Mark Twain wrote that \u201crejecting awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than usual.\u201d An award always represents recognition of a work or a career, but there may be reasons to publicly reject it: among others, one may be critical or against the organization that grants it (or its interests); one may use the moment of the award as a platform from which to claim something; one may reject it to guarantee independence; one may be outside of awards and, in a certain way, of society; one may say \u201cno\u201d in coherence with a way of thinking and also to be consistent with the character that we have built for ourselves and, finally, one may accept an award and at the same time specify in the speech everything that one rejects.<\/p>\n
In 1972, Marlon Brando was awarded the Oscar for best actor for his performance in The Godfather. Instead of collecting the award, Brando sent a young actress of Indian origin who read out on the actor’s behalf her refusal to accept the prize as a protest against the treatment of the Indian people in Hollywood films.<\/p>\n
In 1964, Jean-Paul Sartre refused the Nobel Prize for Literature and explained that if he accepted it he would compromise his integrity as a writer.<\/p>\n
Another case is that of the Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman who, after solving a mathematical enigma that had been pending since the 1990s, showed his lack of interest in public recognition by considering the award unfair (he declared that his American colleague Richard Hamilton was the first to suggest the solution) and said no to a prize worth a million dollars.<\/p>\n
Juan Goytisolo was as careful as he was explicit when explaining his refusal. In an article published in El Pa\u00eds, he first explained his joy at learning the names of the members of the jury who had awarded him the International Literature Prize (all of them writers that Goytisolo admired) and then stated a \u201cbut\u201d: the origin of the funds from the Libyan People’s Democratic Jamahiriya, created in 1969 by Gaddafi’s military coup.<\/p>\n
In 1964, in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, Martin Luther King listed everything he rejected: “I accept this award today with a deep and solid faith in America and a bold faith in the future of humanity. I refuse to accept despair as the definitive answer to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the tendency to conform to the simplicity of what \u201cis,\u201d proper to human nature in our days, makes the men of today morally incapable of reaching the eternal \u201cwhat should be\u201d that has always been proposed.\u201d<\/p>\n
A few days ago, Santiago Sierra renounced the Spanish National Prize for Fine Arts, citing common sense and considering that the prize \u201cuses the prestige of the prize-winner to benefit the state.\u201d Ultimately, rejecting a prize is a question of attitude and also reflects the character that Sierra has created for himself: tough, direct and uncompromising.<\/p>\n
[Article published in Bonart, 2011]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mark Twain wrote that \u201crejecting awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than usual.\u201d An award always represents recognition of a work or a career, but there may be reasons to publicly reject it: among others, one may be critical or against the organization that grants it (or its interests); one may […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-textos-en"],"yoast_head":"\n