Jake and Dinos Chapman Interview Hitler Turning in his Grave

Provenance

Self-transcribed from the recording's audio/video with Whisper ASR, then drawn from the frozen curation of the CCRU oral archive. The identifiers below fingerprint the exact source transcript files.

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Adjudicated APPROVED 2026-07-11 (basis: owner ruling 2026-07-11: institutional recordings released except fee-charging course content; lane recent-institutional -> recent-institutional-released). Series: standalone. Source: audio original (.mp3).

Timestamped map

These jump targets come from timestamps preserved in the source transcript, so they work as navigational anchors rather than editorially invented section labels. Timings are approximate — they mark where a passage begins, not exact word timing.

• 00:00:03

  Well, with the Hitler work, we were interested in the idea of trying to work out what a work of art does and how well it does it. We were thinking, well, if a work of art has a latent meaning to it or some apparent sense of self-expression, you can look at Van Gogh's sunflowers and see those as an expression…

• 00:02:09

  So we were thinking, well, it's a very interesting idea that if you think about the 20th century and the most evil person in the 20th century and you have opportunity to look at the work, that actually it's blank. Maybe the idea of being evil is being blank. But also it's not especially blank. No. It's…

• 00:03:44

  The idea that actually, you know, that we are destroying a limited resource, a limited set of objects, which in some ways, you know, they shouldn't be drawn on because they should stand as documents which are historically, they historically represent this person. The idea of drawing on them means to say that you're…

• 00:04:58

  So he won't, he won't ever be rescuable. Yeah, with the Hitler paintings, it seemed, you know, to be faced with a picture by Hitler and to work out what it is we wanted to do. It seemed that, you know, if there was some idea of, you know, the idea of actually, you know, how do you transgress the most transgressive…

• 00:06:20

  We could actually turn pretty little multicolored rainbows into the most transgressive element, you know, because it seems the most inappropriate thing was then appropriate. You know, that here you have this thing which is kind of, which is the currency of mass genocide. To paint little rainbows on it seemed…

• 00:07:31

  I mean, the work is about the outcome. And so in some ways, you know, the arguments kind of range from, you know, these things should be preserved as historical documents to, you know, sort of... Destroyed. They should be destroyed or, you know, midway you get kind of death threats from neo-Nazis saying you've drawn…

• 00:08:54

  So, you know, and after maybe two or three, four versions, you know, the idea of actually, you know, that you can actually sort of make your threats... It becomes serious. So the idea actually, you know, might be a point in time where people have to hide their Goyas or hide their Hitler paintings because, you know…

• 00:10:03

  You know, as Jake said, you know, you do the first set of Goyas and everybody goes, that's a funny idea. You do the second one and everybody goes, oh, shit. This is...this is real. This isn't kind of... No, he's probably going to say, well, why didn't you do it twice? Yeah. You know... So you have to do it a third…