Dan Harlow

When it comes to Monet, I’m of two minds. While I recognize his brilliance as a painter and appreciate the impressionist movement for what it is I also am sick of seeing his paintings everywhere. Hanging a Monet on the wall just seems to scream “I have no taste in art” or “I only like pretty things on the wall”. Just like a radio station that plays the same 10 songs everyday for years on end because the fans only like safe and regular music, Monet is sort of the Clear Channel of art right now - he’s everywhere. If you don’t believe me then the next time you walk into someone’s home that has a Monet print check to see if there is also an Ansel Adams photograph hanging up not to far away and an old French poster for wine somewhere in the kitchen.

Now even if you don’t agree with my assessment of Claude Monet and Ansel Adams, you have to admit that art can arouse strong feelings in people. Art appreciation, even among people who don’t know how to read a painting is a right we all have. Something I like may be something you absolutely hate and vice versa. Even if only 1 person in the entire world honestly finds something to be art then that outweighs the other 6 billion of us who loudly disagree in protest. Art is personal to each of us and what we choose to like and hang on our walls says volumes about us as individuals.

Art is so powerful, in fact, that governments, king, mobs and religions have burnt, stolen, defaced and destroyed tons of it over the centuries. Akhenaten defaced the likeness of Hatshepsut in her own temple, early Christians destroyed goodness knows how many invaluable works of art and writings from the Greeks and Romans and the Communists and the Taliban have a long history of destroying art. Typically this destruction of art seeks to serve the political purpose of control over people - if you don’t let people see dangerous ideas then they can be controlled easier by those in power.

Sometimes art is defaced by treasure hunters and bandits. Seeking only wealth from gold and jewels, famous temples, carvings and other works are destroyed to mine only the valuable materials they are made from. All over the middle east and Americas are examples of ancient civilizations and cities that have been so badly looted that gleaning any sort of useful history from these sites and extremely difficult. Who knows how much history has been lost to time for the sake of pure vanity?

Finally there is just plain and simple vandalism which is what happened at the Orsay Museum in France on this past Sunday. Apparantly breaking in through the a faulty back door, a group of drunk youths entered the museum and when the alarm finally sounded one of them punched a hole in the masterpiece “Le Pont d’Argenteuil” leaving a repairable 4 inch tear in the canvas. Ironically the break in and vandalism happened during an all night festival taking place out on the streets celebrating the arts with public concerts and exhibits.

So for whatever reason you don’t like a work of art, destroying it is just dumb and it speaks volumes about you as a person or group. You don’t have to like something to protect it and feel sad that it has been damaged or worse, you just have to be a human being to understand that art is important to all of us and deserves to be protected.

Popularity: 4% [?]