Andrew Graham-Dixon on David Shrigley’s contribution to the Tate Britain’s new exhibition, Rude Britannia: British Comic Art, an indignant yet deceased feline on a plinth:
This defiantly ambiguous object could be seen in a number of ways. Is it
Damien Hirst redone as taxidermical stand-up comedy (its theme, after
all, is pretty well identical to the title Hirst gave to his original,
Saatchi-sponsored shark in formaldehyde, namely The Physical
Impossibility of Death in the Mind ofSomethingSomeone Living)? Or is it Monty
Python’s Dead Parrot sketch reworked as a piece of Conceptual Art?
Then again, if Cedar Lewisohn is right, maybe Monty Python’s parrot
sketch was a piece of Conceptual Art in the first place. (more)
Not in the show but could have been, Liz Arnold’s white cat on a different mission. (Vicky Park, 1997) Arnold died at 36 in 2001 of ovarian cancer. Graham-Dixon’s appreciation here.)
weird… i’m currently rereading ‘The Master and Margarita’…