Being something of an
minor league art cannibal, I've been observing the recent controversy created when a local Miami artist acted on impulse (or in a
premeditated fashion, depending on
who you believe) and
broke elements of an expensive art installation to protest the museum's perceived lack of community outreach, once again exposing a typical gallery game to light where the well-known are used (and abused) and the unknown are ignored for the sake of commerce.
Plus ca change...
An irony abounds here, however - for the
artist whose work hit the tiles has himself made a name by
indulging at times in forms of vandalism for the sake of a greater point - in his case, to protest the masses' uncaring attitude toward their own cultural history. A fair point, and yet...
The fact that this same artist now decries such highbrow hooliganism holds the irony, and the comparison used to justify his revisionism (
'You cannot stand in front of a classical painting and kill somebody and say that you are inspired by the artist') makes as little sense as a purely destructive act
committed in and of itself. Who is
'killing somebody' here, in the interests of metaphoric comparison?
Further to that,
actual murder has allegedly
inspired art, as
art has been the
inspiration for murder...which thus dooms the comparison to irrelevance, in any case.
It's likely that the art was overvalued for insurance purposes, as the artist acknowledged - and my opinion is that it is overvalued for
artistic purposes also, as dipping an ancient relic in high-visibility paint provides a point (to me)
abstract at best and
nebulous at the worst, much like
another artist who took the mundane and made it
more...
mundane.
'
Fuck off', indeed.
;>)
