Wednesday, June 25, 2014
The Passion of Kim Kardashian
A young artist from New York is making a name for herself by painting pictures of Kim Kardashian dressed up as the Virgin Mary, Jesus, and (for good measure) assorted she-devils.
"Kim Kardashian is God,” declared Hannah Kunkle, aged 23. “She's crazy, bodacious and has the nose job of an angel. I don't know if she's omniscient, but no one can deny she's omnipresent."
The acolytes of the Pope have not been shy to masquerade as art critics:
“The paintings are dumb and stupid,” said Father Michael Perry of Our Lady of Refuge Church. “Everyone knows who Kim Kardashian is and I don't care who she is. She has no impact on my life at all.”
John Gribowich, a seminarian with a degree in art history, offered a more considered judgement:
“Here she is as Christ, there she is as the Blessed Mother, and then there's a demonic image of her. I don't know how you can be all of those things. It doesn't make sense.”
The disgruntled Catholics have my sympathy on this occasion. Kim is not remotely credible as the Virgin Mary because her arse is too big, and I mean no insult to either of them by saying so. A virgin living in first-century Judea could not have acquired a Kardashian bubble-butt on a diet of pitta bread, hummus and the occasional olive. Hundreds of Big Macs and creamy milkshakes have given their lives to create that plump rump, which is a holy relic in its own right. Mixing up the iconography of different religions is a heinous sacrilege for which Hannah’s own behind should be spanked forthwith. I would do it myself if I lived in Brooklyn.
Portraying Kim as Jesus is equally absurd. Although no one can be sure what Christ looked like, the consensus of scholarly opinion is that he must have had a beard. The only men who shaved in the Roman Empire were Romans and eunuchs, and Jesus was neither. Given that Kim has electrocuted all her facial follicles, it is ludicrous to suggest she could pass herself off as Jesus. For this affront to common sense and decency, Hannah deserves a second spanking, delivered by the Pope himself.
On the other hand, depicting Kim as a demonic damsel is defensible. A succubus can take any form, so there’s no issue with appearance here. Furthermore, Kim is married to a man who resembles Satan in many respects, blessed as he is with a brawny chest and a goat-like sexual appetite. The she-devil pictures may not be high art, but they wouldn’t look out-of-place in a witches’ coven or the boudoir of a dominatrix.
After Hannah is spanked, the Pope should consider what action to take against the maker of a pop video which showed a partially-clothed couple kissing on the altar of a church:
“The behaviour in the video was a desecration of the church and caused most grievous distress to the parish priest,” a church statement said.
I bet did it, but the term “partially-clothed” is too vague to recommend a suitable penance. Which parts were clothed and which parts were showing?
Labels: Art, Big Bottom, big bum Kim Kardashian, church, sacrilege
Monday, July 23, 2012
Keyhole art
On balance, I think that the new peeping tom exhibit at London’s National Gallery will be a force for good. For those of you who aren’t avid followers of high culture, this work of art consists of a bathroom in which naked women are viewed through carefully positioned peep holes. The women are models, I should hasten to add, and fully aware that visitors are spying on them. One hopes their skin retains its natural oils and juices after being washed and dried on a continuous loop.
Why do I approve of this exhibit? Because I believe that giving peeping toms a lawful outlet for their perversion is better than letting them run amok in respectable society. As well as causing their victims much anguish and annoyance, these fiends have to be hunted down at considerable cost in time and labour. I speak as a gorilla who was dragooned into anti-voyeur duties during his circus career. The female acrobats expected me to guard their changing and showering facilities, as well as apprehending any rascally swine who dared to spy on them.
Although I was happy to protect the girls from intruding eyes, and dealt with offenders as mercifully as the dictates of justice allowed, I would much rather have been reading comics or harvesting root vegetables or competing in toe-wrestling tournaments. No gorilla on his deathbed has ever said “I wish I’d spent more time chasing peeping toms”. Even the biggest dullards of our species have better things to do with their leisure.
I have often wondered why humans, of all the animals, feel shame on exposing their private parts. I think there are two reasons. First, there is considerably more variety in their size and shape than in other species. Imagine a world in which all humans had standard-issue genitalia. Would a man be ashamed of displaying his todger if it were identical to every other human todger? I think not.
The second reason is that humans have less control over their sexual arousal than other species. This is obviously true of men, who dread being discovered with an involuntary stiffy, even when they are fully clothed. Yet there are also women, so I’ve heard, who can be tricked into unwanted nipple-hardening and dilation of the vulva. This is a major biological weakness, because the animal in heat is an easy target for predators. Hence clothes are an essential cloaking mechanism for humans.
The models in the National Gallery have clearly learnt to master their shame, but I’m not particularly keen to watch them in action. Looking at naked humans through peep holes is not the gorilla way. I would much rather view the exciting banana exhibition being held in a museum in Somerset.
The banana is a noble fruit which feels no shame when you peel it. Yet curiously enough, the man whose artefacts are being displayed at the museum was inspired to start his collection by the sight of a woman furtively eating a banana. Why in the name of all that’s white and tasty would a woman be embarrassed about eating a banana in a public place? I admit to mystification.
Labels: Art, banana-peeling, peeping tom, shame, todger
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
The art of making crap
A correspondent draws my attention to a ground-breaking exhibit in Australia’s Museum of New Art. It is a device that mimics the mammalian digestive system by converting food into faeces. This poo-poo machine has been lauded for producing exquisitely malodorous turds which visitors can sniff at their leisure. Few of them are up to the challenge:
“It put me off because of the overwhelming assault on the senses,” declared Diane Malnic, a Sydney-based accountant.
Perhaps the senses of an accountant are rather too easy to overwhelm. An honest farmer, who knows the value of muck, might react more favourably. This machine wasn’t intended for namby-pamby city dwellers who have never fisted a four-legged beast.
The manager of the safari camp grinned facetiously when I told him about it.
“I always knew modern art was shit and now someone’s proved it!” he quipped.
That’s easy for him to say, but what does he know about art? The museum’s mission statement is to “shock, offend, inform and entertain” as if those were the relevant criteria. Frankly, I have my doubts. Watching Jerry Springer ticks all of those boxes, but not even an ignorant baboon would confuse that with art.
In my humble opinion, this turd-machine is a brilliant piece of technology rather than a work of art. Breaking down food, extracting the nutrients and shitting out the remnants is an amazing feat to perform mechanically. It makes one ponder about the true nature of food. Consider the following mathematical equations:
Shit = Food – Nutrients
therefore:
Food = Nutrients + Shit
therefore:
Food contains shit.
Is there a flaw in this logical proof? I sent an email to my friend Dicky Dawkins, who knows about these things, and he assured me that he wasn’t a shit-eater. Apparently, the excrement one expunges from the bowels acquires its shitty characteristics from the bacteria in the gut and other chemical processes. Making poo-poo is a mysterious and complex biological process, no less wondrous than the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly. Remember to feel awed the next time you have a dump.
Not all shit is the same, of course. In general, the most foul-smelling, disgusting excrement is produced by carnivorous creatures. I remember opening the door of a portable lavatory back in my circus days:
“Pooh!” I exclaimed. “Has one of the big cats been doing its business in here?”
“Sorry, GB, it was me,” said one of the female acrobats, blushing furiously. “I had steak for dinner last night.”
“Little girl make big stink!” I replied with an avuncular grin.
This incident taught me that the poo-poo of a pretty girl can be as vile and offensive as anything a hyena can produce. If you don’t want to make a stink in the bathroom, the only solution is to adopt the diet of a gorilla. Our dung is not much worse than Fresh Umbrian Clay with a hint of guacamole. But you’ll have to give up meat; there are no shortcuts in life.
Labels: Art, Poo-poo, technology, turds
Monday, November 16, 2009
Art imitates porn
A correspondent draws my attention to a 10-minute film showing a pair of students copulating in Newcastle. Frankly, I would rather watch baboons do it. Only humans are vain enough to believe their sexual antics are visually appealing. I can assure you that no wild gorillas have ever asked for royalties after being filmed having it off in the jungle. That’s because people who enjoy watching such things are boobies, and extorting cash from boobies would be undignified.
My only interest in the film would be to discover whether the couple did it with their socks on, which is allegedly common practice in Newcastle. I wouldn’t blame them to be honest. The town is swept with chill winds from the North Sea, which infiltrate every nook and penetrate every cranny. I wouldn’t want to be distracted by cold feet when making jiggy-pokey in such an environment. Not that I would ever go there, of course. The place has very little vegetation and is populated with unnaturally nocturnal humans. It’s bad enough having your sleep disturbed by parrots.
Now the maker of the film is a 23-year-old student called Joseph Steele, who imagines himself to be an artist. A friend of the co-stars, he obtained their consent by promising to show the work in a trendy gallery. Hence, the discerning audience would engage with its profound social message rather than hooting with glee or playing with their private parts.
“It is absolutely art because I put it there and said it was,” declared the Jean-Luc Godard of Tyneside.
I suppose that settles it then. He claims that everyone who saw the film found it “erotic and inspirational”, but impartial observers report seeing a lot of shocked faces. These art-loving types are very easily shocked if you ask me. Anyone who is perturbed by the sight of human sexual activity needs to get out more, by which I mean out to Africa. When you’ve seen a raging bull elephant in musth, its swollen todger writhing like a snake, there’s not much that humans could do to startle you.
Perhaps I’ll commission Master Steele to direct a film that my females have been nagging me to produce, called Tarzan Was Our Toy-Boy. The script has already been written and it’s very avant-garde, with overlapping dialogue and naturalistic grunts and groans. The hairy ladies have already cast themselves as the declaimers of the title, but we’re still looking for the right Tarzan. Initially, I thought one of the whey-faced dandies in Beverly Hills 90210 would be ideal for the part, but they’re probably too old for it now. Whoever lands the role, we expect to produce a work of high feminist art which is a contender for the Palm d’Orifice at Cannes.
I shouldn’t leave you with the impression that we gorillas only make art in the hope of winning critical acclaim, or selling it for piles of dosh, like Damien “Daffy” Hirst. “Art for art’s sake” is our motto. Appreciate our creations with spontaneous delight rather than appraising them with the cold eye of the collector. Tomorrow, I’m going to rustle up some natural dyes and do some body art on a woman at the safari guesthouse who’s been longing to enjoy my brushwork. The one good thing about bare human skin is that it makes an excellent canvas.
Labels: Art, Newcastle, sex with socks on, todger
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Art lesson
Miss Scarlet-Blue, the pouting sex-kitten of South London, has sent me some pictures to look at. Not indecent photographs of herself, I should hasten to add. She knows better than to distract a gorilla with fatuous images of that kind. No, the pictures she has forwarded are works of art – created, she assures me, by the great masters of history. It’s part of her high-minded mission to share the finer aspects of human culture with her hairy cousins. I shall reciprocate, in due course, by showing her a few things we gorillas are good at.
Apes are no strangers to the creative use of textures and dyes. Gibbons were doing remarkable things with elephant dung long before your ancestors were daubing the walls of their caves. Had I been a prehistoric cave-dweller, I would have left the walls alone and painted a picture of a hideous monster above the entrance to scare off predators. Art must have a practical side when survival hangs in the balance. Only a species obsessed with impressing visitors would spend so much time on interior decoration. If I want to dazzle my dinner companions, I scratch my face with my toes. Try it yourself before jeering.
I‘m not sure what to think about Miss Scarlet’s exhibits. We gorillas appreciate art in a holistic way, where the personality of the creator is as important as the work. It seems to me that a lot of human maestros had major character flaws: Da Vinci was a know-it-all; Michelangelo was a drama queen; Picasso was a devious weirdo. The ones we esteem most highly are painters like Titian and Reubens – honorary gorillas who preferred their females to have a bit of meat on them.
Strangest of all, to be sure, are the contemporary practitioners who imagine that pickling a dead creature in formaldehyde is a form of artistic expression. Damien Hirst is a name Miss Scarlet has mentioned on a number of occasions, although not necessarily with approval. This piqued my curiosity and inspired me to do a little research. What caught my eye was not the artefacts he has created but a photograph of the man himself. I immediately recognised him as an apprentice clown who had spent a summer with the circus I was in. He went by the name of ‘Daffy Sucks’ and obviously wasn’t cut out for clowning; but he did paint landscapes which he showed to anyone who was interested. I commented on his collection once:
“Master Sucks,” I said, “the market for pretty pictures is saturated. The kind of work you are doing is found on greeting cards which sell for the price of a condom. Consider your fellow humans who pay thousands to go on safari. Do you suppose they part with their cash to see beautiful sunsets and flowers blooming after the first rains? Not on your nelly! What they crave is the sight of lions gorging on dismembered carcasses, their faces reddened with blood, and entrails scattered across the savanna. Treat art collectors like the crowd in a Roman amphitheatre – the more you shock them with offal and gore, the more they will pay for your creations.”
My well-intentioned advice prompted him to walk off in a sulk, and I didn’t expect another viewing. How surprised I was when a few days later he asked me to inspect a new painting. This one depicted a hedgehog. Two halves of a hedgehog, to be precise, for the animal had been bisected with a machete, leaving its internal organs clearly visible. Inside its stomach were the partly-digested head of a mouse, an earthworm and a pickled onion (or something resembling it). Having just eaten breakfast, I felt the bile rising in my throat.
“A overpowering piece of work!” I spluttered. “If you’ll excuse me I have some business to attend to in my trailer.”
He left the circus a short while later and has never looked back. How I wish I’d made an offer for that painting! I believe he called it The Physical Impossibility of Appreciating the True Value of a Hedgehog Autopsy in the Mind of Someone Living.
Labels: Art, Damien Hirst, elephant dung, Safari
