“The world is a dangerous place to live;
not because of the people who are evil,
but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”
Albert Einstein
“It” appears so harmless.
“It” is an inert life, captured in a moment between helplessness and peace. But, “It” is disturbing. “It” fills you with disdain, disgust and horror, not for “It’s” amniotic suspension, realism or political statement… but for “It’s” face. A face, as they say, only a mother could love…. And that too might strain credulity.
“It” is Hitler.
This is not the goose-stepping, vitriol-spitting, genocidal xenophobe who came to define the first half of the 20th century and beyond, but instead a Hitler at his most helpless. A baby. An innocent baby. What’s more than that, “It” is a foetus… Or, in parlance perhaps we should call it a fötus. However, this fötus, floating harmlessly in a preservative cocoon in a Pre-Mengelian visualization, provides us a glimpse of a bottled beast, of the calm before the storm. In the process, it challenges our own morality and presents us with a dilemma.
What would you do? Would you smash the womb that contained this face? Would you nurture the child inside? Would you do either knowing what “It” would become?
“The sun also shines on the wicked”- Seneca
Without polemic on abortion, nature vs. nurture or the politics of the Third Reich, Parisian sculptor NICOLAS (b. 1970- see below) presents Hitler to us in the simplest of terms. Naked. Raw. Emotionless. It is only when we bring ourselves into the debate do we feel the gut-wrenching disgust and helplessness in knowing we are probably not strong enough, wise enough or prescient enough to take any action at all. And if we did… What would it say about us?
NICOLAS Has debuted on the international Art scene on touchy ground for a young, emerging talent. Perhaps this is where he is best suited, straddling the line between Damien Hirst’s “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living” (BELOW- Left) and Ron Mueck’s 17 foot long “A Girl” (BELOW- Right). Whereas Mueck’s photo-realist work, which uses its enormous scale and hyper-realism to discomfit viewers, Nicolas’ “Hitlerfötus” achieves revulsion because of the subject. Small, helpless and breathing it creates a moral question without taking sides. It neither condones action, nor does it condemn it. Neither Nicolas’ or Mueck’s works make implicit statements abortion, life or death, but they provide powerful allusions without revealing the artist’s respective positions on divisive issues. This is precisely why they are compelling. Each work is ratified by the viewers by the very act of feeling, positively or negatively.
In the simplest terms… each artist leaves it for you to decide. Whether you love it or hate it. Whether you want to own it or burn it… is up to you and you alone.
So, what does “It” say about you?
