Each charcoal drawing shows the artist, Gil Vicente of Recife, Brazil, holding a weapon moments before assassinating a world leader. The series, called Inimigos (Enemies), is meant to highlight alleged crimes for which the leaders have been directly or indirectly responsible by imagining that they are being made to pay the price.
Full Story – HERE
Outside the art world i’d expect this type of thing to be taken as a real threat. Can you imagine if some kid sketched the exact same thing in a notebook at school? All hell would break loose. According to the article, the artist wants $260,000 for all 9 of his sketches… which in the U.S. would probably be close to the bail you would have to pay to get your kid out of jail temporarily for doing the same thing.
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12 responses to “Brazilian Artist Assassinates World Leaders In Charcoal Sketches”
I couldn’t get the link to work so I tracked the story down here – http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/8027019/Brazilian-artist-in-the-frame-assassinating-the-Pope-the-Queen-and-George-Bush.html
Gil is a fool, of course, but his work does serve to illustrate why the arts are irrelevant today. Publicity stunts like this one – or suspending chopped up aminals in glass tanks of fomaldehyde, smearing pitures of Catholic saints with turds and pornography – momentarily catch our attention for their brazenness but utterly fail to engage us as artists once did. When talent falters, turn up the volume!
I would normally agree (though not with the sweeping statement that the whole of the arts is ‘irrelevant’), however looking at the sketches, he’s hardly without conventional artistic talent.
Yea that blog must have been down. I put the link you gave in the post now. Thanks.
He does seem to be a pretty good artist, but I agree a lot of the exhibits are going for popularity based on shock rather than differentiating themselves through outstanding talent.
Replace the heads of state in his pictures with people who might actually deserve to be on the receiving end of a bullet for crimes against humanityand – Bin Laden, the late Messrs. S. Hussein, Pol Pot, and any one of numerous Asiatic, African or Latin-American tyrants – and it seems to me that the affect would be rather different, and even less “artistic”.
I notice he didn’t happen to include any South/Central American dignitaries in his work.
God knows there are plenty of them that deserved such fitting tribute.
The Pope, HM The Queen and Dubya are pretty safe targets – Hugo Chavez is too close to home. Maybe imagining himself on the recieving end of his brand of justice is the reason for the self-censorship.
What are you talking about? One of them is the president of Brazil.
OOPS!
He has nothing but his rage and anger inspiring him, fed to him by a constant stream of aggitators and malcontents.
This why art is a joke in the 21th century. They look to man and not God for inspiration.
That’s an interesting way to look at it. I don’t disagree with you.
I was thinking exactly the same thing – your kid does a stick figure like this and he’s not coming back to school for a long time. Controversy sells I guess. It makes me laugh because this kind of stuff is en vogue when certain leaders are in charge, and then not when the leadership changes.
You guys are all making a very common mistake. Thinking that this art is “shock value”, designed to get YOUR attention by shocking YOU. This is not the case. Most artists draw, paint, sculpt…… for themselves. Not for their audience. These paintings are entirely for the artist and his gratification. Whether the populus likes or dislikes the work is of no relevence. I personally enjoy this work, even if I didn’t it’s not my place to judge.