human beings are trapped in the perennially revolving wheel of their drives and urges. Once one is satisfied, another one arises, and so on. Bondage to the will, Schopenhauer calls our human predicament. A terrifyingly destructive but realist analysis of metaphysical egoism. Wonder why people fight wars? Listen to this: ‘Everyone wants everything for himself, wants to possess, or at least control, and would like to destroy whatever opposes him.’ Does it ring a bell, reader?

True art, however, lifts us out of that sorry state. In beholding a painting by Raphael or Poussin, or the Elgin Marbles, or in listening to Mozart, we are taken out, so to speak, of our willing ego. We lose ourselves in that beauty. We become purely knowing, contemplating subjects. No longer craving egoists but selfless, contemplative beings. Insofar as we manage that, we have escaped the wheel of Ixion. Further, the philosopher adds that liberation from self, in breaking down the illusion of separateness between beings, also moves us to loving kindness. To compassion for the sufferings of all living beings, for all those who are under the sway of endless desires. Coherently, Schopenhauer wrote against evils like slavery and vivisection.

Whether you buy Arthur’s complex Weltanshauung or not, compassion, sympathy, an imaginative identification with others, seems the appropriate response to human suffering. I discern none of that in the Chapmans’ art. Flogging the dead horse of Nazism is convenient but it justifies nothing. Even in human-created hells, as a matter of fact, angels arise. St Maximilian Kolbe, who gave his life for another prisoner at Auschwitz, is a shining example. There are Jews who have reached out to Palestinians, and vice versa. But nothing relieves the inhuman ugliness, the monotony of the violations, the ferocity of the murders and mayhem of F…ing Hell. Bosch’s Temptations of St Anthony at least inclines the viewer to investigate the weird symbolism of its tiny figures. Dino and Jake Chapman’s freaks elicit only disgust. For that, they must stand condemned.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~