Keep your propaganda out of the museum!

The BBQ Pit
1

This afternoon, Mr. Rilch and I visited LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of the Arts). The modern art section included a really impressive installation. Someone had rigged up a room to look exactly the way a garage would if someone had been spent twenty years or more accruing all the junk that piles up in a garage over time. Shelves and drawers and workbenches, all scattered with odds and ends. Automotive parts, broken toys, empty cans of stuff, those jars of nails and whatnot with the lid nailed to the underside of the shelf so you can unscrew the jar from beneath, a spiderweb with a huge egg suspended in it (brrr…) garden tools…

…and a badge that said, in white letters on blue,

“NO WAR WITH IRAQ”.

Sigh.

Look, I’m not going to state what I think about the current situation, except to say that I don’t believe it matters what I think. I’m just following the news while staying neutral. What’s going to happen is going to happen. Or not happen.

All afternoon, I’d been looking at art (man, I love those Dutch masters!) and without consciously realizing it, I had slowly been reaching a state of serenity and wonderment. That’s why you go to an art museum. It’s not the place for propaganda.

We continued on through the installation, then I discreetly approached a guide.

“Ah…I was just wondering…If it was the artist’s intention, then okay, but there’s a badge in the “garage” installation that says ‘No War With Iraq.’ Is that supposed to be there?”

“Oh, man, there’s so much stuff in that installation…I’ll go take a look…You know, it’s from the early '90s; are you sure it’s not something left over from the Gulf War?”

“Well, it might be…See, there it is.”

“Oh, no; that’s not supposed to be there. Sheesh…We’ve already got cameras in here so people don’t snag stuff…”

“Yeah, well; I know it’s not your fault. Thanks anyway.”

I mean, really: that’s tampering! I wonder what the artist would say if he knew? Even if he is also anti-war, that’s still out of line. If he wanted to make an anti-war statement, he would make a separate one. What makes someone think they have the right to sneak propaganda into a) someone else’s work and b) a public place that is not a forum for political statements?

Again I say, I didn’t object to the badge because it was anti-war. If it had had a pro-war message, I would have been equally offended. I just didn’t want to see anything having to do with Iraq while I was in an art museum. Is there no place on earth where I don’t have to hear about that? Apparently not.

2

uuhhh… i dont think you exactly explained HOW it was tampering?
Did the guard place the badge there?
If not im totally confused…

3

The badge was not part of the installation. Someone, either a museum patron or a staff member, placed it there.

You don’t add or subtract anything to a museum installation. You don’t touch them at all. I asked the guide if the badge was meant to be part of the installation, since there was an outside chance that the artist had directed it to be added, so as to make a statement, though I doubted it. She confirmed that it was not meant to be there, and removed it.

4

Yes, vandalizing works of art is bad, and the person who did that was an inconsiderate jackass.

But I’m a bit puzzled by your insistence on not being exposed to anti-war/pro-war statements in an art museum. I mean, what about Guernica? The Third of May 1808? Portraits of Napoleon or George Washington in battle? If those, why not Iraq?

5

Not pro/anti-war statements in general, AiU; just the one that I’ve been hearing about ad nauseum for the last few weeks. The Guernica bombings are history, not topical. When the inevitable 9/11 installations go up (or have they already?) I will gladly view them as retrospectives. As a matter of fact, when I visit the LACMA, I make a point of viewing a painting of the Czechoslovakian invasion of Siberia. (I’m half Slovak; we don’t get much representation!)

If someone had been distributing the badges outside the museum, I would have forgotten about it by the time I’d gotten past the cashier. If one had been left on a bench or a table in the cafe, I would have glanced at it, then forgotten it in my absorption in the Van der Mies. I just thought that sneaking one into an installation was going over the line.

6

And I need to get some sleep. Van der Mies, indeed…I know that’s architecture…Phooey.

7

People are by nature barbaric hell-pigs. Take it from a museum pro who’s cleaned a few wads of gum and dry bloody boogers from pictures in his day.

Exhibit tampering is rather common, but not as common as people simply reaching out with their greasy grubby hell-pig claws and stroking the art, as if they had eyes in place of their jagged, dirty fingernails.

Of course it’s not, dear (pat pat) … hey, have you seen that Guernica? Hollywood liberal antiwar drivel! Do our taxes help pay for that crap?!

8

[quote]

All afternoon, I’d been looking at art (man, I love those Dutch masters!) and without consciously realizing it, I had slowly been reaching a state of serenity and wonderment. That’s why you go to an art museum. It’s not the place for propaganda.

[quote]

Sure, it is. As Already in Use pointed out, Picasso and Goya’s most famous paintings are works of political propaganda. And what about Kathe Kollwitz’s Never Again War? Max Beckmann’s Declaration of War? George Grosz’s The Hero? The history of art encompasses the history of poltical expression from the Palette of Narmer, a work of politcal propaganda celebrating the conquest of Lower Egypt by Narmer, King of Upper Egypt in the fourth millenium BCE.

With all due respect, a work of art is not necessarily meant to inspire only middlebrow “serenity and wonderment,” but to create rage, awe, lust, anger, and other strong emotions in the viewer. If you feel serenity and wonderment while looking at Guernica, then you don’t understand the painting.

9

But that’s when art has the most potential for change. Heck, some of the most intersting German art is from political campaign posters.

10

Oh brother. Might as well respond to this while I can.

**

Oh, RTA! I just said Guernica is okay!

As a matter of fact, pro/anti-war statements about stuff that’s already happened are a good way to put this whole Iraq thing in perspective. Wars happen, they have happened, and they will continue to happen.

But that’s why I thought what I saw yesterday was presumptuous. What, did they think Dubya was going to see it and fling up his hands saying, “You’re right! I should call this whole thing off!”?

I wasn’t looking at Guernica. It’s not even in the LACMA. I was in the modern art section…let’s see, what did they have? A sculpture called “Breaker”, which was a bunch of garden hoses welded together to look like a breaking wave. Then there was a series of photos called “100 Boots”. This guy took 100 pairs of rain boots and arranged them at different locations in California and New York: “100 Boots cross Fifth Avenue” and like that. Some other guy painted a lot of free-association text on unbleached muslin…I got as close as I could and read as much as I could…it was like a justhink post. There was almost an ocean theme here, because someone else created a buoy out of wicker and rigged up a motor to make it pitch and yaw, while a recording of harbor sounds played. If you watched it long enough, you felt like you were at sea.

This was interesting. This was a new way of looking at things. Then I went into the “garage”, and I was over the moon. It was just like my dad’s garage! Omigod, the artist must have loved putting all this together! This is middle America, right here! This is the pack-rat mentality! This is…

…the same damned thing I’m hearing about every day, on the net and on the TV and from other people. All Iraq, all the time. And the artist didn’t intend for it to be there.. If someone had made a painting, sculpture, or whatever about Iraq, I would have judged it on its own merits (overlooking the fact that it’s way too early for someone to complete something and get it sold). But this was a jarring, unwelcome intrusion.

It also might not have bothered me if I hadn’t been on my last stop. We were going to see the modern art, then leave. So the last note was a sour one.

ARGH! Where’s that jaw-dropping smiley?

11

Well, there I am in agreement. Some dorkwad lefty sticking a peace button on a work of art is, IMO, acting no better than a vandal (or a Vandal, even).

12

I think this is the key point, one that is difficult to argue with.

13

“Someone had rigged up a room to look exactly the way a garage would if someone had been spent twenty years or more accruing all the junk that piles up in a garage over time.”

—Doesn’t sound so much like “art” as, oh, I don’t know . . . A pile of crap? I think I’d be more horrified if someone stuck a NO WAR WITH IRAQ sticker on a Holbein or a Goya. This sounds like one more little piece of annoying crap atop the huge pile of annoying crap.

14

This discussion brings to mind a favorite modern art moment: A few years ago, I had the pleasure of viewing the Whitney Museum’s Biennial exhibit which showcases “the best” modern art has to offer. I would consider myself an art enthusiast, but more than half of what passes for modern art seems to me to be more in the ridiculous joke category, this garage exhibit being a good example. We saw an exhibit which was ostensibly a room from a house, set on a angle - you could look in the windows and see the floor and all the furniture but the whole room was tilted. After a number of such exhibits, we were walking down the corridor of the museum and I noticed a bank of pay telephones attached to the wall, They were sort of old fashioned looking telephones, so the thought occurred: “Are those actually pay phones, or is that an exhibit?” My group did a double take and for a quick minute we couldn’t be sure…

15

It seems to me there are two different discussions here. I am against the war. What the vandel did was offensive and rude, and does more to hurt his cause than any person for the war could do. I am sure that someone maybe able to come up with exeptions, but I am having trouble coming up with when it would ever be acceptable to mess with someone elses work.

The second discussion is art being something that is supposed to make you comfortable. I am sorry. You don’t get to have that. Art is supposed to make you think. It should sometimes make you angry. It should discuss politics and religion and the values of our culture. It should never ever let you just drift off into some calm state of nothingness. The purpose of doing art is comunication. Maybe the nicey nicey stuff that our first grade art teachers made us do is what some think art should be, but that is not art anymore than pablum is food.

16

Holbein is “pablum?” Da Vinci is “pablum?” Sorry, that doesn’t wash. A pile of junk is a pile of junk, it ain’t “art.”

17

What about Kinkade? Is that art or pablum?

18

Da Vincci in his day was very controversial. He learned anatomy by doing autopsies, which was not just illegal but could have gotten him excommunicated. Holbien had to deal with the Reformation. The way the piece in question is described, suggests it is only a pile of junk, but frankly I cant judge it by the description presented. I have to assume if it was in the museum there might possibly be more to it than that, and even if there wasn’t no one has the right to deface it.

19

I tend to think of Kinkade as pablum, although he is an excelent technician. The fact I don’t like it doesn’t give me any right to add to one of his paintings, even if that addition doesn’t harm it.

20

Vandalization of art is wrong - period. There, now that that’s out of the way.

As for the meaning of art - art is meant to make you feel as well as think. I like Monet and Degas - not the most controversial artists in the world. And no, after I look at their paintings, I don’t feel particularly angry or get a true message. What I feel is serenity - and happy, because I see something beautiful. So - is this art? It is to me. And art is in the eye of the beholder.

Susam