Sticking It To Goya, 2003
In 2003, Jake and Dinos Chapman montaged clown and other "funny" faces onto a set of etchings of Goya's The Disasters of War (which they had purchased), thereby intervening in the original work. Aside from complaints on the grounds of bad taste, this act was described by some as "defacement", although the set was a late 1930s printing. Ostensibly as a protest against this piece, Aaron Barschak (who later became famous for gate-crashing Prince William's 21st birthday party dressed as Osama bin Laden in a frock) threw a pot of red paint over Jake Chapman during a talk he was giving in May 2003.
The Chapmans then added monster heads to Goya's Los Caprichos etchings and exhibited them at the White Cube in 2005 under the title Like a dog returns to its vomit. Like other interventionists they asserted this was an improvement on the original: "You can't vandalise something by making it more expensive." However, Dinos pointed out one problem: "sometimes it is difficult to make the original Goya etchings any nastier; in one I found a witch sexually molesting a baby.".
Read more about this topic: Art Intervention, Illicit Confronts The Approved
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