Alexander (Sasha) Kargaltsev Response To Dasha Zhukova - Black and White chairs

Black and white chairs

Alexander (Sasha) Kargaltsev Response To Dasha Zhukova

Excellent response by queer Russian artist Alexander Kargaltsev to this image showing Dasha Zhukova sitting on a black woman chair, from Out There magazine. I love this because it not only joins into the discussion around the original chair, it points out that many prefer their submissives to be female, especially non-white, and their active people to be white, usually male – and get offended when the roles, genders and indeed sexual orientation is reversed.

Interestingly the maker of the original chair who riffed/ripped off Allen Jones, is Bjarne Melgaard. He’s an enfant terrible of the art world and someone who Brian Sewell described as “bad Basquiat. It’s unoriginal, the perfect example of postmodernism.” so he must be doing something right. Whether it’s wise to be pictured sitting on one of his chairs, well…in one sense this is a bit of a storm in a liberal teacup, in another as Alexander points out with this image, and the rather odd response on HuffPo Facebook comments, these issues are still a problem – to many this ‘isn’t art’ because of what it shows. Methinks the racists protest too much.

Then again maybe they’re just uncultured oafs. There’s an art meme going around Facebook and someone posted Manet’s ‘Dejeuner sur L’Herbe’ which one commenter described as ‘indecent’ and ‘isn’t even a good painting’. So you completely missed the point (indecent, yes. It’s suppose to be, that was the power and intention and why along with Olympia it was revolutionary, and the paintings ‘shortcomings’ were all intentional, or signs of the time – it wasn’t possible to paint a nude woman in situ for instance) and one of the most important paintings of modern times is shit? Okaaaay. I think the majority of the free-thinking world disagrees, at least within the art world…

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