Nail In Scrotum Art

Regular readers will know what I think about "performance artists": silly show-offs that lack any sensitivity to art. This one takes the biscuit: Pyotr Pavlensky. Here he is performing his latest stunt. He stripped naked and drove a nail through his scrotum to pin himself to Red Square in Moscow. Last year he sewed his lips together as an anti-Putin protest. In May of this year he wrapped his naked self in a cocoon of barbed wire outside St Petersburg's legislative assembly (CLICK). My guess is that he suffers from congenital analgesia, an inability to feel pain. Hot and cold don't register as dangerous sensations. It's a rare condition that effects less than one in a million people (CLICK). I doubt if Pavlensky's problem will worry Putin.