IF YOU want to give a work of art loads of publicity, censor it. That is what the hosts of Madrid’s Contemporary Art Fair (ARCO) did with a tableau by Santiago Sierra called “Political Prisoners in Contemporary Spain” featuring 24 pixelated mugshots, three of them of jailed Catalan separatist leaders. On February 21st the director of the exhibition centre where ARCO is held ordered a participating gallery to remove the work. With that, he triggered a national debate.
His decision coincided with two other acts of intolerance. The previous day the Supreme Court upheld a 42-month jail sentence against Josep Miquel Arenas, a rapper who calls himself Valtónyc, for insulting the monarchy and glorifying terrorism in YouTube posts. That followed an order by a lower-court judge to withdraw a book about the drug trade in Galicia, published in 2015. A former mayor in a small town, whom nobody had previously heard of, objected to his name...Continue reading
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