Channel 4 show where Jimmy Carr can destroy Hitler painting ‘trivialises’ the Holocaust, trust says
A Channel 4 show in which Jimmy Carr will be given the power to destroy a painting by Adolf Hitler has been criticised by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.
Airing later this month, Jimmy Carr Destroys Art (originally listed as Art Trouble) will see the controversial comedian look into the debate around “separating the art from the artist”.
Audiences will then vote whether or not he should destroy the artworks bought by Channel 4 and created by “problematic” artists, including Hitler, Pablo Picasso, Rolf Harris and Eric Gill.
Channel 4’s director of programming Ian Katz said that the show would see guests advocate for eeach piece of art.
“So you’ve got an advocate for Hitler,” he said. “There’ll be someone arguing not for Hitler, but for the fact that his moral character should not decide whether or not a piece of art exists or not.”
The announcement was met with criticism, with the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust’s chief executive Olivia Marks-Woldman accusing the show of “making Hitler a topic of light entertainment”.
“The question of how far art can be linked to its creators is an important one, but this programme is simply a stunt for shock value and cannot excuse the trivialisation of the horrors of Nazism,” she told The Guardian.
The Independent has contacted Channel 4 for comment.
The artworks debated on the show will be destroyed with a variety of tools including a flamethrower. However, Channel 4 clarified that the flamethrower would not be used on the painting by Hitler.
Appearing on LBC, antisemitism campaigner Jonathan Sacerdoti said the show was an “utterly sick piece of entertainment television” and that he didn’t understand “how this could get past any stage of development”.
Many critics had specifically questioned Carr’s involvement in the project.
Earlier this year, a joke from his Netflix special, in which the comic riffed about the genocide of travellers during the Holocaust, was condemned for being “racist” and “hateful”.
