Man damages Old Master painting at Milwaukee Art Museum
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=587117 reported by Bob Purvis
It was something you’d almost want to watch*. Yes, it would be cringe-inducing like watching Borat or Jackass or America’s Funniest Home Videos or Faces of Death. I wouldn’t bring these videos up if I didn’t have a later point. But the point is this, perhaps: even the mentally unhinged have a subversive performance art statement to make about the easy and high-def violence broadcast in modern artistic and commercial media.
The meat of what happen: “The 22-year-old Pewaukee man started kicking "The Triumph of David" by Ottavio Vannini as it hung on the wall in the museum's Early European Gallery, said David Gordon, CEO and director of the Milwaukee Art Museum.
Painted in 1640, the oil painting depicts the outcome of the biblical tale of David and Goliath, with David carrying the giant Goliath's severed head, Gordon said.”
Let’s forget all about the trivialities here. This is not about the security guards that couldn’t get to the young man in the few seconds it took to kick a tennis ball-sized hole in a 15th century painting. Any number of highly suspect people walks through art museums and galleries around the world many times a day.
In fact, those unstable persons are often what make art and the interpretation or commentary of our society so vivacious. In 2007, many fine individuals with schizophrenia, bi-polar disorders, impotence issues, all the way down to those on antidepressants and sleep disorders have a wealth of chemical balancers and elevators available to make them happy. Well, dull but not acting out. Besides, the vandal stated that he is on medication but failed to be on it at said time of kicking.
The value of the painting is not the real issue, either. Neither is the advocation for the destruction of valuable art, or the preservation of artifact. Yes, the staff of the Milwaukee Art Museum has learned to better monitor the drunkards at the frequent parties and events who decide to climb and grope the art (see Martinifest fiasco). We want national charitable trusts and collectors to continue to want to bring special exhibitions to the MAM, even if they are often just early work, minor pieces, and studies. On a side note, at the most recent “Three degrees of Bacon” event, the offended robust lady statue was conspicuously missing.
The act of violence against a canvas (aside from the decapitation depiction on said destroyed Old Master’s work) was done far from what might be considered the most dangerous work in the museum. The most dangerous work is the Francis Bacon featured exhibit (even though, as opined two sentences ago, not his best). With depictions of blurry faces and dogs on dark backgrounds along with dissected faces, religious hierarchy posing in front of sides of beef, and two owls - the fears these paintings may instill lay in a fuzzier, dreamy area of our psyche. If anything, given the chance to get drunk at the “Three Degrees” event and crawl into a big woman’s arms would have been nice.
While the vandalism or destruction of artwork for any reason is not original (see Dario Gamboni , or this), the desired statement is relatively new. In a different era, someone committing this act could have done so for various reasons: a soldier fresh from the war reacting emotionally to the horror he’s seen, an anarchist making a political action, or a troll seeking attention for themselves by an obnoxious mean.
From reports, it’s unlikely the disturbed man did it for any of those reasons. After the act was halted, he took off his shirt and lay down on the cool floor.
More likely in my mind is the possible reaction to the lack of real violence around him. Before you negate this supposition, remember that while guns tear people apart - it is an act done from a distance and impersonal. A car accident of deathly ends is uncommon to witness unless it ends up recreated on TV or in a movie.
Therein lays my argument. Would the cure from a Clockwork Orange even work anymore? Is it even necessary? Kubrick and collaborators imagined that you would have to hold the eyes open by force. Little did he know that decades later, images of sex and violence would become staples of evening television (once family-friendly CBS airs no drama in prime-time right now other than crime shows, and has killed off more fictional people than real numbers from their imagined cities) and movies (that being said, 300 was pretty awesome and I will be seeing Grindhouse).
How much can we process? While the undertones of Bacon’s work are enough to make you want to run out and smash into the Chihuly sculpture, it’s the mastery of the Old Master that brought a high-def painting into people’s heads. Its commonplace to see a severed head in media (there’s one in Entertainment Weekly this week, look for it at your dentist’s office), but rare to see in it such gothic, biblical, realistic ways. TVs and movie screens are points of light, whereas Goliath defeated head can be felt, touched, probed, punched, and kicked.
Am I advocating or encouraging such acts? No. I had to think about it a few days ago but now I’m positive it’s no. Historical artifacts should be preserved, we must learn from the past to build upon it. The thing that I worry about is, what are we building upon now? The stones have been getting smaller and smaller, and we’ve reached a kind of leveling off at our ability to understand and process images. It seems like a reformation will happen. How much of this will be a tight fist and control and how much will be self-control remains to be seen.
*Reports from the underbelly say that MAM has security cameras, and may have caught the action but are not sharing with anyone….
