Artist 118 and Artist 119
Dinos and Jake Chapman Chapman Brothers Insult to Injury
Iakovos "Jake" (born 1966) and Konstantinos "Dinos" (born 1962) are British visual artists, often known as the Chapman Brothers. Their subject matter tries to be deliberately shocking, including, in 2008, a series of works that appropriated original watercolours by Adolf Hitler.
They began their own collaboration in 1991. The brothers have often made pieces with plastic models or fiberglass mannequins of people.
The Chapman brothers continued the theme of anatomical and pornographic grotesque with a series of mannequins, sometimes fused together, with genitalia in place of facial features.
In 2003, with a series of works named Insult to Injury, they altered a set of Goya's etchings by adding funny faces. This series is today’s focus.
The Chapmans bought a complete set of, Goya's Disasters of War. It is mint condition set of 80 etchings printed from the artist's plates.
In terms of print connoisseurship, in terms of art history, in any terms, this is a treasure - and they have vandalised it. (Jones, 2003)
"We had it sitting around for a couple of years, every so often taking it out and having a look at it," says Dinos, until they were quite sure what they wanted to do. "We always had the intention of rectifying it, to take that nice word from The Shining, when the butler's trying to encourage Jack Nicholson to kill his family - to rectify the situation," interrupts Jake.
"So we've gone very systematically through the entire 80 etchings," continues Dinos, "and changed all the visible victims' heads to clowns' heads and puppies' heads."
When I first saw the series I thought what fun and then as I researched and learnt they defaced the artists actual prints and not replications my stomach fell.
Where is the line? What lines were crossed? This breaks the taboo of respect in other artists works. Is it strange I care? Their work definitely evokes a self re-evaluation.
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