Works of art … of different kinds.

 On Valentine’s Day a Banksy work appeared showing a woman, missing a tooth and with a bruised face, pushing a man, presumably her abusing husband or partner, into a chest freezer. It was apparently called “Valentine’s Day Mascara”. Soon afterwards the chest freezer was removed by the local council. This led to a load of complaints along the lines of “if someone anonymously dumped an old freezer on the street it would take weeks for the council to remove it, but when a famous artist does the same it is removed at once”. It seems the council plans to return the freezer once it has been “made safe”. Quite what that means is a mystery!

Anyway, today I have found a photo of a group of people doing the conga with the woman from the artwork, which is still there. It ends with a man’s legs sticking out of a wheelie bin. Nice! 

 

I am pretty sure the original Banksy works were intended as street art. They quickly became collectors’ items. This conga photo takes the original street art to another dimension.

I’ve often wondered how the Banksy works are removed from walls to be preserved or sold for large amounts of money without destroying the work. But that’s another matter altogether.

My Italian friend has recommended to me a TV series called “White Lotus”, a sort of black comedy about the guests and employees at the White Lotus Hotel. She recommended it me largely because the second series is set in Taormina, Sicily, a place we have visited some three times to go to a language school there - instrumental in our learning to speak Italian. The first series was set in Hawaii but my friend thought we might like to watch series two in a place we know quite well. It’s always fun playing landmark-spotting in films and TV series! 

We haven’t got around to watching it yet. But now it seems that the popularity of the series has led to an increased demand for the kind of flamboyant pottery produced in Caltagirone, also in Sicily, also a place we have visited on a couple of occasions. It seems that the White Lotus Hotel in Taormina in the TV series is decorated with ceramic heads of a woman and her Moorish lover, based on a seemingly true and rather gruesome story. When the woman discovered that her lover was married to a woman back in Morocco she chopped his head off. Their presence is intended to remind viewers of the possible fate of clients at the fictional hotel. That’s what I have been told anyway! 

And now lots of people want to have their own ‘testa di moro’ ceramics to decorate their homes. Personally I prefer other bits of Caltagirone ceramics buy there is no accounting for taste.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!