Jake and Dinos Chapman Interview Hitler Turning in his Grave

The End Well, with the Hitler work, we were interested in the idea of trying to work out what a work of art does and how well it does it.

We were thinking, well, if a work of art has a latent meaning to it or some apparent sense of self-expression that you can look at Van Gogh's sunflowers and see those as an expression of madness or insanity that somehow in the working of the surface or the manipulation of the paint that somehow there's this sense in which the work is motivated by this kind of terrible pain and torment that the artist goes through. We were kind of thinking well Well if that's the case with a Van Gogh painting, maybe you should be able to look at a Hitler painting and see that there should be some kind of index of things to come in the work

before he went on to be a mass murderer of epic magnitude. But the interesting thing with Hitler's work is that the work is blank. There's no forensic evidence of what's to come. So we were just interested in the idea that if a work of art can say something about the person, how come in the case of Hitler the work gives no indication, there's no symptomatic pathology in the work that would then demonstrate what the latent sort of evil, you know, this character, you know, putative evil that this person kind of goes on to express. So we were kind of thinking, well, you know, it's a very interesting idea that actually if you think about the 20th century and the most evil person in the 20th century and you

have opportunity to look at the work, that actually it's blank. Maybe the idea of being evil is being blank. But also it's not especially blank. It's indistinguishable from thousands and thousands of other pieces of second-rate art that was made around the same time. I think a person might be tempted to think, oh no, it's devoid, it's especially devoid, you know, psychosis, but it's not. There's nothing. There's nothing. There's something interesting about the idea of the absolute, the absolute identity of Hitler as an unmistakable, irreducible entity and the

anonymity of the work. You have the two things which are just completely opposite ends of a spectrum. One is the absolute presence of a known entity and then the other thing which is this kind of vacuous superficial, you know, ethereal thing which is this kind of, the work which so far undermines and under-represents the enormity of the individual. So we're kind of interested in how those two things work and the idea of actually, well, you know, drawing on these things just seems... there's lots of things involved in it. The idea that actually we are destroying a limited resource, a limited set of objects which in some ways they shouldn't

be drawn on because they should stand as documents which are historically... they historically represent this person. The idea of drawing on them means to say that you're actually erasing history. Yeah, and also, there's a point in some people's argument that whilst Hitler was making these drawings and paintings, he was still a normal human being, a functioning human being, and if he'd gone to art school, he wouldn't have been this terrible, terrible tyrant. So, kind At a certain point we decided that if we could jump in at that point and even ruin that notion of him, then it's a way of kicking someone where they can't defend themselves at all.

There's no point at which Hitler can... We're going to get a hold of every single thing he's ever done and change it. So he won't ever be rescuable. music Yeah, with the Hitler paintings, it seemed to be faced with a picture by Hitler and to work out what it is we wanted to do.

It seemed that if there was some idea of... The idea of actually how do you transgress the most transgressive thing. I mean, a Hitler painting, when you're faced with it, it's a very disturbing object. Historically, it's very disturbing. But the idea of actually working out how to transgress its value, how to subordinate the metaphysical value of its evil, to turn it into something. And it just seemed very appropriate for us to paint little rainbows and little stars and little, just very innocuous and inoffensive things. What's interesting is that actually the most innocuous and inoffensive thing became the most offensive thing. We could actually turn pretty little multicolored rainbows

into the most transgressive element, because it seems the most inappropriate thing was then appropriate. Here you have this thing which is the currency of mass genocide, to paint little rainbows on it seemed to be the most appropriate thing. It's about the magnitude of scale, the scale of it, the ridiculousness of it seems absolutely appropriate. If you wanted the idea of thinking of Hitler turning in his grave because we painted rainbows on his pictures is just fantastically pleasurable. Fantastic thought. Using My Little Pony to kick Adolf Hitler is entirely appropriate. Some people thought it was the best thing in the world.

Some thought it was less, not so much. The responses are interesting because in a sense there's no way in which you can draw on Hitler's paintings without trying to second guess the outcome. The work is about the outcome. So in some ways the arguments range from these things should be preserved as historical documents to, you know, sort of, you know, they should be destroyed or, you know, in midway you get kind of death threats from neo-Nazis saying you've drawn on the Fuhrer's, you know, work. And, you know, so there's a whole range of responses. I mean, I think the thing is, the historical document one is interesting because, because,

because in a sense, you know, if you have actually, and we have had the same kind of arguments persist with the Goya working on the Goya drawings. You know the idea of actually sort of saying well you know is this a gesture? Are we are we simply saying yeah you know we'll draw on a couple of these things and see how it works. Now if we set ourselves the task of saying we'll draw on every single thing we can get our hands on suddenly the threat and the project becomes much more much more worrying you know but actually what we're saying is that we will we can alter historical documents to the point where they will become ours rather than histories. And in that sense you can see the danger of the project. The threat is real. And the threat is because with the Goya things, we bought the first

set of Goyas, drawn them, sold them, the money we made, we went to buy the next one. And after maybe two or three, four versions, the idea that you can actually make your threats, becomes serious. So the idea that might be a point in time where people have to hide their Goyers or hide their Hitler paintings because it's quite a nice idea. It's kind of aesthetic Ebola. It's malicious. When we say we're going to do that, it's real. Interestingly enough, prices have gone up and Goeia prices have gone up. I think there might be a point at

which we can't afford to buy the next set of Goeias. It's interesting setting a chain of events in motion, not knowing where they're going to lead. You set up a process and the process is more important than the points along that that line. You know, as Jake said, you do the first set of Goyas and everybody goes, that's a funny idea. You do the second one, everybody goes, oh shit, this is real, this isn't kind of... No, it's kind of like saying, well, why didn't you do it twice? Yeah. So you have to do it a third time. And then you say, why have you done it three times?

Thank you. Thank you.