January 22, 2004
Snow White Meets the Ambassador
By now you've probably heard the story of Zvi Mazel, the Israeli ambassador to Sweden, who took exception to a display at an art exhibit in Stockholm that he felt glorified the murder of innocent Israelis. The display was a pool of water, dyed blood red, floating a small boat called the "Snow White", which in place of a sail sported a photograph of Islamic Jihad member Hanadi Jaradat, who blew herself up in Haifa on October 4, killing 21 innocent civilians in the explosion.
Mazel was recorded on a security video walking around the display, unplugging two of the three spotlights lighting the exhibit, and throwing one of the spotlights into the pool, before he was escorted from the area. He was quoted at the scene as telling onlookers that Ms. Jaradat “murdered 21 of my brothers and sisters.” The video can be seen here. (On the Windows Broadband version, the video of Mazel is at the 11:10 mark of the 15 minute video).
Condemnation of this "outburst" came from Dror Feiler, the Israeli-born artist, now living in Sweden, who is a longtime critic of Israel. (Really?) According to the Globe story, "he claimed that Mazel misunderstood his work. He said the piece was supposed to call attention to how weak, lonely people can be capable of horrible things."
Amid calls for disciplinary action against Mazel, or his resignation, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon stands by his ambassador.
One can't condone the vandalizing of an art exhibit, no matter how repugnant it is. But it's also hard for me not to feel some solidarity with Mazel, who said that he had to do something:
“This exhibit was the culmination of dozens of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish events in Sweden.....When you don't protest, it gets worse and worse. It had to be stopped somehow, even by deviating from the behaviour of the buttoned-down diplomat.”
Now two of my favorite writers have weighed in on the Mazel action. Here's an excerpt fromJames Lileks' column :
Everyone talks about insufferably pretentious art, but no one does anything about it. Until now.......It's pretentious nonsense from a culture that's played out and lost, a culture that treats unhinged killers as tragic heroines.
Feiler says he was struck by the paleness of Hanadi's face, and how it contrasted with the color of blood. Red contrasts with white? Who knew? What clever artists we have these days. Perhaps next time Feiler can contrast, say, evil and innocence, and tell us where he stands on the matter."
And Roger Kimball says Mazel should have demonstrated his felings in some other way:
"His outrage at "Snow White" was understandable, even exemplary, but he should not have destroyed or defaced the exhibition. There were many steps open to him short of violence. To vandalize an art work--even a bad art work, even a morally reprehensible art work--is to adopt the tactics of the enemies of culture."
And while he is critical of Mazel's actions, Kimball, an art critic of no small measure himself, makes sure we know what he thinks of "Snow White and the Madness of Truth" :
an off-the-rack piece of installation art, as predictably repellent as it is unfailingly banal.......In the normal course of things, you would never have heard of "Snow White." It's just another bit of dreary left-wing "statement art": morally rebarbative, aesthetically nugatory, interesting only as a symptom of cultural decay.
Don't sugarcoat it, Roger.
UPDATE 1/25: At the Armavirumque blog, Roger Kimball posts some of the reader responses to his opinionjournal.com op-ed linked above.
Posted by dan at January 22, 2004 04:43 PM