Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Abel Azcona, an Artyr for our times

 http://media-cache-ec5.pinterest.com/upload/226798531205242828_DKJyrlwC_b.jpg

Abel Azcona, an artist from Navarro, Spain, has been getting death threats from Muslims after he enacted his latest expressionist project in which he literally ate a Koran over the span of eight hours.  (Thanks to Jihad Watch.)

"I believe in freedom of expression, provocation and artistic freedom, and I will certainly continue doing so today, tomorrow and always," spake Azcona.

Azcona joins the long list of artists, writers, performers, scholars and others who have been intimidated with Muslim (and Islamoleftist) death threats -- some whose lives and careers have been ruined; others who have met the brutal end Muslims intend for all who do not submit to their War God and His Gang Boss, Mohammed.

Where are all the intelligentsia, art mavens, literati, and illiterately uncritical art critics (of the West, of course) who have for decades fawned over the likes of Mapplethorpe (coffee-table photography of underage boys posing as Art), Andres Serrano (the Piss Christ exhibit), Chris Ofili (the elephant dung Virgin Mary exhibit), "performance artist" Karen Finley (whose exhibitionist exhibit was to cover her naked body in chocolate and who once on the Bill Maher show praised a recent show of "performance art" she saw that consisted entirely of a naked black man maintaining an erection for hours), Christo & Jeanne-Claude (whose staff spent exorbitant amounts of money wrapping public places in colorful paper -- elevating child-like precocity to the sublime heights of asinine childishness funded by millionaires) -- not to mention among many others we could name, the derivative hack Basquiat, and the king of shit art Andy Warhol -- now that they have an artist in Abel Azcona putting his life on the line for the freedom of anti-establishment expression that is the very heart of post-post-modern Art?

Does there exist an exhibit somewhere in the empty halls of a gallery where the rooms and walls are utterly bare and devoid, where it is mostly dark with only indirect lighting seeping in from the utility closet, and where the visitor can hear nothing but the sounds of the scuffle of his own shoes and of crickets chirping on a looped tape...? Call that piece, The Answer to Your Good Question.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Hesp, I loved your pun! Artyr versus martyr. :) Egghead

Hesperado said...

Thanks Egghead. I actually coined that for a novel I wrote a couple of years ago (unpublished, of course). Thought it came in handy for this article.

gravenimage said...

And now, "Inspire Magazine"--the glossy Jihad 'how to" infamous for "How to Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom", has reaffirmed Islam's Jihad against artists, including a hit list that includes many artists, including Lars Vilks, Kurt Westergaard, and Molly Norris.

God, I hate Islam.