I think this kind of reaction is exactly what the Chapmans are trying, simultaneously, to evoke and disdain. They play a double game, presenting brutal acts and challenging the audience to accept or reject the total nihilism implicit in the acts themselves, and their representation of them.

Imagine the Chapmans saying 'This means nothing. And until you accept that it means nothing, this kind of thing will keep happening. Because violence, as long as it inspires emotion in us, will lead to more violence. Your capacity to be moved by violence in art is directly linked to your capacity to commit violent acts. Your ability to construct noble, humanist meanings out of the completely superficial, flat and nul fact of death on a big scale is, itself, the problem.'

This is undoubtedly true. Look at the current death happening in Iraq in the name of noble, humanist values -- democracy, humanity, peace. Strip those 'humanist' values away and you just have the honest, idoitic fact 'We are killing them. For no particularly good reason'. The 'banality of evil'.

I think the proximity of our violent side to our noble side -- the secret link between superego and id -- is something every tabloid editor knows. Put the gory details of the rape in your paper, while condeming the act roundly. It's what Anthony Burgess meant when he showed Alex, in 'A Clockwork Orange', losing his capacity to enjoy Beethoven at the same time as his capacity to enjoy ultraviolence.

To break out of this vicious circle -- violence leads to 'humanist' condemnation, which in turn leads to 'just wars' and more violence -- we must reach a state where, instead of emotion and catharsis, violence simply leaves us indifferent and cold. If violence is meaningless, it should be shown as boring, banal, as completely flat and superficial as an Andy Warhol car crash painting.

I think in this sense, the Chapmans are trying to say about violence what I remember trying to say in arguments on ilxOr about race (for instance, Dan Perry's 'Are you racist?' thread): that we will only be free from racism when race becomes a non-signifying difference. And that as long as people have strong reactions to the topic, it can never be this.

So the Chapmans are trying, for progressive but not humanist reasons, to 'desensitise' us to violence. In order to defeat death, we must learn to be dead to death, rather than alive to it.

There's a whole other thing going on too, which is a questioning and mockery of the art world. For instance, it's fascinating that Norman Rosenthal built his Apocalypse show around 'Hell'. Is he (a jew) complicit, or is he buying the 'humanist' argument about 'Hell' being a condemnation of the holocaust? Are the Chapmans laughing at him, or are he and the Chapmans laughing at the thousands of people who saw 'Apocalypse', or are we all equally horrified / enthralled, or what? And the fact that we don't quite know the answer to this is one of the things that makes 'Hell' important art.

momus on the chapman brothers