South Africa: Shock Art - Why a Dismally Bad Painting Has Caused Such a Flap

analysis

A tale of two dicks. In South Africa, Presidential Penisgate rages. In Canada, the Prime Ministerial Penisgate rages. In between, there are centuries of artistic controversies, some even involving good art. RICHARD POPLAK compares, um, apples to oranges.

"Art is the supreme incarnation of luxury entertainment," Japanese postmodernist Takashi Murakami once said. Murakami would know: his mercenary approach to art-as-commerce makes Damien Hirst look like Vincent Van Gogh. His super-flat movement references generations of so-called 2-D Japanese graphic imagery, and is meant as a comment of post-war Japanese culture: high and low melding into a congealed lump that Murakami packages and sells for tens of millions of dollars at international art fairs through his Kaikai Kiki Co. Super-flat allows Murakami an out: everything is art, so long as it is marketed as such.

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