In “Alice in Wonderland,” Alice meets the Queen of Hearts, who is having all the white roses painted red. In the Disney film of that story, playing cards sing the song, “We’re painting the roses red!” We’re reminded of this scene because Danish artist Marco Evaristti is painting an iceberg off the coast of Greenland red. He says, “We all have a need to decorate Mother Nature because it belongs to us.”
We recently wrote about artists who are making monsters by manipulating genes in bizarre ways that seem to have no practical use, such as growing human hair on a cactus or attaching wings to pigs. Perhaps they are reacting to the devastating effects that human beings are having on the Earth with regard to climate and the extinction of species, by tinkering with nature in a more direct way.
Evaristti is used to controversy. In 2000, in an art show at a Danish gallery, he invited the public to put live goldfish through food blenders by pressing the “on” button. At least one visitor did it, killing two goldfish. The gallery director was fined for cruelty to animals, but a Danish court ruled that the fish had not been treated cruelly, because they died instantly.
Whitley had an anguished reaction to the recent revelations of child abuse in the Catholic Church. What did he do??He wrote a dynamic short story about it?and it’s now on sale.
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