CHENNAI: The act of defacement has deep roots, beginning with our childhood. Black kohl-dripping baby eyes and a huge black full moon on the cheek/forehead to ward off the alleged evil has completely destroyed several generations’ yearnings to flaunt infant images on Instagram. This distortion of beauty continues throughout our existence in some form, few of them even taking on harmful traces.
Defacing art too has deep roots. It dates back in history to ancient times. Even when art was sheltered within the safe walls of galleries and museums, there have been several instances of people attacking and partially destroying it. If you imagine these attackers to be the typical scar-faced mean men with axes, you are wrong. In 1885, Russian artist Vasily Vereshchagin’s evangelical works were condemned by the Catholic Church and when he refused to take them down from his exhibition, a monk threw acid on six of his paintings, causing considerable damage. So much for the muscled and tattooed vandal of our imaginations!
Our dear Mona Lisa who even managed to crawl into the lyrics of our movie songs hasn’t been spared. She has been defaced on several occasions, with acid, rocks and even a ceramic mug being thrown at her. Now she smiles from behind a bullet-proof glass shield, and yet recently, a climate activist managed to wipe the glass with cake!
If this is the fate of art in secure spaces, one dreads to even think of those in vulnerable public areas. Look at our public sculptures; statues of our leaders are sometimes disfigured beyond recognition — the iconic walking stick and round glass frames often being the only indications of the Mahatma that stood tall on a crossroad. Mother Nature’s exclusive sculptures, her rock formations, bear the brunt with a million proclamations of love carved onto them — Raju loves Priya and Priya loves John — as though that one act would turn the sculptors into apostles of love.
Even the political parties in our country leave no space untouched by their posters announcing their assumed self- importance. Art on pillars of flyovers or public walls have all succumbed to the onslaught of powermongers whose hunger for fame surpasses the need to preserve the sanctity of public art.
No matter the reasoning behind these actions, can defacing art be the solution to anything at all? Vandalising art in well-protected museums will only bring on more walls of security and distance us from connecting with a work of art.
Our public roads will become drab and dreary when bereft of sculptures and murals that provide beauty amidst the chaos of blaring horns in snarling traffic blocks. Our politicians and their ambitions may fade away, lovers who etched their names for eternity on hillsides may part to live their separate lives and causes we believed in so ferociously may die along with the tides of life. Let us not act on these fleeting impulses and destroy the art that would define our civilisation in the future. For, a thing of beauty is joy forever.