Bricker, where in the following argument do we disagree?
Art has value to people other than the owner.
Anyone who destroys a piece of art has taken something away from those people.
This violates our notion of justice, and requires the destroyer to make those people whole.
It would be impractical in the extreme for the destroyer of art to individually recompense everyone for their loss, reverse Go Fund Me not being a thing.
Therefore the restitution should be made to the people as a whole, as represented by the government.
Therefore, the government is within its rights to impose fines on those who destroy art.
That suggestion exists purely in your imagination.
If my response to your request for an explanation of a specific aspect of museum ethics seemed snarky, perhaps that is because you asked in the same post where you dismissed the entire topic as being irrelevant to the thread. I am not your research assistant, and I am not going to painfully peck out an answer just so you can spring some “Gotcha!” on me. You’re not going to goad me into doing it by claiming that I’m the one being dishonest here.
You don’t seem to have any problems painfully pecking out the answer that you are not going to painfully peck out an answer. Yet any genuine defence of your assertion is beyond you. Funny, that.
Monetarily you’ve still lost nothing (with the exception of the PPV example already given).
However, if your implication is that what is lost is a right or something else non-monetary, I’m not sure it makes any sense to scale it on monetary value terms. The First Amendment applies equally regardless of the cost of the medium.
This argument fails here, with its use of the fallacy of equivocation. Helen Hunt has value to me as a blonde, because I like blondes. But that’s not the kind of “value” we mean when we discuss Ms. Hunt having taken something recompensable from me. Our sense of justice is only triggered when what is taken is the property of another, or when there is a possessory interest from the one deprived. Emma Stone has beautiful skin, but if she defaces it with a shoulder tattoo she “takes” from me absolutely nothing that we recognize as actionable: her skin is hers, to do with as she wishes.
Your argument switches between the meaning of “value,” as an esoteric, generalized interest, and “value,” meaning a recognized possessory interest which society is willing to protect with legal sanction.
Of course I never suggested that you were dishonest. I suggested you made a claim, undoubtedly in good faith, but then found that your source failed to support your claim, and are now loathe to admit error.
I do notice your willingness to soldier on through your pain in ardent and lengthy defense of your unwillingness to type out any refutation of that accusation is illuminating.
Then why don’t I have a First Amendment right to destroy my Vermeer painting, to make a statement about the futility of permanence or the excess of the bourgeois or the impudent use of natural light?
I think you’re equivocating here, I’m afraid. Specifically, between beautiful people and works of art. A poetic metaphor, to be sure, but this is a conversation about property rights and I understand the question of whether humans could be conflated with property was settled in the US rather emphatically. I will stand with you and say that no law should prevent anyone, however luminous their skin, from getting a tattoo. I just don’t understand what that has to do with a conversation about smashing statues or burning paintings.
Art exists solely to have value for all who see it in a way that Emma Stone does not. That is its purpose: to be seen, and to illuminate. As such, while any one person may own the physical piece of art, they cannot own its whole value. The value of art is the property of everyone who sees it.
Again, this strikes me as begging the question. You seem to be claiming that we shouldn’t recognise and protect a possessory interest because we don’t already recognise and protect a possessory interest. From a legal perspective, this is perfectly correct. But you also asked about moral and ethical perspectives, and I don’t see how this objection addresses those at all.
The intangible value I would lose if you destroyed a Vermeer is no less to be considered than the intangible value you would lose should you be forbidden from destroying that Vermeer.
To be blunt, I would argue that the Pieta, for example, offers spiritual solace to all, and that as such I - and the entire population of the planet - do have a possessory interest in it. Not an interest so strong as to allow to me demand a private showing, or dictate any aspect of its display. But just strong enough, collectively, to prevent its owner from destroying it, and depriving us all of that solace.
That’s not equivocation. That’s an analogy. You’re certainly free to argue that the analogy lacks persuasive value, of course.
This is begging the question. You’re asserting, as fact, the very proposition I’ve challenged as the basis for this debate. Why would you imagine that merely repeating it here would lend it any credence? I don’t agree that any portion of the “value” in artwork gives persons who are not the owner or possessor any cognizable interest in the artwork.
True, although it’s not begging the question so much as it’s placing the burden of persuasion on the affirmative side. Moral and ethical standards don’t arise spontaneously – they arise from broad agreement. A group of Occupy Wall Street protesters may be firmly convinced that property is theft, but that doesn’t translate into an ethical or moral imperative for the country at large. Their view is parochial, not general.
I absolutely don’t agree. And since you concede that I have a perfect First Amendment right to destroy my Vermeer to make a statement about artists who use natural light in the way Vermeer did, how can you compare the two on any level? How does your intangible right to simply know the painting exists in any way balance that out?
In fact – do you agree that I could keep the Vermeer locked away in my basement, displayed next to Velvet Elvis and Dogs Playing Poker? I could restrict its viewing to me, my family, and our cat, couldn’t I? Do you pretend there’s some moral or ethical restraint against that?
If there isn’t, then how do you reconcile your claims?
Throughout this thread you’ve simply assumed that absolute ownership rights are the default. But when you say “our general concept of freedom of ownership” whose “general concept” are you talking about? Certainly most of the people in this thread don’t view ownership as some absolute right unfettered by other considerations. Your idea that ownership is absolute and inviolate is NOT a “general concept” at all, but rather a fringe view of a small minority. Why should the rest of us cater to that minority’s odd ideas?
If you, say, owned a house right next door to the VFW, and your teenage son wanted to stand out in your front yard burning flags for no other reason than “to piss off those old fucks next door,” would you advise him that this is “right” behavior or “wrong” behavior?
eta: Or hell, you tell me. What are some of these “additional circumstances” that might make you consider flag burning to be wrong?
It’s a bad example. No one holds a flag to be great art.
If you (somehow) bought the Fort McHenry flag, and tried to burn it, I very much hope you would be stopped.
It’s invalid to try to move from a property dispute to a speech dispute. The two aren’t the same.
I covered an instance where being denied the right to destroy something might have an actual loss-of-value. You can’t do that in speech issues: if you are prevented from saying something – say a protest rally is dispersed by the police – you can’t show any loss of monetary value. Instead, what you have there is infringement of rights. Lawsuits against the government over infringements of rights don’t come with monetary loss claims. The flag-burning cases at the Supreme Court didn’t depend on the loss of money that came from the states’ attempted denial of the right to burn a flag. It came from the First Amendment, not the Fifth.
You are debating two very different issues as if they were the same.
Considering parts of the Parthenon sit within the walls of the British Museum in London, the casino owner, might get a lower price for an incomplete work of art.
Bricker, where in the following argument do we disagree?
Art has value to people other than the owner.
[/QUOTE]
I’m not Bricker (and neither is my wife) but I would say it fails on the first premise.
If by “value” you mean there is a moral duty to allow others to enjoy/benefit from art that I own, I would deny that there is. If I own a piece of art, I am not obliged to put it on public display - I can hang it in my living room and shut the drapes if I like. Or I can burn it or recycle it if I want. If I destroy it, others are not any more deprived than if I just never let anyone else look at it.
Who would detemine which art belonged to “the world”?
I bought a couple of very nice spray-paint paintings last year. They no longer give me any enjoyment.
a) Should I be able to destroy them?
b) Should I simply put them somewhere until their eventual decay?
c) Should I always display it?
d) Should I give it back?