Milan’s Shoah Memorial received four unusual visitors on Holocaust Remembrance Day last year. Fox TV cartoon characters Homer Simpson, his wife Marge, and their three children, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie, have appeared in the form of a mural on the outside wall of the city’s Central Station. A memorial to those killed in the city has been installed at the station since 2013. Jews who were deported to Auschwitz and other German concentration camps during World War II along with political prisoners. His first of two panels depicts the Simpsons as Jews wearing overcoats with yellow stars. Their faces express resignation at the fate of the many Milanese Jews who were packed into boxcars at the train station and deported by the Nazis to Auschwitz. The second panel depicts a family languishing at Auschwitz, wearing their infamous pajama-like uniforms.
This mural is both shocking in its vibrant colors and cartoony. But the artist behind it is a famous Milanese fashion designer and street artist. alexandro palombo, this piece is not intended as a joke or an insult. Like much of his street art, this mural simply appeared one morning without warning or consultation with Shore Memorial officials. Shortly after releasing this work, the artist released a statement deploring Shore and his horribleness. explain his work as a “visual stumbling block that makes something invisible become visible.” Palombo believed he was passing on the vision of the Holocaust to “a new generation.”
When Palombo used the term “visual stumbling blocks,” he was probably referring to street art that: Stolperstein (“Stumbling Stone”) is a concept created by German artist Gunter Demnig in 1992. Stolpersteins are brass plaques embedded in sidewalks across Europe that mark the places where Jews and other Holocaust victims lived just before they were captured, deported, and died. Demnig believes the idea stems from an idiom that was popular in his youth after the war. When a German man stumbled on the street for no apparent reason, he laughed and said, “I must have stumbled over the grave of a dead Jew.” He wanted people to not just walk past his Stolperstein, but to stop and remember the victims of the Holocaust as human beings.Stolperstein arrived in Milan Established in January 2017, 171 markers now commemorate a small portion of the city’s expelled Jews. In explaining the motivation behind the Simpsons mural, Palombo may have been referring to Demnig’s Stolperstein, which similarly attempts to stop people in their tracks and make them think about the Shoah.
One group that caught the attention of the Palombo mural without realizing it was the Milan Shore Memorial Foundation.organization leader Said Although they were not “involved in the decision-making process,” they praised the work and said they “didn’t find it particularly harmful.”
This lack of criticism may reflect the fact that Palombo is unfamiliar with Simpsons-related Holocaust art. In 2015, towards the age of 70th Palombo Auschwitz Liberation Day Illustration series released,title never again, depicting the Simpsons in front of a sign at the camp’s entrance with the slogan “Arbeit Macht Frei.” Next to the crematorium. And also on the railroad tracks leading to the gas chambers. In one work, Bart Simpson is depicted with his arms raised in a pose reminiscent of his photographs. Warsaw ghetto boy Surrounded by armed Nazis.Palombo explained The series is an “invitation to reflection, an artwork to raise awareness, an indictment of intolerance, a punch to inhumanity.”
Anti-Semites took the Simpsons mural as a provocation. Just a few months after it was revealed, destroyer I painted the character’s yellow star black and left scratches across the surface of the mural. someone in january scribbled Above Homer’s head are the words “Fuck Israel” and “Long Live Hitler.” However, this was not the first time it had been destroyed. The work was altered again on June 5, 2023.
Palombo’s art has also faced more thoughtful criticism. In a 2015 essay forwardcritic Anna Goldenberg voiced her concerns Palombo’s mix of pop culture and the Holocaust. She was concerned about the impact this image would have on a generation that may not know about the Holocaust or understand the gravity of what is being depicted.
James Young mentions similarly provocative art in his book stages of memoryI would like to comment on Notorious 2002 exhibit Title at the Jewish Museum in New York Reflecting evil: Nazi images/recent art. The work was on display. prada death camp, photoshopped images of concentration camp victims drinking Diet Coke, and even a Lego model of a crematorium. These works certainly had their detractors, but Young believes that three generations after the Holocaust, what he calls an “afterlife of memory” – the experiences of survivors’ grandchildren – exist and that they are inevitable. concluded that it is mediated by television, movies, novels, and theater. . Many people born in the post-Holocaust generation only learn about the destruction of European Jewry through pop culture. Their art, like Palombo’s, expresses that distance.
But the popularity and familiarity of the Simpsons is not what makes them ultimately interesting as victims of the Holocaust. What’s conceptually interesting about animated characters in general, including The Simpsons, is that they never age, they never suffer, and they never die. Cartoon violence allows characters like Wile E. Coyote, Donald Duck, and even Itchy and Scratchy (the main characters of the fictional cartoon series depicted in the film) to appear. simpsons) Never suffer from being sliced, diced, thrown off a cliff, slammed with rocks, or targeted by various missiles. They are not affected by trauma because they are just cartoon characters. Recontextualizing the Simpson family at Auschwitz within a landscape of suffering imbues the characters with a shocking vulnerability for viewers who know them as ageless beings who cannot be harmed. Palombo’s art therefore does not caricature Holocaust victims. It humanizes the comic book characters, humanizes them as Jews. Palombo turns the Simpsons into humans, even Jewish humans. This isn’t just a trick. It’s a profound artistic choice.
In this sense, Palombo’s closest analog may be Art Spiegelman, a graphic artist who painted Jewish subjects. mouse They are depicted as cartoon rats to emphasize their vulnerability. Palombo took comic book subjects and made them seen as Jews in order to portray their vulnerability and humanity. Indeed, there are countless ways to thoughtfully use art to understand the Holocaust.