Hundreds of artists condemn the Royal Academy of Arts’ anti-Palestinian censorship
JVL Introduction
We reported in Censoring anti-Zionist art isn’t free speech on the decision of the Royal Academy to withdraw two painting from its Young Artists Summer Show.
Artists for Palestine UK has now issued a powerful statement denouncing this act of censorship, signed by over seven hundred practicing artists.
It includes this paragraph:
“Many of us have joined the Jewish Bloc at marches in London that have called for a ceasefire in Gaza. By censoring a photograph of a protestor with a placard reading, “Jews Say Stop Genocide on Palestinians. Not In Our Name”, the Royal Academy has colluded with the erasure of Jewish contribution to solidarity with Palestinians.”
RK
This article was originally published by Artists for Palestine UK on Mon 29 Jul 2024. Read the original here.
Hundreds of artists condemn the Royal Academy of Arts’ anti-Palestinian censorship
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I went to the RA Summer Exhibition and the Young Artists Exhibition, taking with me the tabard I made to wear on the marches, with the intention of putting it on in the room which still contains one of the works the BOD objected to, The Mass Slaughter of Defenceless Women & Children is not how you Deradicalise Gaza, by Michael Sandle RA. (Near it is another superb work, The Destruction of Jericho). I put on the tabard in due course. On the front is fabric printed with tanks, with my badge Jew against Genocide pinned on, the back I have embroidered with the story of the IDF admission in February that it opened fire on Palestinians approaching a food truck, but with the excuse that most of the dead were trampled or run over by the trucks. Of course it ends with ‘The IDF are investigating … Unlike when I’m marching, no one paid any attention, till one woman approached and asked where I got my information, that it wasn’t true etc.
In the Young Artists room there were no spaces to show where the two pieces had been removed. However, there was one powerful painting which referred to Gaza, no 281 by Natania, age 17, called Crumbling Childhoods, which depicts a girl standing amongst rubble, including Lego bricks. Discreetly, on the bottom right of the frame, she has painted a Palestinian flag. The BOD seems to have missed that one, and in the adult exhibition, the framed representation of the Palestinian flag made simply of cut, still grooved plasticine (No 282 entitled Plasticine Flag by John Smith).
Yet again, we have the Board of Deputies weighing in with intimidatory intentions to silence and suppress any expression or exposure of Israel’s blatant crimes against humanity, especially including Jewish anger at its relentless genocide against the Palestinians over the last 9 months.
Instead of supporting those dissenting Jews who protest, it seeks to squash such expression at a time when Israel is shamelessly acting out its extreme fantasy of elimination of the Palestinians.
Artists have historically portrayed the horrors of war and the desire for freedom in the most graphic ways. Goya and Picasso (Guernica) spring to mind, as do the parallels with the Nazis, and people have the right to express them in their art. The whole world can see what a deranged entity the Zionist state has become.
The Board of Deputies should have been trying to see the truth of Israel’s horror instead of the absurd invoking of the IHRA definition, whose basis as a benchmark of anti-racism is now in tatters. In fact it proves that Israel’s legitimacy must be questioned and challenged. There are compelling grounds now for the ‘state’ to be dismantled and it’s membership rescinded rom the United Nations.
The RA should immediately re instate those works of art and an apology issued to those brave artists who were not afraid to express what many in the world feel about Israel now. Removing those works on the say so of the Board of Deputies would in fact increase antisemitic feelings tremendously.
P.S. Just to remind you that the Jewish Chronicle, July 16th, referred to the man in the aeroplane in Sandle’s drawing as a ‘murderous Jewish (sic) pilot’, not Israeli, and that the woman holding the placard in the photographic piece was ‘hiding’ behind it.