five thousand shades of blue
Monday, January 07, 2002
I caught the tail end of
a story this morning on ABC News: an Afghan artist who'd used brilliant trickery and deception to keep the Taliban from destroying his paintings. It is the Taliban's hardline fanatical opinion that the human form cannot and should not be depicted in any form in any work of art. The government took it upon themselves to blow up ancient holy Buddhas and shatter sculptures, clay pots and bowls from antiquity; there was little he could do to keep them from slashing his portraits. But he got clever: on his oil paintings, he painted over the human figures in watercolor. On the watercolor paintings, he simply painted directly on the glass. He figured when the Taliban was no longer in power, he could just restore his original works with a wipe of a sponge... and it was this way that he saved about eighty works of his art. The camera crews surrounded him and focused closely on what appeared to be a landscape painting, as he took a damp sponge and like magic revealed a figure sitting on the bank what had moments before been another patch of river. The Taliban had never caught on.
Human spirit and creativity once again thumbs its nose at oppression.
is
this just not enough…?
