World in the art mirror: a hint of Vonnegut and Chapman bros. to comment the growing euroscepticism
Jake and Dinos Chapman, The sum of all evil, 2012/2013, detail.
The vote in Europe has sadly confirmed the opinion about Europeans that the old newspaper editor claims in Kurt Vonnegut’s Bluebeard (1987). When advising the New York based cartoons drawer Rabo Karabekian who wants to move to Europe to become a real artist, the journalist tells him what still today seems to be a big truth.
If the cities are still standing when you get to Europe,” he said, “and you sit in a cafe for hours, sipping coffee or wine or beer, and discussing painting and music and literature, just remember that the Europeans around you, who you think are so much more civilized than Americans, are looking forward to just one thing: the time when it will become legal to kill each other and knock everything down again.
September 22, 2014
