I need some help here, Hatpeople. Something has bubbled up in my line of vision this morning that has seriously harshed my Stanford mellow.
I mean, here I am bound by the almost indescribable beauty of the natural world and basking in my pantheist’s paradise. And then this horror show, packaged and marketed in the name of art, nogal, crawls in to contaminate my karma.
Brace all of your your sensibilities, my Hatties, and get a load of this…
A nice young woman sitting on a very nice horse in a nice bit of South African countryside... with, er, what the hell is that?!
That, dear and undoubtedly devastated readers, is a buck. A South African buck. A blesbok if I’m not an ignoramus. Dead. Brown bread. Killed. Murdered. Shot. By that there sweetie-pie girly on that thar hoss. Nice, hey? Nice picture, hey? Yes. It’s called art.
And so artistic is deemed this sweet little snap that it has earned a bloke called David Chancellor top spot in the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize. Go on, click on that last link and check out what the once highly esteemed British Journal of Photography has to say about Chancellor’s winning picture. And then, if you feel strong enough, scroll down a bit and have a butchers at what won second prize.
Tasty, hey? I mean, tasteful, hey? Yes, some oke’s wife spreading her pins for an upskirt shot. That’s art, Hatpeople. Art. Not porn. Not at all. And I’ll tell you why. Because that there pussypic, which I won’t publish on this blog, was snapped not by some dodgy character called Elmer P. Gobspittle with a Burt Reynolds ‘tache and a massive gold medallion nestling in the old chest-jersey, but by An Artist.
Someone who has minced around the art world long enough, clinking glasses with the people who nod their approval of certain artworld mincers, and ingratiated himself into their artworld good books. And will willingly produce the schlock horror allegedly de rigeur to draw attention to their absurd art prize competitions. I blame that arty-farty toerag Damien Hirst for starting this.
So, what else do the two top entries in the precious Taylor Wessing competition tell us? That it’s absolutely whizzo to photograph murderous Alabama teenagers and assorted other plonkers on wildlife massacres in Third World countries, especially if you have a posh name like Chancellor, and it’s divine, darling, to show the world your wife’s vagina as long as it’s not on www.mymissuseshairyguava.com.
But, hey, perhaps I’ve lost the plot and I am the total doos in all of this?
I’ve given you three blogposts already today and I’m knackered. But I’d like to leave you with this thought to take to bed with you…
“The bontebocks, above all appeared in flocks of two thousand at least. I am persuaded that this day, buffaloes, antelopes of all kinds, zebras and ostriches, I had before my eyes at one time more than four or five thousand animals.” – Le Vaillant, the Overberg (1796)
I live in the Overberg. Two hundred and fourteen years later, where and how far do I go to witness such a thing?
And, in 214 years’ time, what real chance do the future inhabitants of Africa, never mind the Overberg, have of seeing just one of these, alive and running free in the wild?
* So I Google “bontebok photo” to bring you a pic… and I find this…
A dead bontebok. Shot. By a hunter. American. Very pleased with his work.
Ain’t that pretty? This photograph was first published on a South Dakota taxidermy website. With this caption…
“Bontebok was the easiest shot of the whole Safari. After a unsuccessful stalk and sitting in an open field, the Bontebok along with another herd bull came walking out of a draw right towards me. At 40 yards they stopped and I harvested the largest of the two. SCI Gold and Rowland Ward by 1 1/2 inches. Overall 43 0/8.”
“Harvested”? Harvested! What is that? Hunterspeak for “killed”. Can’t hunters say “killed”? Or “murdered”?
I feel very tired. And very angry. I’m going to bed. Here’s the website of that – how do the Americans say? – douchebag who kills Africa’s wildlife… American hunter/douchebag\’s website.
It’s near-weekend time, dear Hatpeople, and I wanted, as your “SA-positive” blogger, to send you cruising into weekend mode with a song in your heart and a smile on your dial.
So I apologise in advance for my feeling the need to have a rant at a very English upper-middle class plonker. A well-known restaurant reviewer who has long been insufferable for his unrestrained pretentiousness but who has now topped that with a single act of such intolerable stupidity that he has had even his fiercest critics choking on their gin and tonics.
To set the most horrible of scenes, here are two photographs…
A homo sapien
A baboon (with baby)
Now you would be forgiven for believing that the sentient being in the first photograph might be appear to be more evolved than the sentient being in the second. For starters, he’s wearing clothes and spectacles and has exercised a humanoid option to be clean-shaven.
The baboon, on the other hand, is still walking on four legs, has stuck with the head-to-toe furry look and carries her child on her back instead of in a babyseat in the back of a Volvo.
