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   Richard Stallman (rms@mastodon.xyz)'s status on Thursday, 14-Sep-2023 20:58:14 JST Richard Stallman

   [01/03] Is painting slogans on a wall, that are meant to criticize China's repression, "art"? https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/aug/30/the-london-art-student-whose-chinese-political-slogan-mural-caused-a-storm

   Is painting the regime's own statement, aiming for people to recognize their ironic contradiction with its actions, an effective mode of criticism?

   In my view, the answers are "no" and "it's chancy".

   I am all for condemning China's repressive dictatorship, as a political act; but in order to qualify as art it needs to present its meaning in a subtle, unobvious way. That's...

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     Richard Stallman (rms@mastodon.xyz)'s status on Thursday, 14-Sep-2023 20:58:18 JST Richard Stallman

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     [02/XX] ...the part that could be art. However, merely intending a text as irony fails to do that. It doesn't present the meaning in a subtle way, because the subtlety is not in the work itself; rather, the artist hopes that it will come up in the viewer's minds only.

     As for the effectiveness, it seems that many of the public did not notice the irony and mistook the quotation from the regime for support — and they responded by painting over it with non-ironic condemnation of the regime...

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     Richard Stallman (rms@mastodon.xyz)'s status on Thursday, 14-Sep-2023 20:58:41 JST Richard Stallman

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     [03/03] ...thinking that the artist disagreed with them.

     You could say that the condemnation manifested itself by ricochet. Maybe that is a kind of success. Maybe.

     It seems to me that this art student's heart was in the right place politically, but his artwork calls for an F as art.