9/11 Wicked But A Work Of Art, Says Damien Hirst

One year after the tragic event one of the leading and most famous postmodern artists, Damien Hirst, of dissected cow fame, has said 9/11 was art:

(Cutting courtesy of The Arts Journal:
http://www.artsjournal.com/Arts%20beat.htm#people )

HIRST - 9/11 WAS "ART": Controversial artist Damien Hirst told the BBC yesterday that the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center were a work of art. "The thing about 9/11 is that it's kind of an artwork in its own right. It was wicked, but it was devised in this way for this kind of impact. It was devised visually." Describing the image of the hijacked planes crashing into the twin towers as "visually stunning", he added: "You've got to hand it to them on some level because they've achieved something which nobody would have ever have thought possible, especially to a country as big as America." The Guardian (UK) 09/11/02 http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/story/0,11711,790058,00.html

Responding to Hirst's outburst, Foundation for the Advancement of Art Director Michael Newberry said: "One of the defining characteristics of postmodern art has been to "shock" the audience, as when Marcel Duchamp submitted a urinal to the Society for Independent Artists in New York in 1917. Using the concept of shock aesthetics one can grasp how 9/11 could be viewed as postmodern art. Prophetically, immediately after the 9/11 tragedy I saw the connection between it and postmodern art."

Indeed he did. In October 2001, in issue #49 of the Free Radical magazine, Newberry wrote: "It is a sick irony of massive proportions that America, through its network of museums, dealers, intelligentsia, and funding, is the world's leading exponent of postmodern art...The symbol for this aspect of her culture and equally well for the terrorists is the bloody formless waste that was the World Trade Center and its people. A symbolic and literal marking of the decline of a civilization."

('Terrorism and Post-Modern Art' http://www.freeradical.co.nz/solo/newberry_terrorism.html )

In a follow up essay in June 2002, also in the Free Radical, Newberry went on to write: "The destruction of the World Trade Center is the most brilliant example of the furthest reaches of what is possible to a postmodernist.Beyond obliteration the consequential absence of the Twin Towers is the crowning glory of postmodern art."

('Pandora's Box, Part 1' http://solohq.com/Articles/Newberry/Pandoras_Box_Part_I.shtml )

Newberry, whose foundation was set up in part to combat the outrages of post-modern art, concludes: "I am hoping that society and its cultural leaders can remove the veil that disguises the nature of postmodern art and that they will begin to see that postmodern art does not lead to a flourishing and vital culture."

ENDS

For further information please contact: Michael Newberry Rhodes, Greece Director Foundation for the Advancement of Art Email: Newberry@rho.forthnet.gr Tel/Fax: 30-2410-29751

http://www.ArtAdvancement.org/ http://www.MichaelNewberry.com

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