A few days ago, the TV show Thailand’s Got Talent featured a woman who did a (bad) painting with her bare breasts. The event spun out into multiple different directions, some of them more predictable than others: the female judge who disliked the act so vociferously was revealed to have done something similar in a fashion magazine a few years previously; the official complaints that this was somehow contrary to “Thai values” met with the response that Thailand has a massive and thriving sex industry that makes this sort of thing look pretty milk-and-water and in any case, bare boobs were pretty standard outdoor wear less than 100 years ago; and the whole kerfuffle seems to have been a concocted stunt anyway, with the so-called artist having been hired and instructed by the producers for publicity purposes.
I wouldn’t have minded, except that the act wasn’t even original. The French artist Yves Klein did pretty much the same thing in the 1960s. And he didn’t ask people to vote for it.
(Thanks to Jinda Wedel for getting me thinking.)
(Thanks to Jinda Wedel for getting me thinking.)
