After Giotto, Everything Went to Shit

After Giotto, Everything Went to Shit was published on the occasion of the exhibition «They Are Ugly Because They Are Angry», and presented at Clauda, Prague, on 18 December 2025. Written and drawn by Persis Bekkering and Martin Groch.

I am a fishwife. I am art history’s mad vixen. You think this is interesting? I’ll tell you what’s interesting. I am a screen for your projections. You want me like this. You don’t want me demure. You say you do, but you don’t. Demure is the white wall of education, and I am the institution’s lice. [...]

I want to be repeated, reproduced, endlessly dispersed, fractured, distributed. Let a thousand copies bloom. I am not interested in being original. In having value. The original of me has no aura. I will be multiplied like the sorcerer’s apprentice’s bedbugs, and you will still need to listen to me. My message is my body. My words are my fingers, are my bleeding colors, my vulgarity. [...]

I am with the criminals, the beggars, the rabble, the rascals. The thieves, the rats, the bedbugs, the scammers. There is no heroism here, unlike what you tend to think. There is a stench and we worry all the time. It’s hard to sleep if you worry all the time. We want to be like you while you idealize me. We want to be cold like you, bored like you, have good grammar like you, be intrigued like you and have obsessions. That is our life’s goal. That is the end of our pursuits.