More weeping women

Art Melbourne is a yearly event of collected galleries all showing under the one Royal Exhibition Building roof. It was previously known as the Affordable Art show however their idea of affordable and the general public's seemed to clash so it was renamed. I went along this year as I have done now for the last few. I have purchased the odd print, nothing too sizeable or unaffordable that it won't fit in the space of a small French hatchback without having to put the seats down. Don't make me do that! It's a relaxing Sunday occupation of wandering around the various exhibits in intelligent silence when really your mind is the worlds toughest critic and you are quietly discrediting away the artists works thinking '$1500 bucks for that, who painted it an elephant?' It seems the naked woman is a faithful subject matter as has historically always been the case and these days in the era of easily accessible porn, a reclining nude would barely raise an eyebrow - or so I thought. I came across 3 framed photographs of the same naked model. She has very pale skin and thick wavy red hair. In each of the photographs she is lying on her back, in the first she has blood gushing out of her mouth, the second dripping from her nipple and the third from her vagina. Blood that would be the result of a stab wound. I felt angry even looking at them and even more angry when I got close enough to see that each one had more red dots (meaning sold) beside it than most of the exhibits I had seen. My initial reaction was give me the names of the sick bastards that bought this crap. And then with the collective artistic vibe of the venue I thought maybe I am wrong to say this is crap and who am I to say it's not art? It's obviously appealed to many (I still want their names) so should I accept this as art and not become one of those "ban it" people who seem to be dominating every inch of our society today. I walked away needing to have my questions answered. A bit like those columns in the paper where you write in with your etiquette question like "if another customer at the deli pushes in front of me to get served first, should I demonstrate maturity and say nothing, life's too short blah, blah, blah or punch them hard and say rack off thunder thighs you can wait for your salami a bit longer?". I would like to ask my question to Picasso (and he was alive and he probably wishes he was alive for me to ask) what his interpretation of this. He, being I'm sure accustomed the tut tutting of polite society as he presented compositions of women, penises and lots of other naughty stuff. The problem was this wasn't naughty stuff, this was violent and shocking but not in a Guernica kind of way, more just a bad acting in another episode of Underbelly kind of way. And yes, that's definately not art.