A Petty Vandal's Petty Conquista of "Art"

Left: Woman in a Red Chair. Picasso, 1929
Menil Collection. Houston Texas
Right: Defaced painting

Here is the story of an "artist" defacing the work of another "artist."

Houston cops are hunting for a dapper art vandal who was caught on video spray-painting a priceless Pablo Picasso painting at a museum last week.

Cell phone video shot by a visitor at the Menil Collection Wednesday showed a suave hoodlum in a dark suit jacket and sunglasses spray-painting a stencil over the Spanish master's Woman in a Red Armchair...The brazen graffiti writer sprayed a picture of a bullfighter slaying a bull and the word "Conquista" on the painting.

The witness who shot the video told KPRC television that he confronted the well-dressed vandal afterward.

The vandal said he was an up-and-coming artist and desecrated the artwork in order to honor Picasso, the witness, who didn't want to be identified, told the station.

In this era when "art" is the most scared thing around, it is truly a sacrilege to deface a "work of art," even an ugly and mediocre painting!

But Picasso had it coming. I visited a recent exhibition of his work at the Art Gallery of Ontario, and concluded that he was one of the biggest artist frauds around, and not only that, he was also one of the biggest defacers of art.

It is ironic that another useless, talentless artist should mimic him, to the extent of defacing his (Picasso's) images. Picasso's students cannot be accused of hypocrisy.

But, of course, this vandal only did superficial harm, since all he did to the painting was spray gold (!) paint on it, scribble the word "conquista" and a stick-bull. And isn't spray paint, the modus operandi of graffiti "artists," itself considered art by our connoisseurs these days? Picasso's heirs are pretty lame.

And to make it even worse, this petty vandal was caught on a cell phone! Some museum patron video taped the whole incident on his cell phone and "confronted the...vandal afterward." So much for a Kodak Moment gone awry. I actually don't know who is worse, the vandal, or the cell phone hero, who just wanted another sensation to post on his Youtube/twitter/blog.

Gretchen Sammons, a museum spokesman, assures us that:

'The artwork is currently with the museum's onsite conservation lab. The prognosis is good. But we have no idea when it will be back on display. It's an active investigation with the Houston police.'

The prognosis is good!

I'm working on a blog post on ancient Greek and Roman culture, which I viewed at the Royal Ontario Museum recently (actually, I've been there several times this past month). As I went through the sculptures, I was astounded at the beauty of the work, and specifically the carvings of delicate, gauze-like drapes on these sculptures.

As I looked at these works, I remembered seeing similar translucent drapes on one of Picasso's paintings at the AGO. It is on Les Demoiselles Avignon, a painting that distorted nude female figures and covered them with a gauze-like material. Someone as clever as Picasso (and as talent-bereft) could have only got the idea from these classic Greek and Roman sculptures. And of course, rather than marvel at the beauty of these sculptures and elevate them, the petty, envious Picasso can only desecrate and destroy them. And his are not goddesses, as the Greeks and Romans portray, but prostitutes from a whorehouse in Spain.

At one time, destroying or effacing the works of art of a civilization would be enough to start wars. And no, Woman in a Red Chair is not art, which the reason why the only irate person was a cell phone "artist" who just wanted the images for his personal gallery on twitter.