Imprimir

Shortly after Israel’s ambassador to Sweden vandalized an installation featured at the Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm, Israeli authorities announced the awarding of the Israel Prize – the country’s highest artistic distinction — to the politically radical sculptor Yigal Tumarkin. Both events sparked controversy in Israel and invite a reflection on the delicate relationship between art, politics and morality.

The artwork exhibited by an Israeli/Swedish couple in Stockholm, Snow White and the Madness of Truth, consisted of a small ship carrying a picture of a smiling female Palestinian suicide-bomber sailing in a pool of red water. It was accompanied by posterwalls explaining the terrorist act on the basis of personal desperation. The visiting Israeli diplomat attacked it physically, prompting condemnation in some quarters and approval in others.

Picasso’s Guernica

For some, vandalizing this artwork is a form of political art. I would not go that far, but I find it educational to recall one instance when some in the cultural world defended the act of damaging an artwork as a worthy artistic accomplishment. In 1974, a group of artists united under the unbelievable name «Guerrilla Art Action Group» backed Tony Shafrazi, an artist who had spray-painted Pablo Picasso’s masterpiece Guernica, claiming that he was completing Picasso’s work. The idea of art-creation by means of art-defacing had been seen before — in Marcel Duchamp’s drawing of a mustache and a beard on a replica of the Mona Lisa.

Through these examples, which Israeli commentator Calev Ben-David has made, we could see the Israeli diplomat’s reaction to Snow White as an avant-garde manifestation of the «anti-art» variety. Of course, we know that this isn’t the case. More than a Dadaist loose on a journey of artistic expression, the Israeli diplomat was protesting — in a most undiplomatic, albeit media-catchy, way — the Swedish (and by extension European) celebration of anti-Israel terror.

Now to Tumarkin, the Israeli star who, upon receiving news of the award, said: «I want to be judged on my art and what I’ve contributed to this miserable country.» To understand this comment, you must know about the controversy that he has sparked in the past.

Moving to Germany

Tumarkin once said that when seeing ultra-orthodox Jews in Jerusalem, he could understand the Nazis. He publicly wished he had gunned down right-wing politicians Raphael Eitan and Rehavam Ze’evi (the latter shot to death by Palestinian terrorists years later). Tumarkin insulted immigrant Jews from Arab countries when he said that they were burdening the country «with so many poor children.» And he shocked his countrymen when he went back to his native Germany in the ’50s, at a time when that kind of thing was a taboo in a country with so many Holocaust survivors.

All this has to do with his political worldview, which admittedly, no matter how extreme, should not cloud recognition of his fine artistic contribution to the nation. The man and his work: Can they be separated? Even if they can, how can one not regard as deeply offensive Tumarkin’s creation of a pig wearing phylacteries?

While the meaning and interpretation of art is always subjective and often inscrutable, blatant political messages don’t go unnoticed, and this «art» can be viewed as propaganda disguised in art-format. As art critic Roger Kimball wrote in The Wall Street Journal: «They poach on the prestige of art in order to have it both ways. Criticize the aesthetic vapidness, and you get a lecture about how the artwork transcends the traditional artistic categories to interrogate the oppressive political structures of the status quo, blah, blah, blah. Criticize the moronic politics, and you get a sermon about not reducing works of art to a simplistic set of objective declarations.»

Divisive, controversial

Honoring Tumarkin, a man so divisive and controversial, is an example of the inexplicable tendency toward self-flagellation so widespread in Israeli elite circles. But at least it is a domestic issue and as such remains limited.

Conversely, the Sweden affair is an international matter by definition, pointing to a worrisome trend of romanticization of Palestinian violence in vast segments of the European cultural establishment and general public opinion.

There, terror-glorification is called the «Madness of Truth.» I’d call it the apogee of infamy.

Julián Schvindlerman is a writer and journalist in Buenos Aires.