Jesus’ erection offends the usual suspects
The London Paper reports that Stephen Green’s Voice is calling for a foot high statue to be destroyed.
The figurine of Christ with an erection forms part of an exhibition at The Baltic in Gateshead of the Zabludowicz collection. It is by Chinese artist Terence Koh.
In a press release last week, Green says Koh “badly needs the saving and healing grace of Jesus Christ”. The LP reports that he is also claiming that it has already raised a “storm” of protest.
But a spokeswoman for the Baltic says she has received only 3 letters of complaint:
Contemporary Art by its very nature is often challenging and controversial; reflecting and responding to some very serious personal and social issues in modern life.
Baltic does not shy away from presenting such works.
We do endeavour to provide advance warnings to our visitors when the artworks presented may be distressing to them to enable a choice to be made, and we shall continuously seek to improve our advance information in this way.
Well said, that spokeswoman.
UPDATE: (14th Jan) The press release on Green’s website contains this psychologically revealing passage:
… I am hurt and disappointed that it is a Jewish art collector who has not only bought such an indecent, blasphemous and offensive statue of the Lord Jesus Christ from Koh, but has allowed it to go on show. Only last year I drove 250 miles to deliver clothing for Jewish relief charities.
This is all about Stephen Green and his feelings. Stephen Green drove 250 miles to deliver clothing to Jewish relief charities, and how does this Jewish art collector repay him? She displays a statuette of Jesus with a hard on! What a shoddy, ungrateful way to treat Stephen Green.
I found a veritable storm of protest at the Daily Mail’s website (presumably this is where Green found out about the exhibit). As per usual, it seems, the Mail speaks with Christian tongue and edits out anyone who dares to disagree with them. It saddens me in this day and age that we have a (overtly respectable?) tabloid that fills the minds of vulnerable people with such bullshit as creationism and anti-GM campaigns. I know this is OT, but I’d like to send their editors to some country where GM is feeding millions of hitherto starving people and demand to know what’s so wrong with it.
Will Terence Koh (or ANYBODY) NOW PLEASE PLEASE produce, for public display, a figure of Mohammed with an erction.
Then you will see reaction.
Marc: I’m a staunch atheist and also staunchly anti-GM. I’d encourage you to read the following document, particularly the “Don’t we need GM to feed the world?” section near the end:
http://www.mutatoes.org/b001-whatswrongwithgm.php
In short, aside from the massive environmental dangers, GM crops take control of food away from people, and put it even further into the hands of corporations. People are starving not because there isn’t enough food available (mountains of it go to waste every day) but because they cannot afford to buy it or to support themselves thanks to inequitable distribution channels which place corporate profits before the needs of people, and a global economic system which keeps things this way.
We don’t need GM crops to feed the world – we need corporations to have considerably less power, not more. GM is at best an exercise in corporate control – especially because once it is here, it can never ever be got rid of.
(I’ll try to remember to check back here, in case you wish to debate this further, though I haven’t been checking MWW quite as much recently as I used to, and it’s not an environmental blog anyway so I guess this is all rather off topic!)
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