Look at the picture shown by BBC. It is innocent enough, and just a work of art. You can like it, or not, by the feeling it gives you about spaces and objects, like an empty chair sitting in the middle of a room. The bars on the windows of the home, with an old scene from China outside them are another clue. The creators of this art are a pair of French artists, who were unceremoniously hauled away after he mural was completed, and have not been heard from since. This is, as a plainclothes police officer said, China and not some other country where such things are allowed. The artists should have known. Really?
I wondered about the antics of Kathy Griffin holding up a plastic head of Donald Trump that looks like it was severed with some malice. It was art, and it was judged by the quality of it, not by the message it sent to the people of the United States. Kathy Griffin has largely been out of work since. The quality of comedy was not there. A few found it hard to see the humor, like the Secret Service, which actually has no sense of humor and thus is not good at considering the source and moving on. The Chinese are apparently much less accepting of this kind of art. Amazon is not still sellling severed heads of Xi Jinping, so we can assume Chinese censors would not like that very much. If they can sell Trump’s, they should be able to sell others too.
The difference is, Kathy Griffin is not in jail. The whole of China is not very tolerant of critics. But, even for them, this seems a little harsh. Liu Xiaobo is dead, after all. But, he made such an impression on the leadership that they won’t let it go, even after his death. No more powerful statement can be made about a man.
Arresting a couple of French artists just brings more attention to Liu Xiaobo. Don’t they get it?
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