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scattered thoughts

COPENHAGEN, Denmark - Off the coast of western Greenland, in an area saturated by slow-moving ice floes and white icebergs, the blood red one stands out by design.

“We all have a need to decorate Mother Nature because it belongs to all us,” Chilean-born Danish artist Marco Evaristti said Thursday. “This is my iceberg; it belongs to me.”

On Wednesday, he used 780 gallons of paint diluted with sea water, three fire hoses, two icebreakers and a 20-man crew to spray the chunk of ice floating in the water.

The sea water was colored with the same dye used to highlight meat, Evaristti told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Ilullissat, Greenland.

Evaristti and his crew sailed from the small town and zigzagged among icebergs for about 30 minutes before they found the perfect frozen canvas.

Facing temperatures of minus 9 degrees, it took about two hours for the 40-year-old artist to paint the exposed tip of the iceberg, which was about 1,080 square yards in size.

Ilullissat, which means icebergs in Greenlandic, is a tourist destination because of its scenery.

The town of 4,000 residents sits at the mouth of the 25 mile-long Kangia fjord which is filled with hundreds of icebergs of different sizes spawned by glacial ice sheets.

There was no immediate reaction from Greenland authorities about the art work. Greenlanders are generally very protective about their unspoiled environment.

Evaristti drew widespread attention - and disdain - when he displayed 10 working blenders filled with goldfish in a Danish gallery in 2000.

He invited guests to turn the devices on and someone did, grinding up a pair of goldfish.

The gallery director was tried on charges of animal cruelty, but acquitted.

text from CBS news, emphasis mine

another work by the same artist

Behind the line of fire

Marco Evaristti, who is of Jewish origin, is given a blow job by a muslim woman. A picture which displays loudly and clearly the artist’s political understanding. Political understanding is in fact just as important as the æsthetic dimension in the creation of a finished work of art. Evaristti believes that every work of art has its basis in politics, even when it does not have a direct political message.