Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Artist’s Response To Being Mocked By Sacha Baron Cohen Is Incredibly Gracious

A screen shot of Sacha Baron Cohen as Rick Sherman speaking with Christy Cones from Who Is America? Image by Showtime

You can’t bullshit a bullshitter. But you can convince an artist that fecal smears can be fine art, and that’s just what Sacha Baron Cohen did in the first episode of his new Showtime series, “Who Is America,” on Sunday.

In a slew of interviews, most notably one with the Washington Post, Christy Cones has come forward to clear her name, so to speak. The gallerist and PhD, who was the focus of a segment by Baron Cohen mocking the fine art industry, responded to learning that she was the target of a stunt with unprecedented grace and humor.

Above all, she has more questions. Cones told the Post, “Even now, I know now it’s fake, but I still think a lot of the ideas are real.” Baron Cohen, she contends, only proved the fantastic subjectivity of art by mocking it. In trying, perhaps, to destroy art, he created it.

She explained, “Art is what we say it is. Is it art for rain to fall on the sidewalk in a certain way? Some would say tears dropping down on a love letter is art. Is this art? Someone who is stuck in prison, and they put their whole heart into something? I’d love to have that argument.” Cones added that she thinks Baron Cohen himself, in making his show, is making a kind of argument for art. She said, “Art is always subjective, but to me it seems like [his show] is [art] — a kind of performance art, at least.”

Cones was framed and presented to mass international audiences as a laughingstock. Is she mad? Nope. “He duped me? He made me the fool?” she asked. “Sacha Baron Cohen doesn’t impress me. I’ve been with billionaires, and I’ve been with bag ladies. No one is better than the other.” Plus, after suffering the recent loss of a close friend, she said, “It’s nice to have some comic relief.”

Cohen, she said lovingly, is “a nut case,” adding, “God bless him.” But she also told Politico that he’s “a total genius.”

She does say that she never got a copy of the portrait Baron Cohen made out of her, ostensibly using his own bodily fluids. And she has a more specific request for the erstwhile poop-artist — “Come down to the gallery,” she said. “Come down and buy a painting.”

Jenny Singer is the deputy lifestyle editor for the Forward. You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.