134 Obscenity for moralists, then, is not the same as obscenity for artists and all those who thrive on art and culture. I ask De Bruyckere what obscenity in art is for her, what she finds so unworthy of respect as to be obscene. «Obscenity is a fluid concept, so is tolerance. We should question what defines them. It’s clear that what we perceive as obscene changes throughout time. The extent of disturbance it causes seems deeply connected also with the medium that conveys these so-called obscenities. When we look closely at the Last Judgement by Hieronymus Bosch, the level of disturbing sexual content and brutality is wild, but people still bring their children to see it without blinking. On the other hand, a movie like Pasolini's Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, already controversial in its time, would simply be inconceivable in the current climate. Cinema magnifies these sensitivities – and I don’t deny that the content of that movie is brutal to an extent that it becomes close to unbearable, but seeing it was essential and liberating for me, as an artist and as a person. In my own practice I have encountered moments when I have found myself questioning these boundaries. When I installed Aletheia, I felt the need to bring a bold and strong image. It was a moment in time where extremism and racism proliferated, where I felt compassion and solidarity had withered away, when I saw many resemblances to the restlessness of the late 1930s that preceded the real obscenities of the Holocaust, where, in addition, this defamation of civilisation was being questioned and denied by people with too much political power. To me, that is the real obscenity». I totally agree. The real obscenity is the lack of respect for life. And I totally agree: I think of Article 21 of our Constitution, lately as never before under attack – printed publications, shows and all other manifestations contrary to decency are banned – to reflect on the shifting boundaries of the concept of freedom itself. Freedom of expression above all, given the havoc that those same politicians with symptoms of omnipotence delirium are making in Italy of the public service. Decency as a synonym for respect, it sounds so old fashioned; yet, in its name and like so many furious Torquemadas, we have been able to proscribe immense artists, from Pasolini to Genet, from Schiele to Caravaggio: guilty, the latter, of a pilgrim’s feet dirt in the presence of the Virgin Mary, guiltily forgetting that God was made Man. Censorship, and its ultra-toxic drift in cancel culture – precisely defined by Nick Cave as «Mercy’s antithesis, the unhappiest religion of the world» – is the mortiferous practice of the abuse of respect. In his recent essay The just statues (transl., 2024), Tomaso Montanari reflects on the fact that, given the renewal of values, it is right that material memories such as statues no longer representing shareable values should be at the centre of a conflict, but it would be a tragic mistake to erase them, proposing instead their resemantisation in situ.
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