Cowparade - Hear no Evil

Since its first exhibition in Zurich in 1998, the CowParade has become the largest and most successful public art event in the world staged in over 50 cities worldwide, where over 5,000 artists worldwide have collaborated. This metallized resin “Hear no evil” cow statue belongs to a series of three cow statues including “hear no evil” and “Speak no evil”, which are all hand painted with metallic paint and given an antique finish. The “See, Hear and Speak no evil” derives from the Japanese pictorial maxim of the “Three Wise Monkeys: Mizaru (see no evil), Kikazaru (hear no evil) and Iwazaru (speak no evil)” The pictorial maxim was popularized after a 17th century carving on a door at the Toshogu Shrine in Japan which tried to illustrate Confucius’ Code of conduct. The concept of the three wise monkeys originated from a word play between “-zaru” a negative conjugation used with the verbs “see”, “hear” and “speak”; with the modified form for Monkey “-saru”. In China, the text Analects of Confucius dating between the 2nd and 4th century B.C. shows the phrase which is believed to have later been imported to Japan: “Look not at what is contrary to propriety, Listen not to what is contrary to propriety; speak not what is contrary to propriety....”