AND NOT ONLY
As I already wrote, on Friday, as part of the cultural program, the Danish public will be presented with the severed head of a killed elk..
And now a new cultural event has arrived.
Denmark, in general, has not been letting connoisseurs of the beautiful get bored lately.
This time, another Danish “art figure” distinguished himself — sculptor Jens Galschiøt.
In the European Parliament in Strasbourg, his work entitled “The Orange Plague,” also known as “The King of Injustice,” has been put on display.
The composition is subtle, elegant, and, of course, highly spiritual.
Before the European parliamentarians rises a 2.5-meter completely naked Donald Trump, covered in 23-karat gold, sitting astride the back of a small hunched-over man.
In his hands — the scales of justice, nearby — a golden golf club and a globe in the form of a ball.
So that the viewer does not accidentally miss the full depth of the author’s intent, there is an explanation nearby:
“I sit on a man’s back. He is drowning under my weight. I will do everything to help him. Except to get off his back.”
The artist explains that in this way he is protesting against the abuse of power, and was inspired, among other things, by Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
The venue is especially wonderful.
Not somewhere in a private contemporary art gallery, where people come voluntarily to look at yet another author’s vision of the world.
No.
Right in the European Parliament.
Moreover, this magnificence was brought there by Danish MEP Per Clausen. In his opinion, if someone is so “thin-skinned” that they are unable to calmly perceive such a sculpture, then they have no business on the world political stage.
Well, that is the whole explanation.
Freedom of speech. Satire. Democracy. Art.
Under these four words today, it seems, almost anything can be served.
One can treat Trump any way one likes. Love him, hate him, laugh at him, criticize his every decision.
But there is a rather noticeable line between political satire and demonstrative rudeness.
And when rudeness is exhibited in the building of one of the main political institutions of Europe, and then solemnly explained as the defense of democracy and freedom of expression — it becomes even more interesting than the sculpture itself.
And you know what all this increasingly resembles?
The decadence of the early 20th century.
That very era when external extravagance gradually became an end in itself, former norms were demonstratively destroyed, and the ability to shock began to be valued above the ability to create.
Not because any provocative art means decline.
But because sometimes culture conveys the psychological state of society with amazing precision.
When big ideas run out, a competition in shocking behavior begins.
When there is nothing to offer the future, they begin to mock the past and the present.
And when a political institution no longer notices the difference between freedom of expression and the absence of elementary dignity, an unpleasant feeling arises that the sculpture has accidentally turned into an allegory of something completely different from what the author intended.
Perhaps the naked golden man sitting on someone else’s back in the middle of the European Parliament is not about Trump at all.
Perhaps it is simply a very successful monument to modern Europe.
And the cultural week in Denmark continues in the meantime.
Today — the naked golden Trump.
On Friday — the elk’s head.
I am afraid to even ask what we have planned for the weekend.
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