A grainy video of four masked vandals running through an art gallery in Sweden, smashing sexually explicit photographs with crowbars and axes to the strain of thundering death-metal music, was posted on YouTube Friday night.<\/p>\n
This was no joke or acting stunt. It was what actually happened on a quiet Friday afternoon in Lund, a small university town in southern Sweden where \u201cThe History of Sex,\u201d an exhibition of photographs by the New York artist Andres Serrano, had opened two weeks earlier.<\/p>\n
Around 3:30, half an hour before closing, four vandals wearing black masks stormed into a space known as the Kulturen Gallery while shouting in Swedish, \u201cWe don\u2019t support this,\u201d plus an expletive. They pushed visitors aside, entered a darkened room where some of the photographs were displayed and began smashing the glass protecting the photographs and then hacking away at the prints.<\/p>\n
The bumpy video, evidently shot with a hand-held camera by someone who ran into the gallery with the attackers, intersperses images of the Serrano photographs with lettered commentary in Swedish like \u201cThis is art?\u201d before showing the vandals at work.<\/p>\n
No guards were on duty in the gallery, said Viveca Ohlsson, the show\u2019s curator, although security videos captured much of the incident.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was one woman who works at the gallery who tried to stop them until she saw the axes and crowbars,\u201d Ms. Ohlsson said. \u201cThese men are dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n
By the time the masked men had finished, half the show \u2014 seven 50-by-60-inch photographs, worth some $200,000 over all \u2014 had been destroyed. The men left behind leaflets reading, \u201cAgainst decadence and for a healthier culture.\u201d The fliers listed no name or organization.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was shocked and horrified,\u201d Mr. Serrano said in a telephone interview yesterday from New York. \u201cI never expected something like this, especially in this magical town, which is so sweet I joked about it being like something out of Harry Potter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Serrano said he had flown to Sweden for the opening and was met with great enthusiasm by gallery visitors. \u201cThe reaction was so positive,\u201d he said. \u201cI could never imagine anything like this happening.\u201d<\/p>\n
Officials at the local police station said yesterday that the vandals had not been caught but that they were believed to be part of a neo-Nazi group.<\/p>\n
Ms. Ohlsson said the attack was clearly well planned. \u201cWe think that they had been at the gallery a few days before,\u201d she said. \u201cThey knew where to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
The show consists of photographs, made in 1995 and 1996, of various sex acts, including a depiction of a naked woman fondling a stallion. It was divided into two rooms. One had white walls, the other black. The vandals went to the black room, where Ms. Ohlsson said the photographs were a bit racier.<\/p>\n
This is not the first time Mr. Serrano\u2019s work has been attacked, physically or in words. In 1989 the National Endowment for the Arts came under fire from conservative politicians and religious groups for helping to finance a $15,000 grant to Mr. Serrano related to past work that included a photograph of a crucifix immersed in urine. A print of that work was attacked and destroyed in 1997 when it was on view at the National Gallery of Art in Melbourne, Australia.<\/p>\n
It is not the first time the Kulturen Gallery has seen violence, either. About 10 years ago vandals raced into the gallery and put paint on images by a Swedish photographer.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe History of Sex\u201d remains on view, but with bolstered security, Ms. Ohlsson said, explaining that the group had threatened on the Internet to attack the show again.<\/p>\n
Paula Cooper, Mr. Serrano\u2019s New York dealer, whose gallery in Chelsea exhibited his \u201cHistory of Sex\u201d photographs in 1997, said she was horrified by the attack in Sweden. \u201cArt inflames people,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Ms. Cooper said that her gallery was working to replace the destroyed photographs as soon as possible so they could go back on view in Lund. (Mr. Serrano produced each in editions of three.)<\/p>\n
After \u201cThe History of Sex\u201d closes in Lund in December, it is to travel to the Alingsas Art Museum in Alingsas, Sweden.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A grainy video of four masked vandals running through an art gallery in Sweden, smashing sexually explicit photographs with crowbars and axes to the strain of thundering death-metal music, was posted on YouTube Friday night. This was no joke or acting stunt. It was what actually happened on a quiet Friday afternoon in Lund, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","spay_email":""},"categories":[4,10],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}