A Deranged Suffragette Attacks the Rokeby Venus. The famous Rokeby Valasquez, commonly known as the "Venus with the Mirror," which was presented to the National Gallery in 1906, was mutilated yesterday morning by the prominent militant woman suffragist Mary Richardson. She attacked the picture with a small chopper with a long narrow blade, similar to the instruments used by butchers, and in a few seconds inflicted upon it severe if not irreparable damage. In consequence of the outrage the National Gallery will remain closed to the public until further notice. To judge from the damaged frame, the first blow was struck at the point marked by the star in the reproduction of the picture which will be found on the preceding page.
From that point to the bottom of the frame the plate glass, about one-third of an inch thick, is cracked in all directions upwards and sideways. Downwards nothing remains of the glass except splintered fragments filling the base of the frame and spreading out in front. Mr. Mr. Mr. Michael Landy: patron saint of destruction | Art and design. Michael Landy is a peculiar choice as resident artist of the National Gallery in London: until he was offered the two-year role, he'd never been.
"This is like confessing," he says guiltily. "But I was too busy at church. " He's joking – but, coming from a family of east London Irish Catholics, there is a tiny bit of truth in this. As a kid, adds the artist, he was a regular at the Tate and the Saatchi – more interested in the new than the old. And unlike the last resident artist, Alison Watt, the Scot who made graceful paintings inspired by the folds of fabric depicted in the National's Old Masters, Landy has what you might call an irreverent attitude to objects.
In the end – and here we come back to Landy's religious upbringing – what really got him going, after months of looking intently at the collection and "flagellating myself", was the depiction of saints in the collection's medieval and Renaissance works. "Chopping things up, that's what I'm doing," he says. Pensioner fall damages Ai Weiwei sculpture. The damaged sculpture by Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei is made up of 96 identical vases. Photo: Cristina Quincler/Robert Vos/AFP Published: 12 Apr 2013 16:50 GMT+02:00Updated: 12 Apr 2013 16:50 GMT+02:00 A sculpture by famous Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei has been damaged in Seville after a woman tripped and fell. The sculpture that Ai Weiwei created jointly with the Romanian-American artist Serge Spitzer is titled "Ghost Gu Coming Down the Mountain". Until yesterday it was formed of 96 perfectly aligned jars.
However, that number is now only 95. "One of the jars that make up the exhibit was broken," sources at Andalusia's Contemporary Arts Centre (CAAC) told The Local. "It was an elderly person who tripped," the museum explained. The sculpture makes up part of a larger exhibition of Ai Weiwei work on display at the CAAC. Unfortunately on Thursday morning, a woman stumbled and broke a vase. However, the artist had yet to respond to the news. Fixing art.
This is Not Art | Independent, Emerging + Experimental Arts Festival – Newscastle, Australia. Painful Cake. The Brilliance of Sweden's Shocking Golliwog Cake - Max Fisher. When artist Makode Linde dressed up as a pastry depicting a caricatured African woman, he was doing more than just embarrassing Sweden's cultural minister. Linde howls in mock pain as Swedish art fans eat from a cake made to look like a female African woman.
YouTube You are supposed to be shocked by the photos of the cake, baked in the shape of a contorted, female, black body. You are meant to be appalled by the laughing crowd of white Swedes, egging on Swedish Minister of Culture Lena Adelsohn-Liljeroth as she cuts a slice from the cake's crotch. And you are absolutely meant to be horrified by the living human face, painted in Golliwogg blackface style, looking back at the chuckling crowd, and screaming in mock pain as the cake is cut. There are two layers to the story. Adelsohn-Liljeroth believed she was participating in an art installation meant to draw attention to the plight of female genital mutilation (FGM) in Africa.
Who's Makode Linde, who staged the whole event? The Bluest blue, ever! - Makode Linde and the Cake. De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté. Racism? Art? PSA? Or all three? The disturbing spectacle of Makode Linde’s human cake. The best of non-profit advertising and marketing for social causes Posted by Tom Megginson | 17-04-2012 21:11 | Category: Human rights A male artist, in the most offensive caricature blackface imaginable, creates an anatomical nude female red velvet cake and invites Sweden’s Minister of Culture to give him/her a symbolic cliteridectomy by cutting the genital slice first. Oh, and Mr. Linde screams and moans. Then he eats the cake.
The internet was quick to react. Sweden’s African-Swedish Association called it “a racist spectacle”. Jezebel wrote, “I hope you spent the morning warming up your What The Everloving Hell reaction muscles, because this will require you to use all of them.” Swedish Culture Minister Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth denies doing anything wrong, according to the Guardian, but admits that Mr. And this installation for Sweden’s “Art Week” certainly is… provocative: (More after the break) Once you get past the outrage, however, there are some interesting points to consider.