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Iman Rappetti / Enews via AP
Two pictures show an unidentified man defacing a controversial portrait of South African President Jacob Zuma at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg, South Africa, on Tuesday.
Two men who vandalized a controversial painting of South African President Jacob Zuma with his genitals exposed were due to appear in court Wednesday.
Television footage Tuesday showed a white middle-aged man in a suit walking up to the portrait, called The Spear, at a Johannesburg gallery and painting a red cross on the president's face and private parts, Reuters reported. A younger black man then smeared black paint over the picture while the first man was being taken into custody by security guards.
"I'm doing this because the painting is disrespectful to President Zuma," one of the men told BBC News.
A BBC correspondent said he saw one of the vandals being head-butted as he was detained at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg.
The picture of Zuma is a facsimile of a famous poster of communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. In the red, black and yellow painting, the president is shown striking Lenin's heroic stance, but with his penis hanging out of his trousers.
Racist?
Zuma's African National Congress party had already launched a legal bid to try to force the gallery to remove the picture, which it described as crude and racist.
Minutes before the vandals attacked, ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe told Reuters people had a right to criticize the government, but there were limits.
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When you had an artist depicting the president's genitals, he added, "you are not raising a discussion, you are insulting people."
Jerome Delay / AP
Amid the controversy, supporters of South African President Jacob Zuma gather outside the South Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg on Tuesday.
The artist, Brett Murray, is well-known in South Africa for his work criticizing the white-minority apartheid government that ended in 1994.
The painting was taken down from display after the attack, prompting the Zimbabwe Mail newspaper to file a report headlined “Presidency penis goes into hiding.”
'Paucity of morals'
The Goodman Gallery said Murray’s exhibition, called Hail to the Thief II, “continues his acerbic attacks on abuses of power, corruption and political dumbness.”
“Murray’s bronzes, etchings, paintings and silk-screens form part of a vitriolic and succinct censure of bad governance and are his attempts to humorously expose the paucity of morals and greed within the ruling elite,” the gallery said on its website, which was still showing an unvandalized image of the painting.
Zuma has been married six times and fathered 21 children.
Anton Harber, chairman of South Africa's Freedom of Expression Institute last week called the ANC's criticism of the picture "silly" and defended artists' right to pose difficult, uncomfortable questions with their work.
Zuma sworn in as South Africa’s president
The arrested men, Barend la Grange, and Lowie Mabokela were due to appear in court Wednesday, The City Press newspaper reported, along with a third man arrested outside the gallery after allegedly spraying paint on a wall.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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Leave a Comment:
Maybe the painting should be titled 'letting it all hang out'!
Seriously, if this was a nude portrait, I could see the 'parts' showing, but a fully dressed man with his 'privates' hanging out of his pants? Sort of disgusting. More pornographic than art, I'd say!
Maybe the artist was referring to his rape charge in 2005.
I think the whole painting was ignorant.
I find it symbolic that both a white and a black man defaced this picture. I think they were trying to represent that every one has a problem with this picture(person,) not "just" whites or "just" blacks.
Vandalism. Accept as Art, Respect as Art.
what are we 10 years old? "Private parts" Come on. We're adults here. You can say penis and testicles. It won't send us running...
Okay well it won't send most of us running. Maybe the fundies.
Just imagine if that technique was used for a portrait of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, FDR, Kennedy, Reagan, or Obama. OUTRAGE!
Now if it had been Clinton...well still some outrage. (just kidding!)
Unless the President himself approved such a depiction, I don't think its appropriate to be displayed.
@charlie p just saying something is art does not make it art.
If I painted a picture of your mom blowing Django and just called it 'art' you would have no problem with it because called it 'art?'
While the president in this case is a 'tool,' the painting is a political expression not art.
2 deleted, one-line race-extrapolation from mary52, calling someone - Zuma? the black paint smearer? - a 'typical black man...so proud of his man/boyhood'. Not good for discussion.
You're suspended for a month for violating #5 of the Code of Honor all over recently.
I would say the "vandalism" was performance art. Wonderful, a white man in a suit opens his brief case and paints a red cross over the penis, a young black man follows him by smearing black paint across the entire artwork. The act is rife with symbolism. The artist should appreciate their performance. If he truly were an artist, rather than an egotist with a paintbrush, he certainly would have.
Tyler,
you are a tool and a depressor of expression.........You are big brother and a hypocrite for censuring people for their speech............. A big thumbs down to Tyler and all his censuring buddies...boooooooo.
The artist was trying to link Zuma's sexual escapades with his management of national affairs. That's for sure. I suppose that's a statement to be made but one that has to be made in a less obscene manner, nevertheless. Might this do the trick: an alternative painting depicting white and black South Africans, male and female, reaching for something in Zuma's pants? It will have several plausible interpretations, including the fact that the future of South Africa is hanging on Zuma's phallus!
I wonder if they had enough red paint to get it all?
they painted him a penis but im sure blacks there turn this into racist issue but in reality pepole who did this only do it out of stupidity not racism
paucity of manhood, nuff said. Semper Fi, I believe a word and way of life this man has obviously not heard of or lived. I do feel sorry for the 21 children. Suffer the children-Mommy where is Daddy??
Don't feel sorry for the wives or children; they are all provided for by the State - i.e. citizens taxes. In other words, the ordinary man in the street is paying for his licentious lifestyle and sexual predilections.
So, the ANC sees any criticism or mocking of 'their' President as racist. Gee, this seems very similar to how things work in the US, where blacks can say or do almost anything against another race/ethnic group and it is OK, but if the tables are reversed it becomes racist.
Sorry, but in reality the 'race card' can be dealt to any person acting from racist motives, not only non-blacks.
He was just covering up the herpes sore on his penis.
If these guys don't like what the artist is saying, they can protest, picket, or, better yet, create their own works of art to express their opinions. Damaging another person's work is wrong, period.
The clash of ideas is the sound of freedom.
I thought their "vandalism" was an expression, performance art if you will.
And this is news, WHY?
You read it, didn't you? WHY?
Vandalizing someone's artwork is wrong, but I think its equally wrong to depict someone in the nude without their permission, whether that's a photograph taken without their consent or a portrait painted that they did not sit for or authorize. The artist had every right to make a painting of the subject and make it look like those old posters, though. He just should have left out the genitals. That having been said, Zuma is a douche, and so are those who deface others' work because they find it offensive (see: the fig leaves subsequently added to multitudinous nude paintings and statuary a few hundred years ago).
Which of these ways to depict someone are OK, and which are wrong? Which should be legal, and which illegal?
1. Adding a moustache, snotty nose, and stitches.
2. Adding a word balloon reading, "I eat children!"
3. Adding high heeled women's shoes to a portrait of a man.
4. Adding large, round, buttocks.
5. Enlarging the nose on a portrait of a jew, drawing slit-lines over the eyes of an asian, enlarging the lips of a black.
6. Including a banner reading, "War Criminal."
7. Depicting Jesus as an eskimo.
8. Depicting a leader topless (man or woman).
Just curious.
Kitty, the problem is that the painting is not art. It is a political expression trying to point out the hypocrisy of the leader.
Calling it art does not make it art.
Yeah, because throughout history, art has never been used to make political statements. :deactivate sarcasm mode:
TIS
also TIA
This passes for news?
You read it, didn't you?
And we are surprised these people act this way?
This was never a racial issue - that was a machination of the ruling party to deflect attention away from the short comings of the leader of the ANC party and president of the country. Apart from having 5 wives, currently and 21 children, there are also children out of wedlock, a rape case, the infamous "shower comment" (Zuma's form of HIV/AIDS protection), which earned him the nickname of "Shower Head", implication in fraud and corruption surrounding the "so called" arms deal, poor judgement in having a "now convicted" fraudster as a financial adviser - the list goes on and on. Is this really the person a country needs as it's leader? That's what the controversy is REALLY about!
Is this the sort of leader that Nelson Mandela suffered for?
At least their president HAS genitals...
Only in Africa the leader's naked penis is a political statement. They should also give this dude a spear...
And we should care about this why?
Kind of like the time the Chicago aldercreatures stormed the Art Institute and took down the painting of the late Mayor Harold Washington shown as dressed in ladies underwear.
Dick jokes. Can fart jokes be far behind (pun)?
Confucius say, Man who fart in church must sit in his own pew.
He should have painted over his face.
The interpretation of this piece of politically motivated art was supposed to be simple and incontrovertible- and perhaps it was in its intended African audience, but obviously....not here.
As a public service, I'm going to lay this out for those who missed it.
The painting presented Zuma, who claims to be a reformer of government, as a facsimile of a far older portrait of Lenin, who also claimed to be a reformer.
The artist is thereby attempting to express two ideas- that Zuma makes a complete mockery of reform in the name of his own self-service, and that Zuma will engage in escalating and murderous abuses if allowed to consolidate power.
Zuma's exposed genitalia actually portrays a homily common here- making the point, so to speak, that anyone who has fathered twenty one children literally can't keep his dick in his pants.
Yes, it's disgusting- but it's meant to make an indelible impression, and associate that disgust with the artist's target. It's dirty pool, but it's also effective propaganda with at least a grain of truth- which is exactly why it was attacked and defaced.
Not sure why this is racist. Black men are the only men with penises?
People who reflexively play the race card need to sit down and shut up.
adoration of the p again. enough said!
Wow, that's a presidential portrait that is severely lacking in taste, vandalism aside.