When Victims Rule (pdf)

MODERN ART
insisted that critics of the painting were being culturally intolerant, that the animal
feces that decorated it was really a fertility symbol.)
The Saatchi show was formulated and first exhibited at the Royal Academy
in London; that venue is also headed by a Jew: Norman Rosenthal. For another
Rosenthal exhibition, after Sensation, the Times of London noted that the
“curators of the Royal Academy insisted yesterday that hardcore porn
and images of mutilation by contemporary artists were comparable to
the Old Masters. They likened a sado-masochistic video to Michelangelo
and Renaissance drawings, a pile of rubbish to the 16th-century
painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo, and an assemblage of mutilated toy soldiers
to another 16th-century master, Pieter Breughel the Elder. Norman
Rosenthal, exhibitions secretary of the 237-year-old institution,
and his colleague, Max Wigram, defended the latest objects to fill Burlington
House - a sequel to the 1997 Sensation show - against suggestions
that they could not be described as art. Walking round the Apocalypse
exhibition yesterday before it opens to the public on Saturday, they repeatedly
drew comparisons with the Old Masters … Mr Rosenthal was
unable fully to explain how it differed from pornography screened in
any Soho sex shop: ‘I don’t see porn videos in Soho. This is about men
and women. It is a very Existentialist work of art, like a very beautiful
drawing.’” [ALBERGE, D., 9-20-00]
London’s Daily Telegraph complained that at this same Royal Academy
show, Apocalypse, “its organizer Norman Rosenthal … basks amidst a freak
show almost wholly devoid of authentic art.” [JOHNSON, D., 9-20-00] Or, as
London’s Guardian noted:
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“The Royal Academy is a perverse British institution, and Norman
Rosenthal is a perverse institutional figure. You can’t imagine him anywhere
else. The [London art gallery] Tate would never have put on Sensation!,
the exhibition of Charles Saatchi’s collection the Academy
mounted in 1997: how could the Tate have allowed Saatchi to stamp
himself on history in that way? But Rosenthal had no qualms about importing
all this stuff into the sacred halls of Burlington House, and for
many Sensation! is the defining exhibition of young British art, not only
here but in America. In his office is a framed front page of the New York
Post leading with mayor Giuliani’s attempt to ban the show last year. ‘I
was at the opening (at the Brooklyn Museum). All the glamorous people
were there. But, he says, no protesters at all. ‘I was almost disappointed.
The whole thing took place not in real people’s experience but in the cliches
of politicians and journalists. That’s so boring. Art is beyond that.’
This denial of a desire to create a stir is frankly unbelievable. Rosenthal
is the epitome of the art curator as showman … Rosenthal’s shows have
helped to define British culture now, making the exhibition a phenomenon,
a public ritual … Since he became exhibitions secretary more than
20 years ago, Rosenthal has turned the Royal Academy into a venue for