British artists too frightened to tackle radical Islam

[Ambiorix]

British artists too frightened to tackle radical Islam
from:http://pcwatch.blogspot.com/ 21 nov 2007

Britain's contemporary artists are feted around the world for their willingness to shock but fear is preventing them from tackling Islamic fundamentalism. Grayson Perry, the cross-dressing potter, Turner Prize winner and former Times columnist, said that he had consciously avoided commenting on radical Islam in his otherwise highly provocative body of work because of the threat of reprisals.

Perry also believes that many of his fellow visual artists have also ducked the issue, and one leading British gallery director told The Times that few major venues would be prepared to show potentially inflammatory works. "I've censored myself," Perry said at a discussion on art and politics organised by the Art Fund. "The reason I haven't gone all out attacking Islamism in my art is because I feel real fear that someone will slit my throat."

Perry's highly decorated pots can sell for more than 50,000 pounds and often feature sex, violence and childhood motifs. One work depicted a teddy bear being born from a penis as the Virgin Mary. "I'm interested in religion and I've made a lot of pieces about it," he said. "With other targets you've got a better idea of who they are but Islamism is very amorphous. You don't know what the threshold is. Even what seems an innocuous image might trigger off a really violent reaction so I just play safe all the time."

The fate of Theo van Gogh, the Dutch film-maker who was murdered by a Muslim extremist in 2004 after he made a film portraying violence against women in Islamic societies, is the most chilling example of what can happen to an artist who is perceived to have offended Islam. Perry said that he had also been scared by the reaction across the Islamic world to Danish cartoons deemed anti-Muslim in 2006 and by the protests against Salman Rushdie's knighthood this year.

Across Europe there is growing evidence that freedom of expression has been curtailed by fear of religious fundamentalism. Robert Redeker, a French philosophy teacher, is in hiding after calling the Koran a "book of extraordinary violence" in Le Figaro in 2006; Spanish villages near Valencia have abandoned a centuries-old tradition of burning effigies of Muhammad to mark the reconquest of Spain, against the Moors; and an opera house in Berlin banned a production of Mozart's Idomeneo because it depicted the beheading of Muhammad (as well as Jesus and other spiritual leaders).

In Britain the most high-profile examples have also been seen in the theatre, with the campaign by Christian fundamentalists against Jerry Springer: the Opera and the protests in Birmingham that forced the closure of Bezhti, a play about rape and murder in a Sikh temple.

Tim Marlow, director of exhibitions at White Cube, the London gallery, welcomed Perry's admission. "It's something that's there but very few people have explicitly admitted. Institutions, museums and galleries are probably doing most of the censorship. I would be lying if I said of course we would show something like the Danish cartoons. I think there are genuine reasons for concern. Fundamentalism is a really complex issue and one of the things artists can do is to help us through that complexity. Whether or not it's their responsibility to do that I'm not sure though."

[newman]

Goes to show what sick, discusting, cowardly girliemen are in the art & entertainment field.

They'll happily mock christianity or Judaism but they're too scared to mock iSSlam!

What faggots!!!!!!

[Ambiorix]

Goes to show what sick, discusting, cowardly girliemen are in the art & entertainment field.

They'll happily mock christianity or Judaism but they're too scared to mock iSSlam!

What faggots!!!!!!

In the art & entertainment field,most people really hate people who believe in god, but respect religious freedom.
A minority, with conservative values, is being silenced and ridiculed.

Since the church has less influence then a couple of decades before, Islam , as a non-native religion, has become an ally to socialist&atheists, who think that Islam & Koran are no threat to us.
They think arabs and other muslims are still K.O. from colonisation ...
So these "masses" have to be "liberated" from their enslavers, the white , heterosexual, patriarch.
That's why radical Feminism is the ally of Islam.
They want the destruction of the Western World, by uniting it into One-World-Government.

Artits have to oppose this. Those who don't aren't artists. But media-whores.