I hate art seminar
This week we are having an I HATE ART seminar discussion and we were supposed to pick an artwork that we do not like and create constructive criticism about it to explain to the rest of the class why we don't like it.
This exercise will teach us to talk about art critically while giving valid reasons for disliking the piece.
The piece I decided to pick is called 'Lego, Concentration Camp' from 1996 and it caused a big controversy in the 90s. It was made by a Polish artist Zbigniew Libery. The piece is a set of Lego boxes with the Lego logo and with the blocks to create scenes from the Auschwitz Concentration camp.
This is definitely a controversial piece and it for sure is interesting. Apparently people from all over the world found it inspiring, but Polish people thought it was disrespectful.
I stand by it, I think this is an extremely disrespectful art piece because it shows a place where over million people lost their lives. It shows the prisoners as skeletons and they look both wicked and funny and this matter is not funny and the prisoners were victims of the given situation. Making Lego sets out of such a tragic place makes it seem childish and unimportant where in real life it is extremely important and very serious. I think Polish people especially are very sensitive when it comes to the Holocaust because most of it was happening on the Polish land and was executed by the Nazi Germans. People who may have not been that impacted by the Holocaust may think of this work as inspirational because what the work does is showing that the history should be shared with children, or at least this is how I understand it. I think it gives the idea that people should educate the children from the earliest years about the world's past; however, in my opinion Holocaust did not happen a long time ago and some people who survived Concentration Camps are still alive. It was also one of the most tragic and horrible moments in the world's history and as much as I can understand teaching children about medieval and ancient times, I do not stand by the idea to teach about the second world war from a very young age because for some things people need a certain age to be able to fully understand. In Polish school system, we learn about the Holocaust very late in our education and trips to places like Auschwitz are only when the entire class is mature enough. I am 20 years old and I still have not been to Auschwitz, even though I see myself as a mature person. Apart from emotional maturity that I do have, a person also needs a lot of strength to be able to bear all the visuals there. I have only visited Stuthoff which is a Death Camp, not a Concentration Camp and it still was a shocking experience for me. I think, if someone is not mature enough, they should not be introduced to a topic this heavy. I believe that children are surely not mature enough, so I can see how the idea of sharing the history with the young generation is generally a good idea, I think in this case the piece is inappropriate and disrespectful.
This is a genuinely crass example of an artist mis-understanding an extraordinarily complex and serious subject. There is no humour to be found here, there is little in the way of acknowledgement of what happened, the reasons for it happening and the effect it had on the psyche of Europe, the effect it had on population and the serious implications it has for democracy to this day. I've read some explanations of the work, which has helped me to understand it a little better, but overall I find it difficult to understand it's reason to exist.
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