Dick Displays Bollocks To Public

I must admit to having a passion for modern art.

All the things that other people find total shite, I find rather interesting.

For instance in the old Tate there was a room of paintings, huge canvasses, that were basically one colour - tourquise - with a purple stripe. I can't remember the philosophy behind the pictures, but I loved them because they were the perfect demonstration of the impossibility of sameness in human creation. If you sat and looked at them, you would see the way in which the colour changed due to the vagueries of the composition of the paint, the ammount of paint on the brush etc.

But I have to say that the problem with 'modern art' is that it attracts wankers.

Which brings me to Terence Ko.

Mr Ko has caused offence due to his exibition which includes a statue of Jesus with an erection.

Quite why this is art, I have no idea - as to me it strikes of somethign you would bring home as a sovenier from a holiday in Benidorm. But clearly the people running the Baltic gallery in Newcastle believe that this kind of twaddle is art.

I can't say I am surpised, as when I went to the Baltic they had an exibition by a second rate Bracht parodist and a truely dreadful exihibition of 'monsters' out of rubbish. Frankly I wasn't impressed. It struck me that this was the logical conclusion of spending the arts budget on buildings and not art.

I really don't understand the point of what Mr Ko is getting at - other than playing the emperors new clothes game with the morons who run galleries - according to the story in the Mail, he has also added excited male appendages to Mickey Mouse and ET - and he also caused controversy when he tried exibit a work featuring the Virgin Mary with a penis taking a whizz in a urinal, at the Royal Academy.

I see a theme developing here with Mr Ko. No doubt one that started at school by drawing willies in text books.

Oh that modern artists choose to do really daring things - like the Austrian bloke I saw that has been putting pig fat in tubes for years and claiming that it is a insight into life and mortality. Yeah I know it sounds disgusting, but it was really interesting - in a way that Jesus with an erection is not.

Oh I guess I am a hypocrit in a way about Mr Ko's 'work' on account of my liking fuckface by the Chapman brothers, but then I am also partial to Sarah Lucas' 'two kebabs and a fried egg', but not as much as I like her statements on the female condition in the figures made out of tights. I also love Tracy Emmin's work and stuff like the pile of bricks.

And true I haven't seen Mr Ko's work, and I am being prejudicial to it based on my experience of the work selected by the Baltic. But actually it is extremely cowardly. And far from being shocking and original, it is way out of date. Because we are back in the cycle that would eventually lead to the Danish cartoons controversy, not least because the people who have reported it to the police are saying that Mr Ko would not dare to depict Mohammed in this manner - which is precisely the line of argument that led Jyllands Posten to commision the cartoons in the first place (and no doubt were someone to produce such a work, and there be the usual riot, 'L'iberal types would be complaining that the artist was being deliberately shocking for the sake of being shocking - and Mr Ko is being?)

But then the Baltic wouldn't have dared to display such a figure either - so we shouldn't really expect daring 'artists' to be daring. And instead we should just accept that 'challenging' art in the current climate is little more than adults acting like children, and displaying the results in buildings paid for by the lottery - quite why they didn't think to set up a lottery without the good cause shite, but with a slightly better chance of winning a tenner, would be better for the country as a whole, is beyond me.

But I guess we are stuck with it, rather like the BBC really - with pretty much the same results - cowardly commisioning, unchallenging work that is at best of sixth form standard, and little or no chance of anyone form the outside ever getting in to break up the cosy clique and do what art should do, which is to reflect the world.

Oh and the Christians who are objecting are missing a trick here. Instead of complaining that this is a religious insult and bemoaning that it isn't Mohammed with an erection, they should be lobbing bricks at the Baltic and sending death threats to Mr Ko and the people who commisioned him - that seems to be the effective way of protecting religious freedom in Britain today - it works for the Muslims and it worked for the Sikhs over that play in Birmingham.

Expecting the police to do something, or the CPS or the law is simply pissing in the wind.

Not that I am advocating people should riot - merely making an artistic judgement on the way in which people get what they want in this society.

peace:)