Jake and Dinos Chapman: Perversity & pleasure (1996)
"Their prime concern was not with the objects as such but with the discourse, media and emotional reactions they generated." [Excerpt fr. Walker’s Art & Outrage (1999).]
Two artist brothers— Jake and Dinos Chapman— working in collaboration, produced during the 1990s a series of sculptures designed to shock and offend. Their work was characterised by eroticism and violence; consequently it generated much media coverage and divided critical opinion. In some instances it attracted the interest of the police and in others it proved too strong for the art dealers who had agreed to display it. Sexualised sculptures of children led to accusations of [depicting] paedophilia.
Dinos Chapman was born in London in 1962 and studied at Ravensbourne College of Art while Jake Chapman was born in Cheltenham in 1966 and studied at North East London Polytechnic. As postgraduates they both attended the Royal College of Art but were dissatisfied with the tuition provided because they felt it was geared towards failure rather than success. Understanding the art world and “the game of art” in order to reap the rewards of fame and money became a priority for the brothers.
Whatever complaints can be made about the content of Jake and Dinos Chapman’s art, their sculptures were characterised by meticulous craftsmanship and finish. The brothers worked for a time as technical assistants to the British artists Gilbert & George, so their collaboration — which commenced in 1991— followed a well-established precedent. Yet, while Jake and Dinos made art objects, their prime concern was not with the objects as such but with the discourse, media and emotional reactions they generated.
In April 1993, Jake and Dinos Chapman exhibited in London a series of three-dimensional, miniature figurines using remodelled and painted toy soldiers. These small sculptures were based on Goya’s Disasters of War prints and therefore showed gruesome scenes of mutilation and atrocity. Some viewers wondered why two British artists of the late twentieth century were bothering to recycle Goya’s imagery. It could be argued that all young artists are influenced by the masters of the past but such wholesale borrowing seemed more than “influence”. Alternatively, it could be argued that the practice of appropriation (based on the view that originality in art is now virtually impossible) is an inevitable consequence of the Post-Modern condition. Of course, there was no exact copying or plagiarism because various changes and transformations had been introduced in terms of medium / materials, scale and colour. Jake and Dinos settled their accounts with the history of art disrespectfully by reworking Goya’s prints as parodies, by transforming them into ornamental kitsch. At the same time, these sculptures disturbed the pleasures of war games hobbyists by insisting upon the horrors of war.
A year later, in September-October 1994, Jake and Dinos Chapman exhibited in a Cork Street gallery in London a life-sized sculpture constructed from mannequins based on Goya’s etching Great Deeds Against the Dead. This print shows a tree to which are bound the naked bodies of three members of the Spanish resistance decapitated and castrated by French soldiers during the Peninsula war. To those ignorant of the war and Goya’s work, the sculpture might well appear to be the product of a sick mind, a mind like that of a serial killer who enjoys scenes of torture and mutilation. London police were certainly disturbed by the sculpture which could be seen from the street. They entered the gallery and questioned the director. However, after being shown the Goya source print, they decided to take no action. Apparently, horrific contemporary art is acceptable to authority if it has a famous, art-historical antecedent.
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