Art vandalism: When is a rebel just a jerk?
A Miami painter “has accidentally punched a massive hole in the logic of contemporary art.”
Little-known Miami painter Maximo Caminero “has accidentally punched a massive hole in the logic of contemporary art,” said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian (U.K.). When the 51-year-old activist walked into a gallery at the new Pérez Art Museum Miami on Feb. 16 and deliberately smashed a vase he plucked from an installation by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, he didn’t just win himself an overnight in jail. Ai, after all, is world-famous for destroying art himself. A large photo triptych behind the installation shows Ai dropping and shattering a 2,000-year-old Han Dynasty vase. The vessel that Caminero broke is believed to have been another Han artifact that Ai had defaced by painting it over. But Ai’s defaced vase was worth as much as $1 million because Ai defaced it, while Caminero’s act is being treated by law enforcement as simple vandalism.
“It seems pretty clear that the issue here is ownership,” said Jillian Steinhauer in Hyperallergic.com. Ai owned each of the vases he destroyed, and has chided Caminero for crossing that line. “The irony of it all is too delicious,” said Igor Toronyi-Lalic in The Spectator (U.K.) “An art form that has for 100 years demanded that practitioners shaft society’s norms is, in turn, having its norms shafted,” and the gatekeepers are horrified. Caminero quickly apologized, without backing off his initial claim that he’d shattered the vase to protest the museum’s relative failure to support local artists. Let’s hope Ai decides to sue, said Robert Everett-Green in the Toronto Globe and Mail. “The result would certainly be one of the most entertaining trials of our time—with the artists and their expert supporters arguing about why one kind of art destruction differs, or does not, from another that looks almost exactly the same.”
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
-
'A speaker courageous enough to stand up to the extremists in his own party'
Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
By Harold Maass, The Week US Published
-
How could the Supreme Court's Fischer v. US case impact the other Jan 6. trials including Trump's?
Today's Big Question A former Pennsylvania cop might hold the key to a major upheaval in how the courts treat the Capitol riot — and its alleged instigator
By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US Published
-
Today's political cartoons - April 18, 2024
Cartoons Thursday's cartoons - impeachment Peanuts, record-breaking temperatures, and more
By The Week US Published