I may not know much about art but this makes me glad I don't! From the San Francisco Chronicle:
Damien Hirst, one of Britain's most celebrated artists, told the BBC last month that the Sept. 11 attacks were "visually stunning" artworks and that the perpetrators "need congratulating." He's sorry for that now."You've got to hand it to them on some level," he originally said of the murderers, "because they've achieved something which nobody would have thought possible."
This from a guy who's chief claim to fame is slicing up animals and putting them on display.
Next we hear from Gail Haffern of New Zealand:
Meanwhile, as Hirst was slapping al Qaeda on its collective back, a New Zealand artist named Gail Haffern was telling the Auckland art press that the destruction of the World Trade Center while filled with people was "wonderful .. . because it was a new idea."
Haffern's only notable achievement is that she holds New Zealand's first- ever doctorate in fine arts. "Being an artist," she says of her reaction to the attacks, "I thought what if this had been a performance piece and Osama bin Laden had declared himself an artist, how would the world have seen it then?" Her answer is a sculptural installation involving representations of the trade towers, surrounded by blocks featuring such "wordplay" as "Pentagone. "
I can't wait to see what she does with the Bali bombing....
Finally we hear from Karlheinz Stockhausen, noted composer:
Stockhausen was speaking to journalists in Hamburg, Germany, a few days after the attacks, and called the destruction "the greatest work of art ever." Stockhausen immediately asked the interviewers not to report what he had said.
That characters can bring about in one act what we in music cannot dream of, that people practice madly for 10 years, completely fanatically, for a concert and then die. That is the greatest work of art for the whole cosmos."