:: Left : Victoria is not amused ::
Azlan McLennan‘s latest work has received an extremely savage review from the notoriously fickle Footscray police. As reported by ABC Online, The Age, Melbourne Indymedia and news.com.au, his latest artistic assault on nationalist ideology has been [censored]. In essence, the critics out West have delivered an aesthetic ultimatum: this season, burning flags is out; waving flags is in. (Although some trouble-makers appear to disagree.)
As expected, police have made their usual (dis)claim(er): they were acting after having received ‘complaints’ from ‘the public’ (according to news.com.au, lodged on the 20th of January) regarding McLennan’s work. Bizarrely, the person (or persons) from Footscray police responsible for the theft of the work from outside Footscray’s Trocadero gallery was (or were) only able to gain access to the work by entering the gallery from an adjoining business: ‘Gallery executive Michael Brennan said no one had been at the gallery when police removed the flag. “On Friday … Footscray police officers gained access to the space through a neighbouring business and removed the flag, leaving behind a business card with the neighbouring business,” Mr Brennan said. “(The card) was then passed on to an artist who shares a studio at Trocadero Artspace, who consequently called us to tell us this work had been removed by the police.”‘
Further, according to a police spokesperson: “Police would not have been able to remove the burnt flag if it had been displayed inside the gallery… If it was inside the gallery they wouldn’t have the authority to do anything with it. But once it’s out in public view it could be treated as an incident of offensive behaviour or offensive language.”
Logically, this implies that the work in question is regarded both by (an) anonymous member(s) of the public and the critics at Footscray police station as offensive; police claim that “[a]n investigation had been launched to establish whether an offence had been committed”. In other words, no charges have been laid, and no ‘crime’ committed, other than one against certain, limited notions of what exactly constitutes ‘good taste’; notions derived from anonymous members of the public and… Footscray police.
Now, far be it for me to question the police’s recent foray into cultural criticism, but surely they — like other unhappy visitors to the Proudly UnAustralian exhibition — could content themselves with an unkind entry in the Trocadero’s guestbook? More importantly, will I ever get to view McLennan’s work? Rather sadly, it appears that the answer to both questions is ‘no’…
And now, a word from their sponsor:
On February 27th 1933… While the defeated Centre Party and the Marxists were being driven from their final entrenchments, the trade unions abolished, and while National Socialist thought and ideas were being brought from the world of dream and vision into the world of fact, and our plans were being put into effect one after the other — in the midst of all this we found time to lay the foundations of a new Temple of Art. And so it was that the same revolution that had swept over the State prepared the soil for the growth of a new culture.[…]
Art is not one of those human activities that may be laid aside to order and resumed to order. Nor can it be retired to pension, as it were. For either a people is endowed with cultural gifts that are inherent in its very nature or it is not so endowed at all. Therefore such gifts are part of the general racial qualities of a people. But the creative function through which these spiritual gifts or faculties are expressed follows the same law of development and decay that governs all human activity.[…]
But we are convinced that in the political sphere we have discovered a fitting mode of expression for the nature and will of our people. Therefore we feel that we are capable also of recognising and discovering in the cultural sphere the complementary expression which will be adequate to that nature and that will. We shall discover and encourage artists who will imprint on the new German State the cultural stamp of the German race, which will be valid for all time.
— Adolf Hitler, ‘Art and Politics’, in Liberty. Art. Nationhood (M. Mueller & Son: Berlin, 1935)
Long live Entartete Kunst!
