Art by perpetrator – from reportage to pornography

A compelling article in the UKs guardian newspaper elegantly charts the artist’s inadvertent glorifying of war, leading to the stepping aside of the modernists, and the immediacy of contemporary media which allows the perpetrators to become the new war artists. The mode being essentially exploitative, pornographic and, ironically, highly referential of previous centuries artists who claimed to react so strongly against the human folly and unimaginable horrors of war; like Goya, for instance. Goya’s compositions, it is claimed here (persuasively), actually act as an inspirational template for the lame exploitative works of torturers and tormentors armed with DigiCams.

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1862309,00.html

Excerpt – Look on protest sites and you can find still more atrocity pictures, reported to have been taken by American soldiers and sent to a pornography provider in return for free access to porn. Once again, anti-war campaigners don’t have any means to ensure that no one uses the images pornographically when circulated via a radical website. War photography has come full circle. From being a form of reportage it has become… what?

This is why art has stepped aside. What more to show? How can you make war art now without being sucked into the pornographic madness of these images?

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