"The ideas of heroism, duty and service to others have given way to those of narcissism, self-pity and self-obsession," writes Theodore Dalrymple in an Opinion Journal critique of the latest "triumph" in the ongoing in-your-face art wars:
There has long been an empty plinth in Trafalgar Square, London's grand public space, in the center of which stands Nelson's column, the country's tribute to its great naval hero. The city council recently announced a competition among sculptors to top the empty plinth with a statue. The competition resulted, as you would have expected, in a festival of politically correct nihilism: cruise missiles vied with a wrecked red car covered in bird droppings on a gigantic scale. The winner, however, was a 15-foot-tall nude statue of Alison Lapper, an artist born without arms and with abnormally short legs.
With admirable courage, Ms. Lapper has overcome her disability to become an artist with, alas, all the tedious conformism of her professional tribe: It goes almost without saying that she is a single mother sporting ironmongery in her nose. Her own art, according to a eulogistic Web site, "questions notions of physical normality in a society that considers her deformed because she was born without arms." The eulogizer, however, does not spot the irony here -- that Lapper has shrewdly (and, in the circumstances, understandably) commodified her armlessness, turning it to an advantage. If people truly considered her condition either normal or beautiful, it would be disastrous for her career . . .
We're reminded of Mark Steyn's critique of a new London "satire" of the war on terror that features GW and Tony Blair singing "We’re Sending You A Cluster Bomb From Jesus," blogged here the other day:
I forget what more there had to be. But, even so, "We're Sending You A Cluster Bomb From Jesus" sounds awfully like the war on terror's answer to "Fergie. God, what a fat cow". Indeed, the show's big sing-along Fergie-ises an entire nation: "Let's all be anti-American."
Artist Alison Lapper, whose sculptural likeness will be mounted atop Nelson's column in Trafalgar Square
Drawn irresistibly to slow down and crane our neck to get a glimpse of the accident scene, we Googled some images of artist Lapper and found ourselves unexpectedly moved by the images themselves while repelled by the phony, self-congratulatory pc drivel that swarms like flies around them:
Alison Lapper's photography and painting . . . constantly challenges the viewer to see the beauty and complexity of the human body whatever shape or form this may take.
Her latest series of photographic work confronts our preconceptions about disability and motherhood.
"Challenging, insightful and beautiful, her work is controversial in a world that sees the disabled female body as anything but beautiful."
-- DAIL magazine
That "world that sees the disabled female body as anything but beautiful" is the real world, sir, the one whose driving imperative is survival of the fittest.
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