Artistic Destruction

The Georgia Guidestones are no more.  The quarter-of-a-million-pound granite artwork, sometimes referred to as the American Stonehenge, was so badly damaged by a vandal’s bomb last July that the government toppled what was left of the megalith this week.  

The nineteen-foot-tall granite tablets were inscribed with a message to the future in ten languages, sort of a modern-day Rosetta Stone.  While exactly who detonated the bomb is unknown, the act was most likely motivated by the losing gubernatorial campaign of an idiot who ran on the platform of leaving up Confederate monuments while tearing down those that were “obviously used for satanic rituals”.  Part of the message inscribed on stone was: “Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts….Avoid petty laws and useless officials.”

No doubt it was the attack on useless officials that upset the would-be politician.

In June, a young man broke into the Dallas Museum of Art and smashed three 2500-year-old Greek artifacts valued at more than $5 million.  When he was finished wielding his hammer on the artifacts, he called the local police and calmly announced, “Hey, I’m in the Dallas Museum of Art.”

At left is one of the artifacts the vandal smashed, a 6th century B.C. Greek amphora.  Think of the history that has passed since this vessel was created.  It survived the Peloponnesian Wars, the Age of Alexander the Great, the rise and fall of the Roman Empire and… 

Never mind.  It was destroyed by a 21-year-old moron who spent a total of 12 minutes in the museum after using his hammer to break through the glass of the museum’s doors.  When questioned by the police, he explained that he did it because he was “mad at my girl.”

In October, an American tourist at the Chiaramonti Museum in Rome calmly asked for an audience with the Pope.  When told that was impossible, the man became irate and knocked a 2,000-year-old bust off a pedestal, smashing the piece on the marble floor.  When the 50-year-old tourist saw guards rushing to apprehend him, he knocked a second statue to the floor.

Added to these, consider the other recent attacks on our shared cultural heritage:

• The ongoing debate about whether or not street art by Banksy should be left in situ or removed so the work can be seen in a museum now must deal with a new trend—the graffiti by Banksy is now almost immediately a target by other graffiti artists hoping to get their work in the news.  
• Museums of contemporary art and costumes are horrified by Kim Kardashian’s recent appropriation of a dress made famous by Marilyn Monroe to wear at the Met Gala.  (My distaste of actually typing the word ‘Kardashian’ is mildly assuaged by the fact that spell check has never heard of her.  Wish I hadn’t.)
• An art exhibit at the Musée Picasso in Paris consisting of a blue coat with pockets filled with postcards depicting the works of Picasso was stolen by an elderly woman who had a tailor alter the coat to better fit her.  She was a frequent patron of the museum and did not mistake it for a simple garment.
• 
  Two ‘boisterous’ children smashed a $64,000 glass sculpture of the Disneyland castle on exhibit at the Shanghai Museum of Glass.  The parents’ claim the event was an accident is belied by security camera footage of the parents using their cellphones to record the children smashing the sculpture.
• The historic Spanish steps in Rome were damaged when a Saudi tourist tried to drive his Maserati down the steps, crashing into a wall and breaking off a piece of the travertine marble.  Two weeks later, two American tourists attempted to ride motorized scooters down the steps.  Technically, one of the scooters made it to the bottom, but it was driverless.
• Vandals in the Koonalda Cave in Southern Australia have destroyed cave art that dates back more than 22,000 years.  The authorities are still searching for the vandals.

It is no accident that these attacks on artwork are escalating, since in the last year, public art has been a frequent target of protestors trying to make international news.  The protestors-turned-vandals are usually trying to make some form of statement about the environment, but this in no way justifies the attacks on priceless art.  Not only does this form of protest do nothing for the cause the protestors claim to care about, but it cheapens the artwork targeted in the minds of the public.  In the worst case scenario in which the artwork is destroyed, the vandals have robbed the world of a piece of its history and its heritage.

This year alone, protestors have glued themselves to four different paintings in England to protest the use of petroleum.  The irony that the glue they used is a petroleum product evidently escaped them.  In addition, more than two dozen famous paintings have been attacked, including works by Picasso, Vermeer, and Klimt.  Buckets of mashed potatoes were thrown at Monet’s Haystacks.  Pea soup was thrown at Van Gogh’s The Sower and tomato soup was smeared across his Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers.  A man disguised as a wheelchair bound woman smuggled a cake into the Louvre so he could smear it across the Mona Lisa, though I forget what unrelated cause he was supposedly protesting.  Bedwetting by bald cross-dressers?

We already lose too much art through non-preventable causes like wars, natural disasters, and the inevitable wear and tear of time.  There is nothing we can do about the art that went down with the Titanic.  We tried and failed to protect all the treasures stolen during World War II.  Museums flood and Notre Dame burns and we all suffer.  These kinds of losses that we can’t stop are bad enough without our having to worry about idiotic vandals.

Many paintings have recently been protected from vandals by thick unbreakable glass—so far, anyway.  But such protests always escalate—otherwise they become mundane and fail to garner sufficient Twitter clicks and Facebook ‘likes’.  So, the “protestors” will keep at it, growing ever bolder and using more extreme tactics until, inevitably, we will permanently lose more priceless treasures somewhere.  And these attacks will continue to trivialize the value of such works in the minds of the public.  

The only way to stop such vandalism is to vigorously prosecute the vandals.  Unfortunately, none of the events listed above (with the exception of the Dallas museum incident, which has yet to come to trial) has resulted in more than small fines, partial restitution, or community service.  

Art theft is a white-collar crime and thus it gets fairly lenient treatment.  If you are convicted of stealing a million-dollar Picasso, chances are that you will receive a more lenient punishment that the guy who robbed the local convenience store of $300 and a pack of cigarettes.  You will note that a conviction for an attempted bank or convenience store theft carries the same punishment as a successful bank theft.

There is a reason that these protestors throw soup at Mona Lisa and do not stage mock holdups at banks.

If we treated the theft of art the same way we treat the theft of an equivalent amount of cash from a bank, this would help deter art crime.  We should also treat the destruction of art as severely as the theft—in both cases the public has been deprived of the art.  And so it follows that we should treat the attempt to destroy art by vandalism exactly the same as the destruction of art, and prosecute accordingly.

If we did that, it would send a powerful message that we value our cultural heritage and will do whatever is necessary to protect it.