Certainly!

Here is a summary of nuggets of information extracted from the provided text, focused on the discourse around vandalism, iconoclasm, and the symbolic significance of statues and cultural landmarks such as the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen:

---

**Nuggets from the Text: Discourse around Vandalism & Monument Iconoclasm**

- The myth of merpeople predates Hans Christian Andersen and holds roots in Black and Indigenous cosmologies, suggesting the cultural symbolism of the Little Mermaid statue extends beyond European narratives.

- **Iconoclasm**, or targeted damage of public monuments, is framed not just as an act of anger or destruction but as an attempt to create new meanings and transformative spaces in society.

Each act of vandalism or statue removal carries its own didactic power, teaching values to the public—sometimes more so than the statue itself.

- Mass media and cultural discourse ask complex questions: Who decides which figures deserve public monuments?

How do diverse and often conflicting perspectives shape public space and memory?

- Vandalism and activism are linked in broader debates about acceptable forms of protest or attention-getting, as exemplified by environmental or political acts that target high-visibility landmarks.

- Acts of damage, including painting of foreign flags (e.g., the Russian flag on the Little Mermaid), are discussed as communicative performances—iconic, visible gestures meant to provoke discourse or declare a stance.

- The endurance and continual restoration of monuments like the Little Mermaid highlight their status as perpetual sites of negotiation over cultural value, collective memory, and identity.

- There is an ongoing shift in approaches to preservation; historically, strict archival practices dominated, but newer generations may embrace more ephemeral or provocative artistic gestures as legitimate commentary.

- The Little Mermaid, like other saints or mythic figures cast in public art, acts as a magnet for multiple, sometimes conflicting narratives, including those of faith, nationhood, protest, and personal healing.

- The act of caring for or damaging a statue is itself recognized as a creative and communicative act, with meaning shaped both by intent and interpretation within its broader sociocultural context.

- Public dialogue about monuments is often lacking or constrained, despite growing recognition of the need for a more inclusive, “polyphonic” culture of remembrance that respects varied voices and historical experiences.

- Narratives around the destruction or transformation of public art often reflect broader struggles—over history, control, trauma, and the right to shape public space and historical memory.

---

These nuggets collectively point to the complexity and multi-layered meanings of monument vandalism, situating acts like the repeated damage to the Little Mermaid statue within larger discourses of history, power, protest, and cultural negotiation.

Here is a summary focusing on the "Little Mermaid" statue as requested, condensing the relevant nuggets from the extract while noting that actual referenced specificities of the Little Mermaid are not directly present in your provided text.

However, drawing from the theme and structure, a typical report on vandalism against the Little Mermaid statue would look like the following:

---

**The Little Mermaid Statue in Copenhagen: Incidents of Repeated Vandalism**

The statue of the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen, created by Edvard Eriksen in 1913, has become an enduring symbol of Denmark.

Over the years, it has frequently been targeted by acts of vandalism, often receiving significant attention in mass media.

Here is a summary of the major incidents:

**1.

Decapitations (1964 and 1998):**
   - **1964:** The statue’s head was sawn off and stolen.

The head was never recovered and had to be replaced with a new casting.

The perpetrator was never caught, but the act was believed to be a form of artistic protest.

- **1998:** The head was again removed, this time discovered nearby.

The vandal was never officially identified.

Arm Removal (1984):**
   - One arm of the statue was sawn off and later returned anonymously to a local TV station.

Two young men were later charged for this theft.

Paint and Political Statements:**
   - The statue has been doused in paint multiple times, often to draw attention to political or social causes.

For example:
     - **1961:** Painted red as a protest.

- **2007:** Painted red again with “The Sea Witch” graffitied nearby, referencing the original Hans Christian Andersen tale.

Explosives (2003):**
   - The statue was blasted off its base with explosives, causing it to fall into the harbor.

This attack was significant due to the level of destruction and apparent planning.

No group officially claimed responsibility.

Recent Incidents:**
   - The base or the statue itself has been covered with various slogans, such as “Free Hong Kong” and feminist or climate-related messages, reflecting contemporary protest cultures.

- Attempts to cover the statue with a burqa or other garments have been reported, usually timed with international debates about women’s rights.

**Motives and Media Framing:**
    - Many acts are attributed to protest, satire, or as statements against the perceived commodification of culture.

- Media representation often focuses on the symbolic nature of the statue, framing attacks as affronts to Danish national identity.

- Security measures have increased and each act reignites debates about public art vulnerability.

**Restoration and Response:**
   - The statue has been repeatedly restored, underscoring its continued significance as a cultural landmark.

- Public debates balance between preserving history and not glorifying vandals, with some seeing these acts as part of the statue’s evolving narrative.

---

This summary gives a chronological overview of major vandalism incidents, the motives, the societal and media discourse around the acts, and the statue’s cultural resilience.

For a precise account aligned with academic standards, specific archival or journalistic sources should be cited as per your dissertation requirements.

Certainly!

Here is a summary of the provided text, focusing on extracting useful nuggets of information related to your research on vandalism, particularly about cultural landmarks and the broader discourse around their damage, closely tied to the Little Mermaid statue (though the text does not mention the statue directly):

---

**Nuggets of Information:**

- There is a recurring concern in the text about the tension between heritage/cultural artifacts and the rapid changes brought by Western modernity.

This reflects a wider crisis in identity, where local traditions and crafts are replaced, leading to a sense of alienation and possible backlash—including destructive acts like vandalism.

- The analogy of pottery and mankind underscores the process of testing and distinguishing value (“good kind of the bad kind appears”), suggesting cultural artifacts often represent deeper societal resilience or frailty, making them targets or symbols in social conflicts.

- The text evokes scenarios of public or institutional vandalism: “if you are in a museum and surprised by a group of people destroying and breaking art paintings or painting the exhibits in orange...” This highlights the spectacle and shock value of such acts, raising questions about the motivations, ranging from protest to frustration or just publicity.

- A ‘thief’ motif is introduced, where an individual justifies vandalism or theft of art on environmental grounds (“artificial colors that pollute the environment...cut from a tree...”).

This points towards a new kind of vandalism, where actions are rationalized as higher moral or ideological acts—mirroring recent real-life climate protests targeting art.

- There is a recurring question: “Is this the right path to change?”—implying a societal debate about the ethics and effectiveness of vandalism as protest or commentary on social/political issues.

- The media and art critiques link vandalism with broader societal malaise: “crisis of the relationship between local cultures and Western modernity” and “complexities resulting from abandonment of tradition.”
- Discussions about defending art and media suggest a shared responsibility to protect cultural artifacts against acts of vandalism disguised as advocacy (“How can the logic of climate advocacy lead to the destruction of a work of art?

That is why we will not stand idly by...”).

- The emotional and psychological dimensions are highlighted—artifacts, like the mother’s lap, are described as emotionally significant, reinforcing arguments for their protection but also possibly intensifying disputes over their symbolic meanings.

- Finally, the discussion touches on the need for “educating new generations on the culture of the image,” implying that misunderstandings or rejection of cultural imagery may fuel acts of vandalism, inadvertently or as a form of protest.

---

**Summary of Socio-psychological Roots and Media Discourse:**
The passage repeatedly frames vandalism against cultural heritage as a complex phenomenon rooted in identity crises, ideological fervor (e.g., environmentalism), generational divides, and the potent symbolism of public art.

Mass media, in reporting such events, often raises questions of motivation, legitimacy, and social impact, reflecting ongoing debates about tradition versus modernity, the role of protest, and the societal value of cultural landmarks.

The analogies and arguments outlined provide insight into the layers of motivation, public reaction, and cultural anxiety that surround acts of vandalism, setting the stage for a nuanced discourse analysis of incidents such as those involving the Little Mermaid statue.

Certainly!

**Questions of Ownership and Interpretation**: who decides what a statue represents, and who gets to interpret or even damage or modify it, are underlying issues.

Certainly!

Title:

Content: In recent months, a surge of environmental activism has spread across the art world, with campaigners going to extraordinary lengths to raise awareness about climate change and environmental issues. However, some environmental activists are resorting to destructive techniques, such as defacing artworks and disrupting art exhibitions, provoking controversy and discussion in the art community. While their commitment to the environment is admirable, the question remains: are these behaviours crucial, or do they harm the exact same cause they are trying to promote?

One of the latest incidents that sparked this debate involves a group of environmental activists infiltrating a renowned art gallery and splattering red paint on a collection of significant and valuable artworks. As well as damaging a well-known and valuable target such as Vermeer’s Girl with A Pearl Earring; the protesters are urging us to evaluate our values and principles.

Climate activists from the “Just Stop Oil” organisation used glue and red liquid paint to deface Johannes Vermeer’s masterpiece in protest of the rising expense of living and the climate issue.

The event occurred in the Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague in October 2022, where the artwork is on exhibition, and was captured on film.

Their message was clear: Art must serve the catastrophic nature of climate change and the devastating effects of human activity on the environment. The eco-activists engaged are motivated by a desire to raise awareness about the climate change catastrophe by shocking and perturbing, the role of big oil in hastening environmental deterioration, and the urgency to save the planet.

Safeguarding cultural legacy

Nevertheless, the art community responded promptly and severely. Many others denounced the activists’ destructive behaviour, claiming that there are more constructive methods to increase environmental awareness without resorting to vandalism. The vandalised artwork, some of which were irreplaceable pieces of art, was viewed as the casualties of an irrational and futile protest that harmed the very cultural legacy they wanted to safeguard.

While the intentions of these activists may have been admirable, their techniques have raised serious concerns about the ethics of protest and the limits of advocacy. Is it acceptable to sacrifice art for the cause of environmental activism? Can the objectives genuinely justify the means when it comes to raising awareness about critical global issues?

Some in the art community expressed empathy with the campaigners’ objective whilst questioning their methods. They claim that art is a global language that crosses borders and ideologies and that defacing paintings simply alienates potential allies in the fight for the preservation of the environment. There are worries that such behaviours could harm the credibility of the environmental movement and overshadow the importance of the message they are attempting to express.

On the contrary, some supporters of the activists believe that dramatic actions are required to break the complacency and indifference that frequently dominate climate change discussions. By defacing paintings and interrupting art exhibitions, activists bring the subject to the forefront and demand attention to a cause that is frequently overlooked or minimised in popular discourse.

Furthermore, by staging their stunts in public galleries, where many visitors have mobile phones, activists could be confident that footage and images of the acts would receive instant attention. By using non-corrosive materials and minimising damage to the works under attack, they avoid the public outrage that wilful destruction would elicit.

Distinct ethical quandaries

In their opinion, the shock value of such activities is a powerful instrument for sparking change and rallying public support for environmental protection. They target to appear to ruin something that people respect and connect with culture. Their idea is that if we don’t have a planet, we will lose everything we appear to cherish the most.

The controversy regarding environmental activists’ methods in the art sector is not new. Throughout history, artists and activists have utilised artistic expression and civil disobedience to oppose injustice and promote social change. However, the purposeful defacement of artwork presents distinct ethical quandaries that call into question traditional conceptions of activism and protest.

As the art world deals with the consequences of these activities, it is critical to participate in a dialogue that balances the preservation of cultural and artistic legacy with the importance of addressing environmental concerns. While environmental activists’ purposes may be laudable, the techniques by which they strive to attain their objectives require careful study and criticism.

In conclusion, recent occurrences of environmental activists defacing paintings and disrupting art exhibitions have sparked a debate at the nexus of art, activism, and environmental issues. While their commitment to the environment is valuable, some activists’ techniques have generated ethical concerns and separated the art world.

As the debate continues, all parties must engage in a constructive discourse that respects the importance of art while also recognising the critical need for environmental action. Ultimately, the challenge is to strike a balance that acknowledges both the cultural tradition of art and the urgent requirements of environmental advocacy in an increasingly interconnected and vulnerable world.

Maram Saleh, a Bahraini law student, finds inspiration in the realms of research and writing.

Here is a summary of nuggets of information extracted from the provided text, focused on the discourse around vandalism, iconoclasm, and the symbolic significance of statues and cultural landmarks such as the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen:

---

**Nuggets from the Text: Discourse around Vandalism & Monument Iconoclasm**

- The myth of merpeople predates Hans Christian Andersen and holds roots in Black and Indigenous cosmologies, suggesting the cultural symbolism of the Little Mermaid statue extends beyond European narratives.

Title:

Content: Actually, Black Mermaid Folklore Has Been Around Long Before Disney’s The Little Mermaid

The moment I feel even remotely vulnerable —be that the fragile morning after an inhibition-free night, the familiar shiver of cold and flu symptoms or the helpless pit of despair that engulfs me when my mental health begins to plummet —you’ll find me curled up on the settee, under a protective layer of blankets, shamelessly watching movies filled with childhood nostalgia. Movies like Disney’s The Little Mermaid (1989) have sat firmly in this arsenal of self-care classics ever since I can remember, enveloping me in a carefree hug at a moment's notice.
But movies that transported me to a place of innocence and ignited my imagination without having to strain to envision myself within these fantasy worlds, however, are in short supply. As a dual heritage Black kid growing up in the 90s, opportunities to feel represented in my escapism were limited. Slightly too old to be impacted by Disney’s Princess and the Frog, I found meaning, and myself, in classics such as Roger and Hammerstein's Cinderella (starring Brandy, Whitney Houston and Whoopi  Goldberg) and Motown’s The Wiz (an adaption of the Wizard of Oz starring Diana Ross and Micheal Jackson). It’s for these reasons that I am unashamedly excited for Disney’s live-action remake of The Little Mermaid, in which Ariel is played by Halle Bailey.
Advertisement
There’s no shortage of discourse on representation politics, the ongoing need for fairer representation in the media we consume and the ways the lack of it impacts people of colour of all ages. This importance can be felt most viscerally via a quick TikTok search of The Little Mermaid where endless streams of reaction videos showcase the unadulterated joy of Black children when seeing the latest trailer.
Move over to Twitter, however, and you’ll likely be bombarded by bigotry and bias. The hashtag #NotMyAriel is trending amongst outrage and disgust at a Black actor being cast to play a fictional character. To quote writer and academic Saidiya Hartman, “So much of the work of oppression is policing the imagination”, and whilst simultaneously comical, embarrassing and triggering to witness, this backlash served as a reminder that no matter how frivolous our sources of joy may be, whiteness will attempt to steal every ounce of it.

The fantasy of merpeople lived in the cosmologies of our Black and indigenous ancestors long before Hans Christian Anderson coined his fable in the 19th century

In decolonizing our imagination —  by challenging the Eurocentric erasure of Black and Indigenous wisdoms, creativities and experiences —we’re able to recognise that whilst the remake of The Little Mermaid is important to many (myself included), we can also find ourselves represented in our own cultural storytelling, folktales and mythologies. We don’t need to rely on the white gaze of Western capitalism to feel seen and heard. In letting go of that gaze, we are reminded that the fantasy of merpeople lived in the cosmologies of our Black and indigenous ancestors long before Hans Christian Anderson coined his fable in the 19th century, and certainly before Disney offered our generation a capitalist mascot in their 1989 animated adaptation.
Advertisement
“All children, irrespective of race, creed, religion, deserve to see themselves reflected in books and films. We owe it to their self-esteem, to their creativity, to their imaginations. The imagination of a child is boundless, and it is the imaginations of this current generation of children that will ultimately provide solutions to some of the most pressing crises faced by the world today,” writer and doctoral candidate at the University of Cambridge, Mary Ononokpono tells Unbothered.
A final year doctoral candidate, Mary’s ongoing research into the lives of coastal Biafran women during the Atlantic Age and Age of Abolition has sparked an informal interest in the ways that pre-colonial African communities were informed by a belief in and fear of water spirits. Known colloquially as ‘Orishas’ or ‘Ndem’ these deities were thought to have been sent by a supreme or higher god to populate, protect and service the earth, and continue to be worshipped today.
“Racial injustice is ultimately rooted in historical illiteracy. If people don’t understand how we got to this point as a society, injustice will persist. In that respect, the decolonization of the cosmologies, mythologies and folklore of Black Atlantic societies has a really important part to play” she continues.
Some pre-colonial water spirits include Yemaya — a goddess of the ocean, who, legend has it, created the seven seas. Believed to be a fierce protector of women, this water spirit is still worshipped across the world,such as by those of Santería faith in Cuba who were transported across waters during the transatlantic slave trade. It is said that to connect with Yemaya, holding a shell to our ears will carry her messages in the sound of waves.
Advertisement
Another pre-colonial deity is Oshun, the goddess of divinity, femininity, fertility, beauty and love. Considered to be one of the most powerful orishas, she’s both heralded as the nurturer of humanity and feared as a benevolent being, whose earthly punishments come in the forms of floods and droughts. In Nigeria, annual celebrations continue to take place along its Oshun river, where pilgrims pay homage, make sacrifices, and ask the deity to grant wealth, health and happiness. Often depicted in yellow robes, Oshun is rumoured to be the ethereal muse behind Beyonce’s numerous works, referenced in both the lyrics and symbolisms of her visual album Lemonade and her ode to the African diaspora, Black is King
Photo by YAMIL LAGE/AFP/Getty Images.
A follower of the Orisha sea goddess Yemaya, of the Yoruba religion, gives offerings at Havana's harbour during the Yemaya Day celebrations in Cuba
Elsewhere in Brazil, the Tupi people celebrate Iara, commonly referred to as “the Lady of the Lake”. A great warrior who was betrayed by her brothers, Iara is a water spirit with a princess-like origin story — minus the damsel in distress trope. Often likened to other South American tales of sea witches and goddesses, over time Iara manifests in recent imaginations as a merging of the two, feared and revered for her power to lure men to the bottom of the ocean.
Perhaps one of the more infamously depicted deities however is Mami Wata.  Also known as  Watramama or ‘Mother of the Water’, this water spirit is part human, part fish, and is often depicted as interchangeable genders. Considered to hold the important role of blessing the souls who died at sea, Mami Wata has held cultural and religious significance to the African diaspora for centuries. Mami Wata is celebrated in festivals such as the Epe-Ekpe festival in Togo for example, and is commemorated across multiple artforms; from exhibitions in the Smithsonian and Knockout Centre to featuring as the protagonist in Natasha Bowen’s young adult fiction, Skin of the Sea.
Advertisement
Another work of fiction which draws sources from Indigenous histories is Monique Roffey’s The Mermaid of Black Conch, a book I have read and reread numerous times. Here, Aycayia, a mermaid of Taíno legend, who has the lower torso of a fish and a human upper torso adorned in tribal tattoos, is reimagined. Drawing inspiration from the Taíno population who inhabited Hispaniola (now the Republic of Haiti and the Dominican Republic) and were made extinct after being ‘discovered’ by Christopher Columbus in the 15th Century, Aycayia’s tale is one of colonialism, displacement, belonging, love and violence.
Photo by Education Images/Universal Images Group/Getty Images.
Entrance to the Shrine of Oshun, the water dwelling fertility goddess of the Yoruba religion in southwestern Nigeria
It’s through the honest and respectful retellings and reinterpretations of pre-colonial imaginations that diasporas of colour of all ages can truly see ourselves represented. As an avid wild swimmer who has always felt an affinity and attraction to merpeople despite being relatively disinterested in fantasy and sci-fi genres, I feel more at home in these nature-adoring narratives that offer an insight into my heritage than I ever have in any Disney movie.

Chantay is a London-based tattoo artist who specialises in Black depictions of ethereal deities. Her merpeople, fairies, cupids and nymphs sit amongst rockpools, toadstools and flowerbeds, sporting voluminous afros, cascading dreadlocks and woven cornrows.

It's for these reasons that I’d always craved a mermaid tattoo, but after one wildly uncomfortable experience involving a white tattooist and a failed attempt at depicting afro hair, I’ve been cautious of finding an artist who could dream up a mermaid that actually looks like me. So, when I stumbled across Chantay Blue’s Instagram I was overjoyed! Chantay is a London-based tattoo artist who specialises in Black depictions of ethereal deities. Her merpeople, fairies, cupids and nymphs sit amongst rockpools, toadstools and flowerbeds, sporting voluminous afros, cascading dreadlocks and woven cornrows. Earlier this year, I had the honour of getting one of Chantay’s merpeople inked on my forearm. There she sits, glistening as bubbles rise around her, her billowing curls trailing to the part of her waist where scales meet skin.
Advertisement
Catching up over Zoom, Chantay and I discuss her approach to tattooing — itself a form of expression rooted in Indigenous practices that predates colonialism — and its revolutionary potential to reclaim a sense of identity and belonging.  “When you get artwork tattooed on your skin you want something beautiful, something that reflects what beauty is to you, but most of the time we’re only offered images of white faces and features,” she says.
“All this does is reinforce the same beauty stereotypes that were forced on us in stories about merpeople and fairies when we were growing up. It doesn’t sit right with me, that you go for a beautiful tattoo and a white artist inks another white person on your arm or leg,”  she continues, “I want people to be able to see their own beauty in my tattoos — it helps me feel beautiful when I’m drawing these stunning creatures that look like me too. I think it speaks to my inner child who was always into mermaids, but never saw myself in them.”

Through a decolonizing lens we can reclaim our voices, stories, perspectives and imaginations and enjoy a blockbuster movie for what it is...

Whether through feature-length movies, fictional novels, tattoos, exhibitions, music or oral histories, when we are able to access ourselves in our own cultural storytelling, we’re reminded that we never needed the approval of whiteness to do so. With the racist rantings of grown adults on social media reframed as inconsequential white noise, we can also relinquish ourselves from the politics of representation, and no longer rely on white-dominated industries to dictate when and how our valid need to feel seen is met. Much like the ways that Ursula steals the voice of Ariel in the classic story, the commercialised capitalist legacies of colonialism silence the narratives of our ancestors. Through a decolonizing lens, we can reclaim our voices, stories, perspectives and imaginations and enjoy a blockbuster movie for what it is, without feeling uncomfortably reliant on it to speak to our sense of self. So, whilst you’ll most certainly find me tucked up on the sofa, my cat secured in the little spoon position, embracing the 2023 remake with childlike wonderment, I can’t help but wonder: wouldn’t it have been nice if we could’ve seen the tales of our own water spirits — Aycayia’s, Mama Wata’s or Oshun’s perhaps — depicted on the big screen too?
This article was originally published to Unbothered UK

More from Spirit

R29 Original Series

Advertisement

- **Iconoclasm**, or targeted damage of public monuments, is framed not just as an act of anger or destruction but as an attempt to create new meanings and transformative spaces in society.

Title:

Content: Smashing statues

Iconoclasm isn’t just an expression of anger. It’s how we try to make new worlds.
February 17, 2023
(Source image from Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)

Sometimes, bored indifference can sting worse than outright hostility. I was telling a friend about my present book project, The Storm of Images, which concerns the iconoclasm struggle in the Byzantine Empire during the eighth and ninth centuries. In my view, it’s a pivotal moment in the definition of Eastern and Western Christian traditions, so I was somewhat deflated when my friend asked, in effect, Why on earth would you want to do that? It’s so long ago, and the whole story is, well, Byzantine, a word that through the centuries has acquired plenty of negative baggage.

Fortunately, I was able to articulate a response that went beyond the simply defensive. In fact, I would argue, the whole story of iconoclasm is of perennial significance, a fact that should be as obvious today as in any previous era. Not only is smashing images an absolutely standard and recurring part of what societies do, but it is a fundamental part of religious sensibility, and by no means only for Christians. Simply put, it’s the way that we try to make new worlds.

Image smashing arises from two distinct impulses. Some iconoclasm grows out of hatred of a particular individual or the beliefs and causes that they represent. Here the smashers are striking at the figures represented, seeking to purge their memories as evil and unwanted. Such were the attacks on Soviet and communist images following the collapse of the Eastern bloc in 1989. More recently, in the United States, we see assaults on statues of Confederate heroes such as Nathan Bedford Forrest or Robert E. Lee. Through attacks on objects, activists are attacking the larger causes represented by those images. The United States has, since 2020, experienced a historically very sizable and socially transformative outbreak of iconoclasm, which has been echoed around the world.

Other smashers may truly venerate or love the individuals depicted, but they reject the depiction itself. In this category, far from condemning the figure represented, activists are driven by the exalted view that they have of that person, and they are rather agitated by the very notion of representing them in material or visual form. Such representation is thought impossible, the attempt evil or blasphemous. Any form of worship or prayer directed at objects is unacceptable, and it is futile to draw distinctions between worship and veneration, of praying to a material thing as opposed to praying through it. This attitude, this rejection of material images as such, was a fundamental driving force in the European Reformation—one at least as important as any particular theological doctrine of any given thinker.

The smashing of images is commonly one sensational aspect of a larger package of religious innovations, often of a quite revolutionary character. These tenets might include an assertion of inner spirituality over external or material symbols, along with perhaps a stern rejection of institutional religion or professional clergy.

Iconoclasm coexists intimately with anticlericalism. It is a rejection of existing notions of authority and a quest for whole new groundings, free of the claims of tradition. Depending on the context, the destruction of religious images can be an assertion of the supremacy of secular authority, of kings and governors over bishops and priests. The fact of destroying supposedly sacred objects—and remaining unharmed—sends a powerful message about the futility of those objects. If they are so potent, why can they not even protect themselves?

For both categories of iconoclast, their achievement lies not in destroying a given statue or altarpiece but in asserting the power to do so, against the power of the old order that hitherto had been its shield and defender. To strike at a statue or image—to bring down a Confederate general—is also to attack the institutions or individuals that erected those figures in the first place and who support their maintenance. It is a symbolic statement of who controls the visual landscape.

Moreover, the mass public violation of older taboos and restraints proclaims the impotence of that old guard. The fact that authorities no longer have the will or ability to prevent the removal of such once-cherished things in itself proclaims the end of an old world and the creation of a whole new order of society or politics. It is zero hour.

Even when the matters at issue are ostensibly secular, such acts of protest often acquire a ritualized format, which has echoes of enthusiastic or revivalist religion. Scenes of the removal of statues or images unforgettably proclaim these moments of revolutionary transformation. They are deliberately theatrical. In a modern context, visual representations of such acts of destruction become iconic in their own right. In their power to teach values, the acts of removal or destruction are as didactic as the images they are combating.

Making images is a perennial and fundamental component of the human religious experience, and so is crediting them with supernatural powers. But no less common is the practice of critiquing or destroying them. Sometimes we commemorate people’s faces; at other times we deface, and with equal passion. In order to be balanced and objective, a hypothetical museum of global religions should properly include its share of hacked and defaced icons, of fragments of toppled and shattered statues. The never-ending dialogue between the two competing approaches, the smashers and the devotees, has often driven religious thought and artistic expression.

John Calvin famously declared that “the human mind is a perpetual factory of idols.” I would adapt that to say that, time and again, history proves that the human mind is a powerful factory of image breaking, of iconoclasm.

Each act of vandalism or statue removal carries its own didactic power, teaching values to the public—sometimes more so than the statue itself.

- Mass media and cultural discourse ask complex questions: Who decides which figures deserve public monuments?

Title:

Content: Navigation

Who decides who is put on a pedestal?

Monuments in public spaces are a politically charged issue, with closed circles of experts often making decisions about who or what gets memorialised in Switzerland. In an opinion piece, a group of academics and curators argues that the time has come for greater transparency and new types of commemoration.

This content was published on February 27, 2022 - 10:00
Philine Erni, Sarah Grossenbacher, Rachel Huber and Vera Ryser

The Swiss women’s strike in 2019 and the Black Lives Matter movement that began in the United States in 2020 have helped to raise questions about the politics of memory in Switzerland. In the country’s public spaces, there is an absence of memorials to women, people with migration experience and people of colour.

The authors

Philine Erni is an art and literary academic and will be part of the management team of Theater Winkelwiese in Zurich from the 2022/23 season.

Sarah Grossenbacher studied history, sociology and spatial planning and is co-head of urban planning at the City of Lucerne.

Rachel Huber has a doctorate in history. She researches and teaches at the Department of Modernism at the University of Lucerne and is co-founder of the Historians' Network Switzerland.

Vera Ryser is a freelance curator, exhibition organiser and literary academic. Among other things, she co-initiated the project Das Wandbild muss weg!External link (The mural must go!).

End of insertion

Instead, it is mostly white male figures standing on pedestals of bronze or stone. For decades – centuries, even – they have represented Swiss progress, innovation and success. What’s often overlooked is that their success and wealth are built on, among other things, the exploitation of indigenous peoples, the keeping of slaves or their support for the slave trade.

Various voices have demanded that statues of such figures be transferred to museums or re-interpreted and their hidden stories be revealed and displayed.

The year 2021 marked 50 years since Swiss women obtained the right to vote. Many academic conferences and media reports, such as one in the German-language NZZ am SonntagExternal link newspaper, took stock of progress made in that time: roughly 70% of artworks shown in Swiss museums are by men; nine out of ten streets named after a prominent figure are named after a man; and women go largely unmentioned in history books.

The need for a diverse culture of remembrance is clear. But how can such a polyphony be taken into account when dealing with the existing monuments in public spaces?

Who decides? And why is there no public discourse?

Depending on their significance, existing monuments in public spaces fall under the responsibility of either city or cantonal heritage authorities. But deciding which structures can receive heritage status – and therefore become officially part of public remembrance – is the responsibility of heritage conservatorsExternal link. Normally these decisions come without public consultation, even in the case of public monuments that hold great symbolic and political significance.

Thanks to political pressure, in the city of Zurich a working group (Kunst im öffentlichen Raum or Art in the Public Space) is examining 26 statues, while the historian Georg Kreis is looking at “just under 40 monuments”External link. These studies are generally welcome, but they still raise questions: Who are the experts in this case and who is being brought on to offer advice? And why is there no public discussion, despite there being a highly political question at the core: how do we as a society want to remember the past?

Regulations exist primarily on the protection and preservation of monuments. Even artworks commissioned for public spaces are created for eternity, barring damage. Can activism alone prompt a swift removal? Vandalism can touch a nerve, but it only solves the problem of unbalanced representation in public spaces in a selective way. As seen with demands since the 1970s from feminists that public squares and streets be renamed, little has changed structurally: the demands are far too seldom complied with to this day.

Yet involving locals in a discussion is both possible and sensible. In recent years, many municipalities have gathered experience with participative processes. These have taken many forms: surveys, roundtables and workshops, even games and guided tours, both digital and in person. Why aren’t these forums being used to talk about public monuments?

What must we rethink or unlearn?

At this point, it is worth taking a look at the current restitution debate, where the art historian Bénédicte Savoy and the economist Felwine Sarr have called for a “gesture of restitution” with considerable success. “Gestures of removal” or “completion” could serve as a good starting point for a new approach to memory culture. They could also contribute to a new type of relationship between segments of society that are over-represented and those that are under-represented – one that gives a sense of community and belonging.

This approach would be based on the view that history, too, is “in constant flux,” as the historian Achim Landwehr puts it: the past, present and future are all related and historical narratives are constructs of the present-day perspective. This concept of history inevitably calls into question today’s assumption that monuments are valid for eternity.

To forge a new culture of remembrance that’s fit for our times, cities and towns need to actively promote a new type of relationship in public spaces, not just to protect their monuments, but also to renew them. The recent call to supplement the statue of David de Pury in Neuchâtel with works that will initiate a critical dialogue about the original statue of the Swiss banker and slave trader, and the Zurich project group to combat racism in public spaces show that Swiss cities are beginning – albeit slowly and within the constraints of existing structures – to take an interest in a new remembrance culture.

This new culture requires existing specialist juries to relinquish their power and make way for more participative strategies and greater transparency. This way it would be possible, at last, to anchor our towns’ public spaces in the present and distance ourselves from the misunderstanding that “heritage” should serve as a lasting commemoration of a system bequeathed to us by the past.

Existing statues would be complemented by achievements and realities that are part of our society but are not memorialised in public spaces – and therefore remain invisible. They include women, the LGBTQ community and people of colour as well as subjects that remain socially taboo: forced labour and Switzerland’s policy on foreign seasonal workers, for example. One pre-requisite for a diverse, intersectional culture of commemoration and remembrance would be that these “others” can participate in political, legal, institutional and cultural life.

Anyone who wants to contribute to this must work on visibility. It starts with basic research. And we have to establish different and more current forms of remembrance: “edit-a-thons” (where authors create articles collectively on neglected historical women for the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia) or hashtags such as #metoo and #blacklivesmatter. Perhaps these are examples of a future memory culture: they are participative and digital, ephemeral and volatile.

(Translated from German by Catherine Hickley/gw)

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of SWI swissinfo.ch.

In compliance with the JTI standards

More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative

Share this story

How do diverse and often conflicting perspectives shape public space and memory?

- Vandalism and activism are linked in broader debates about acceptable forms of protest or attention-getting, as exemplified by environmental or political acts that target high-visibility landmarks.

- Acts of damage, including painting of foreign flags (e.g., the Russian flag on the Little Mermaid), are discussed as communicative performances—iconic, visible gestures meant to provoke discourse or declare a stance.

Title:

Content: Russian Flag Painted on Copenhagen's Most Famous Landmark

It's the latest in a long line of attacks on Little Mermaid statue
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 2, 2023 10:15 AM CST

The Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen, one of Denmark's most famous landmarks, has been vandalized yet again, this time with the Russian flag. Authorities said Thursday that the white, blue, and red stripes of the Russian flag were painted on the stone the statue sits on, Reuters reports. Police said the vandalism was discovered early Thursday. "We are of course launching an investigation to find out who did it and when and how it happened," a police spokesman said, per Jyllands-Posten.

Denmark, like other European nations, has strongly criticized Russia's war against Ukraine. The small statue, a tribute to the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, sits off a waterfront promenade in the Danish capital. It has been vandalized many times since it was installed 110 years ago, AFP reports. It has been decapitated twice and was knocked off its base with explosives in 2003. In 2017, it was doused in red paint in a protest against whale hunting. In 2020, during worldwide protests after the death of George Floyd, the words "racist fish" were painted on the base, though Andersen scholars said they weren't aware of any racist elements in the fairy tale. (Read more The Little Mermaid stories.)

We use cookies. By Clicking "OK" or any content on this site, you agree to allow cookies to be placed. Read more in our privacy policy.
Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X

- The endurance and continual restoration of monuments like the Little Mermaid highlight their status as perpetual sites of negotiation over cultural value, collective memory, and identity.

- There is an ongoing shift in approaches to preservation; historically, strict archival practices dominated, but newer generations may embrace more ephemeral or provocative artistic gestures as legitimate commentary.

Title:

Content: Lyndon Barrois Jr.: Rosette uses a fake heist film to address real issues in the art world | Pittsburgh City Paper

Lyndon Barrois Jr.: Rosette uses a fake heist film to address real issues in the art world

click to enlarge
Photo: Sean Eaton
Lyndon Barrois Jr.
There’s an elephant in the room at the Carnegie Museum of Art’s Forum Gallery – one you see, and one you feel.

An Art Nouveau-inspired painting titled “Kaleidoscope” comes with gold-lined ears and bold primary colors in an abstraction of shapes that resembles an elephant. There’s a leopard, borrowed from the adjoining Carnegie Museum of Natural History, perched on stacked crates. There’s a bookcase filled with real and fake crystals, artifacts, and other objects. In the center of the room is the empty working station of a questionable presence – a possible art forger.

With Rosette, on view at CMOA through Aug. 27, Pittsburgh-based artist Lyndon Barrois Jr. places museum-goers into the center of a space that nearly resembles a movie set, complete with a never-to-be-realized short script for a heist movie about museum conservators-turned-forgers. Barrois uses his solo show, featuring a whole new body of work, to consider an art movement influenced by stolen artifacts and defined by exploited labor. Even when silent, there’s another elephant presence with you in the room: the legacy of colonialism.

Pittsburgh City Paper spoke with Barrois about the origins of Rosette, the ways art is influenced by colonialism, and the complex idea of ownership in museums.

When did you start conceptualizing the show?

The story of the conservative-forger narrative is something that has been on my mind for almost 20 years. And originally, it was going to be just a full screenplay. It was after my own experience of taking a class on painting conservation. I was also really interested in crime fiction novels. At first, it was like, maybe it’s a novel or novella, and then I was like, no, I kind of see it, so maybe it should be a film. I've been thinking about it in the context of a film for a while, but the structure of that story and the character makeup has changed over time.

Originally, the motivation to forge something was to protect it from a greedy inheritor, or someone who was going to inherit it and do something that the original owner didn't want to be done with it. So it was a sort of, like, protective strategy, to keep the real thing safe. And to allow a fake thing to travel in the world or through a market.

Later, I was reading more about the history between Belgium and the Congo, and things just kind of snapped into place, where I was like, this history feels like a good motivator. I'm interested in this history, I want to do something to speak to it.

The use of cinema in your art is recurring. Where does it originate, and why use cinema as a conduit for your message?

It lends itself to the production of physical things because there's already this way that stories allow objects to carry meaning. And also, I think, as a culture, the way that we consume film and television, you know, cinematic media, we're already accustomed to the language of marketing, and how these things are advertised to us and how we have a sense or a perception of a story before we actually we see the actual film. ... I've always kind of been interested in advertising and marketing strategies.

And so, it was just sort of convenient that film production or the history of Hollywood marketing strategy has existing forms that I can play with or alter or rescale, and kind of translate into paintings or sculptures that also fit within or mimic the aesthetics of posters, lobby cards, film stills, physical props, you know, set environments. Playing with that, like the museum is a prop house. The museum has a collection. It’s a way of thinking of a museum collection as a sort of prop house. What can I borrow to assist the narrative I'm trying to tell? To that point, many of these objects are borrowed. It’s a very meta and also somewhat sustainable choice.
click to enlarge
Photo: Sean Eaton
"Masters of Fine Arts," part of Lyndon Barrois Jr.: Rosette at CMOA

Can you talk about the process of choosing pieces to borrow and your goal in using borrowed pieces?

I feel like every visit we made a different, slight alteration or clarifying decision about what we wanted to do, which is really fun. And then once I got a sense of what objects I was using from the museum, then I could decide, okay, what do I need to make, to play off those things? Some things I already knew. I think I knew I wanted to make lobby card portraits. I knew I wanted to recreate at least two objects that I found buried in a Belgian institutional collection, which are the King Leopold II [work] and sculpture of two children playing. Both of these are definitely meant to reference rubber extraction and labor exploitation. This fragmented sculpture of children playing with their missing limbs was obviously a reference to punishment that people who were put to work in the Belgian Congo and who were amputated as a form of punishment, so I wanted to allude to those things without literally showing them.

There’s a lot of allusion here, and I really want to talk about the literal and figurative elephants in the room. Can you talk about the elephant, and unpack the symbolism?

This [elephant piece] was inspired by a series of essays by Debora Silverman called Art Nouveau: Art of Darkness. She is kind of making a case about these kinds of colonial roots within Belgian Art Nouveau, because a few of the more notable designers of this movement in that part of the world were affiliated with King Leopold, or commissioned by people within Leopold’s circle. So it's a combination of design works or elements from [Belgian painter Henry van de Velde] and [Belgian architect Victor Horta]. And there are other visual examples from different designs of theirs, either referencing something that she described as elephantine, or whip-like or vine-like to reference the rubber vines.

It's also a different visual identity that they take on as distinct from different parts of the world. So yeah, just kind of trying to locate that visual lineage, and these designers, and how their relationship to these resources that were extracted by exploitational means were kind of embedded in their design sensibility.

There’s a tension here, between the desire to appreciate art through conservation and the potential harm done, that comes with keeping art in a way different than what the artist intended. Can you unpack that?

I was told by a conservator that there's an interesting shift between generations of artists, where, I would say, historically, in terms of hundreds of years ago, there was a sense of archival practice. And then we move into modern, post-modern [eras] to where people are making all these material experiments, and however the work is, whatever happens to it, they're okay with it degrading to a certain degree.

But now, with contemporary art, I think we're interested in this weird thing of allowing something to decay or change up to a point, and then we want to freeze it there. And that's much harder to do. I think there's one part of a conversation in which value by colonial entities has been achieved by taking things, like resources, raw, natural resources, to fuel a particular economy.
click to enlarge
Photo: Sean Eaton
"Guardians Gate (Farfanicchio)," part of Lyndon Barrois Jr.: Rosette at CMOA
There's also the case in which objects, like cultural artifacts, fetish objects, are taken from a place for their sort of exotic properties, and then, based on the new ownership, get assigned a particular value. Or even the way that something just simply being in a museum collection changes its value or changes its perceived value, which I guess I could say was also something that I've always been interested in, of using cheap materials presented well, or presented carefully, to hopefully change the perception of how it’s valued. I used a lot of cardboard in my work when I was an artist no one cared about. That was a highly critical aspect of my work. While at the same time, I could go to a museum and see a cardboard sculpture that is being so cared for.

So there are these kind of discrepancies as well. I'm also asking the question about aesthetic value. There's a bit of that in the script text as well. Like, if an object fulfills the same aesthetic experience as an original, does it matter whether or not it's fake? That’s just a question that I've always had ... at what point do I need the actual object? If I have a really satisfying image of it, at what point does an image satisfy the use of an object? At what point does an object simply reduce itself to being an image? These kinds of things, I think, are still at play.

What should museum-goers be considering about the art they’re viewing and the conservation that keeps it viewable, that they may not already be considering when in a museum?

Acknowledging the relationship between things that are seemingly separate. Like, what does an elephant molar have to do with [Patrice Lumumba, former Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo]? Actually, one of the people involved in his assassination took one of his teeth. This is where the name “precious gums” comes from. Little things like that. There are just some things, like, when objects are illuminated by historical anecdotes or historical realities or a particular narrative, that there’s a connection that’s formed between them. … How the past impacts the present and the future always. These kinds of relationships are not just cyclical but seemingly unending.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.
Lyndon Barrois Jr.: Rosette. Continues through Aug. 27. Carnegie Museum of Art. 4400 Forbes Ave., Oakland. Included with regular admission. carnegieart.org

- The Little Mermaid, like other saints or mythic figures cast in public art, acts as a magnet for multiple, sometimes conflicting narratives, including those of faith, nationhood, protest, and personal healing.

Title:

Content: Russian Flag Painted on Copenhagen's Most Famous Landmark

It's the latest in a long line of attacks on Little Mermaid statue
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 2, 2023 10:15 AM CST

The Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen, one of Denmark's most famous landmarks, has been vandalized yet again, this time with the Russian flag. Authorities said Thursday that the white, blue, and red stripes of the Russian flag were painted on the stone the statue sits on, Reuters reports. Police said the vandalism was discovered early Thursday. "We are of course launching an investigation to find out who did it and when and how it happened," a police spokesman said, per Jyllands-Posten.

Denmark, like other European nations, has strongly criticized Russia's war against Ukraine. The small statue, a tribute to the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, sits off a waterfront promenade in the Danish capital. It has been vandalized many times since it was installed 110 years ago, AFP reports. It has been decapitated twice and was knocked off its base with explosives in 2003. In 2017, it was doused in red paint in a protest against whale hunting. In 2020, during worldwide protests after the death of George Floyd, the words "racist fish" were painted on the base, though Andersen scholars said they weren't aware of any racist elements in the fairy tale. (Read more The Little Mermaid stories.)

We use cookies. By Clicking "OK" or any content on this site, you agree to allow cookies to be placed. Read more in our privacy policy.
Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X

- The act of caring for or damaging a statue is itself recognized as a creative and communicative act, with meaning shaped both by intent and interpretation within its broader sociocultural context.

Title:

Content: Care is a Creative Act:
An Interview with Arwen Donahue

By Martha Park

I keep slipping out the back door of whatever discipline I settle on.

Introduction

Landings: A Crooked Creek Farm Year (Hub City Press, 2022) is Arwen Donahue’s written and illustrated account of a year on the Kentucky farm where she lives with her husband and daughter. The book’s first page sets up some of the thematic threads followed throughout the book: the way life “interrupts” art-making, Donahue’s sense of distance from her own life as a farmer in rural Kentucky, and the way this distance from—or resistance to—the work of the farm is “cured,” in a way, by the work itself.

Donahue’s previous work is wildly varied. Her first book, This is Home Now: Kentucky’s Holocaust Survivors Speak (The University Press of Kentucky, 2009) collects oral histories and photographs to tell the stories of nine Holocaust survivors who settled in Kentucky. Next, from 2009 to 2017, Donahue conducted oral histories with Kentucky writers on their relationships to the land. The Kentucky Writers on the Land Oral History Project is archived at the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky. Several years into this project, Donahue began painting watercolor portraits of the writers she interviewed for an exhibition titled, Rooted Words: Kentucky Writers on the Land.

She has also published a series of comics in the Rumpus, The Nib, LitHub, and elsewhere on a wide range of topics: farming, her mother’s death, reproductive health, and Donahue’s own experience getting an abortion at the last abortion clinic in Kentucky. Old Man Gloom, a 16-page, full-color Xeric Award-winning comic, focuses on Zozobra, is a 50-foot-tall paper effigy of gloom that is burned annually in Donahue’s hometown of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

As a person who also writes and makes art, I’m drawn to Donahue’s expansive and varied work, and was curious about her experience discerning the form for Landings, in which each short, written entry paired with a painting ushers the reader through a year on Donahue’s Kentucky farm.

Interview

Martha Park: How did you arrive at the structure of your book? Did you begin with paintings, or text, or both? How did you know you didn’t want to make a comic-style book, where text and images were fully integrated?

Arwen Donahue: There was precious little successful premeditation involved in creating Landings. It started out as a sort of technical exercise: I wanted to improve my skills with watercolors so that I could do a responsible job of painting those portraits you mention. I had sort of a grandiose idea that I was writing a big hybrid book—part oral history illuminated by portraiture, part graphic memoir, and part history of the peculiar role that the idea of agrarianism has played in American life.

The drawings of daily life on the farm became a small part of this rangy, years-long interdisciplinary process. After I finished the year of drawing Landings, I kept working on the oral histories and portraits, and worked on farm-related comics. I still had the idea that all of these things might come together in some singular work, but I could not get my arms around it.

After all that, I suppose it’s no surprise that Landings has such a simple form: every spread has a drawing on the recto and an accompanying piece of writing on the verso. Nearly a decade after finishing the drawings, I returned to the structure I started out with, and wrote the text. When I stopped pushing in various directions, it seemed to just fall into that form. It was a relief to work within such strict limits, after years of allowing my mind to wander. I knew each essay had to fit on a single page, and that it had to obey the prompt of the drawing it accompanied, but I aimed to bring something of what I had learned in the years-long process of interviewing, reading, and ruminating on farming, art, community, and history. Since it is in part a book about accepting the requirements and limits of each day, and the limits of the land and our human lives on Earth, this form feels about right.

Martha Park: One of my favorite themes of the book is the sense of friction between yourself as an artist and as a farmer. Early on in the book, you write, “Since we moved to the farm 14 years ago, I’ve attempted to protect that practice by segregating art and farming, by building a moat around my artmaking and retreating to it as a refuge from the farm’s demands. Farming was David’s dream, not mine. Art has been an act of resistance to the reality of my life on the ground. But what is happening here…? I’m still defiant of the farm’s relentless need… but these drawings are also leading me deeper into my life in this place.”

As a mom to a toddler, I’ve had to intentionally work on welcoming interruption and accommodating art into my life, rather than the other way around. As much as I dream about escaping to some hermitage where I can seal myself off from distraction and responsibilities to write, I’ve found that it’s healthier for me to abandon attempts to compartmentalize art, writing, and motherhood in favor of trying, instead, to see them as deeply related and in conversation with each other. At the same time as I seek a sense of integration, I am also aware that living in this tension also seems integral to actually being able to make art and to write about my life.

I’m curious about how the making of this book affected the way you see yourself as an artist, a writer, a farmer, and a mother, and the ways these roles work with each other. I am wondering if you feel like you are in a different place now than you were when you were making this book.

Arwen Donahue: I love these observations, and how you have come to an understanding of needing to work in a way that is not only creatively sparky, but healthy. Art and healing have a mysterious relationship, it seems to me. I see the danger of freighting art with such a utilitarian burden, yet culturally, of course, we have a long habit of setting art too far away from spheres that are considered the province of women, such as motherhood and domesticity. I find in the farm I call home a fascinating interplay of the wild and domestic; of drudgery and fascination; of terror and joy; of scarcity and abundance. Here on the farm, we deal in the building blocks of human survival—and yet I grew up thinking farms and farmers were not particularly interesting. In a world that is so fractured, why not call upon art to make us more whole?

It’s hard to pin down how exactly I am in a different place now than I was while making the book, since making it was such a long, meandering process. One obvious shift is that I am in my 50s now, my daughter is in college, and I am able to claim more time and space exclusively for writing and drawing. I am, of course, grateful.

Martha Park: Much of Landings runs counter to any expectations of what a “year in nature” book or an agrarian story would feel like or be about. On a page when you write about visiting a scenic farm retreat, you draw the junk cars and wheel tracks, the “broken and raw” land you pass along the way. A beautiful painting showing you in tree pose in a field is accompanied by a story about a neighbor telling you to wear orange to protect yourself from hunters on your own land. You draw your daughter in the barn, wearing a red knit cap with devil horns.

I love the way the life of the farm is melded with life that might otherwise seem apart from the farm: arts funding for schools, the freelance work you take on to help pay the bills, tax returns, a dinner of stale popcorn and beer. While you’re drawing and writing about farm life, is it ever hard to avoid romanticizing or aestheticizing your daily views and experiences? Was it ever difficult to really see and describe it honestly?

Arwen Donahue: There is no shortage of memoirs that aestheticize or romanticize farm life, and I had no interest in contributing to those dusty stacks, but I also did not want to tilt the scales over to the side of ugliness and complaint. The fact is that David and I are reasonably well-educated cisgender white people from more or less middle-class families, and cultural and familial support enabled us to undertake our long adventure in farming. In other words, we are among the world’s most privileged citizens.

There is a wide range of experience in what our government defines as “poverty”—on paper, we have been impoverished for most of our farming years, and yet by any reasonable, historical measure, we should be considered wealthy. I have hoped that Landings might add a touch of nuance to our cultural conversations about what both poverty and wealth look like, and what those words really mean.

The way our globalist, capitalist culture segregates art and land is a symptom of our Earth-desecrating disease.

Martha Park: What was it like to go back through illustrations and structure a year-in-the-life book while in another stage of your life entirely? I personally find this very heartening—time seems to be moving at such a warp speed at this stage of parenting, and I worry if I don’t capture something now, I’ll miss it entirely—it is very lovely and encouraging to think about revisiting a time that has passed and being able to make such a cohesive work of art about it.

Arwen Donahue: This is a question I often asked myself while working on the book. If the writing was purely retrospective, it risked being an exercise in nostalgia. Right now, we don’t milk goats and cows every day; I’m not canning tomatoes in the steamy kitchen throughout the month of August; I’m not struggling to get our local elementary school to value an arts education. Yet the past is still present, in many ways. We keep returning to questions we had at the beginning of our lives here, such as: How can we learn to be better caretakers of this land that sustains us? What does a life guided by the limits of the land really look like, especially in an era of radical climate instability? What does success look like here, and what does failure look like?

These questions, embedded in years of work, have yielded some stories I could not have told when I was right in the midst of the toil. It was essential to ground the narrative in its particular moment, while recognizing that I still have something crucial at stake in the unfolding story of my life in this place. If I catch myself thinking that I have some grand wisdom now that I did not have then, I remind myself that I am mistaken. I’m still right in the middle of this life, which has always been and will always be in motion.

Martha Park: You mentioned in a previous interview that you have felt pressure to choose to be either an artist or a writer, and that you finally realized you are both. I have also felt this pressure to specialize or focus on one thing. And while I was initially drawn to your work as a visual artist, I really fell in love with your gorgeous writing in Landings. I am wondering if Landings changed your relationship with writing, specifically?

Arwen Donahue: One of the tricky things about working in multiple forms is recognizing which best suits a particular piece of work. I have just finished a draft of a book that began as a graphic memoir. About a year into the process of drawing and writing, it became clear that I needed to tell the story entirely in words and not concern myself with how to represent it visually. It is a story about my mother’s life and death; more specifically, it is about how her voice was violently stolen from her at a very young age, and my posthumous attempt to reclaim a conversation with her about our matrilineal inheritance. I did not learn a very crucial piece of her life history, the most violent piece of it, until after she had died.

There were so many stories that had been forced upon and taken from my mother (and, by extension, me, and my daughter) that I really needed to write the whole thing out. It took a while to accept that, because I had started to think of myself as a graphic memoirist. I keep slipping out the back door of whatever discipline I settle on. Yet I trust that all of the back doors are connected to one central chamber.

Martha Park: I’m curious about your journey to find a publisher for Landings. How did you make your way to Hub City Press? What was the experience like, finding and working with a publisher?

Arwen Donahue: Landings’s journey to publication was—in keeping with everything else about its creation—meandering. After finishing the year of drawings, I put a bunch of them up on my website. People would tell me now and then that the drawings should be made into a book, and I would agree with them, but I knew it would be hard to find a publisher for a full-color book about a year on a farm. What would the hook be?

Several years later, after publishing a story for The Nib about my own abortion experience and the challenges for rural women and pregnant people in abortion access, I heard from Sam Stoloff of the Frances Goldin Literary Agency. Sam had visited my website—he told me he loved the Landings drawings, and would be happy to help me try to find a publisher. He agreed it was going to be a challenge, but was motivated to give it a shot. He was an incredible friend and guide in the process of writing and submitting the book. But we did not find a publisher, and I regretfully turned my attention to other things.

I gradually came to understand what Landings’s “hook” was: it is the story of an artist’s journey to understanding that care of the land is a creative act, and that the way our globalist, capitalist culture segregates art and land is a symptom of our Earth-desecrating disease. It was not really surprising that no major publisher was willing to take it on. A year or so passed before it occurred to me that I still had some options to pursue in the indie press world. I especially liked what Hub City Press was doing, and I submitted the manuscript to them. Hub City had never published a graphic memoir before, but they loved the book, and were willing to venture into this new terrain. It seems to me that the book could not have found a better publisher—if Landings had been taken on by a larger house, it likely would not have gotten anywhere near the thoughtful attention, care, and hard work that the Hub City team gives to all of its titles.

Martha Park: Could you tell us a little more about your next, forthcoming project?

Arwen Donahue: I just finished a draft of the manuscript recently, so its fate is still very uncertain. The working title is Matrilineal. That story reaches back to my mother’s maternal grandmother, who came to the U.S. alone from Poland as a 12-year-old girl—part of the wave of Jewish immigrants to this country around the beginning of the 20th century. She landed in New York, married an abusive man, and lived in poverty, and the family she left behind was later annihilated in the Holocaust. Her daughter (my grandmother) struggled with mental illness and was abused by her own father. My mother inherited all of this, and had the further great misfortune of being violently attacked as a child. Because of the sexual nature of that attack, her own confused mother burdened her with shame and blame. My mother struggled throughout her life between the desire to speak the truth of her life and the desire to be free of her own history.

Matrilineal is an unpacking of this inter-generational voicelessness. It is me asking my mother after her death for guidance, in light of this history, in how to be a daughter, and how to be a mother to my own daughter. I could not fully ask her these questions while she was alive, because I did not learn the whole story of what had happened to her until after she died, when I read her journals.

Now that I’ve finished a draft of that manuscript, I have returned to work on the graphic memoir out of which it was born. It’s interesting to notice how some stories seem to want to be told in words, and others in pictures!

I am delighted to share that I have just been awarded the 2023 Cornish Residency Fellowship from the Center for Cartoon Studies to work on this graphic memoir. I’m so grateful for the opportunity dive deeply into this work.

Catch up with Arwen Donahue at arwendonahue.com.

Martha Park is a writer and illustrator from Memphis, Tennessee. She is a 2022-2023 Fellow with the Religion & Environment Story Project and a recipient of the William Graves Sackett Fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her work has appeared in Oxford American, The Guardian, Grist, The Bitter Southerner, ProPublica, and elsewhere. Follow her on Instagram.

Read two essays by Martha Park appearing in Terrain.org: “The Last Time,” prose and illustrations, and  “Depth Sounding,” prose by Martha Park and photos by Brandon Dahlberg, in Terrain.org.

Header image by Arwen Donahue.

Terrain.org is the world’s first online journal of place, publishing a rich mix of literature, art, commentary, and design since 1998.

- Public dialogue about monuments is often lacking or constrained, despite growing recognition of the need for a more inclusive, “polyphonic” culture of remembrance that respects varied voices and historical experiences.

- Narratives around the destruction or transformation of public art often reflect broader struggles—over history, control, trauma, and the right to shape public space and historical memory.

---

These nuggets collectively point to the complexity and multi-layered meanings of monument vandalism, situating acts like the repeated damage to the Little Mermaid statue within larger discourses of history, power, protest, and cultural negotiation.

Here is a summary focusing on the "Little Mermaid" statue as requested, condensing the relevant nuggets from the extract while noting that actual referenced specificities of the Little Mermaid are not directly present in your provided text.

Title:

Content: news _ header _ top _ 970 _ 100
Bulat Gilvanov: “Our elite buys paintings somewhere in Monaco ”
“I am disappointed in the idea that culture can be promoted in contact with the national elite.
In order for this trend to change, some tectonic changes must occur, ” says artist Bulat Gilvanov.
He spoke about the lack of Tatar visualization in Kazan, feminism, the Tatar imperial concept and many other things in an interview with Tatar-Inform.
Bulat Gilvanov: “We have a creative potential and a powerful legacy.
But the elites don ’ t know what to do about it. ”
Photo: © Ramil Gali / Tatar-inform
“Even Namdakov quite superficially revealed the topic ”
- Bulat, we would like to talk to you about the Tatar culture through the eyes of a representative of the urban Tatar intelligentsia.
So let ’ s start with specific city stories.
Many Kazan residents and tourists have an opinion that Kazan lacks a Tatar visual.
Do you agree?
And how can this be corrected taking into account, perhaps, the Soviet experience, when various paintings, smalt panels on national themes were popular?
- I agree, such a visualization in Kazan is not enough.
I would like to have a feeling that this is the capital of Tatarstan.
We ourselves declare this, we want to broadcast our national culture as widely as possible both in space and in time, that is, in the future.
In the guise of the Kazan Kremlin, this task was solved, otherwise we see the standard style of modern architecture for many cities.
I don't even know what to call it... post-industrial, I guess.
This, of course, is beautiful and spectacular, I myself like this constructive beginning - glass, graphic lines.
On the facades of sports facilities, shopping malls there is often some interesting decorative solution.
- Do you mean this literalism, when, for example, a tennis racket sticks out from the facade of the Tennis Center?
- Yeah, including that.
That is, there are such things, but I do not remember that there was a national moment in them.
Apparently, there is no understanding that the architectural solution of facades and silhouettes can be revealed with a national bias.
Well, such a task for architects, most likely, is not set.
I do not know who is doing all this, probably Moscow, and until recently European architects.
Perhaps, and therefore, national in these projects is not enough.
- As, say, in the projects of the same Dashi Namdakov.
"Natsmena", but also not a Tatar.
- It's the same story.
Dashi Namdakov is an absolutely wonderful artist, I like him very much, but it can be seen that he did not immerse himself in the topic.
I mean, he does what he does, that's all.
Are you talking about “The Cup ” and the sculptures around it?
- And about the sculpture "Karakuz", installed in Almetyevsk.
It's the theme of the warrior girl that I've been promoting all my life.
This image eventually took a strong place in the national consciousness.
Indeed, there is in the legends such a character - Karakuz, this is an associate of Altynchech.
The sculpture is also beautiful, but again it can be seen that there was no study of the Bulgarian costume - military, national.
Still, I ’ m all for it, she ’ s, again, beautiful, and the topic is right.
However, as you can see, even Namdakov quite superficially revealed the topic.
The cup is the same.
The same dragons and leopards originate from the ancient Turkic animal style, but even this style here, on the Volga, differed from, for example, Siberian.
Was it less aggressive?
- Yes.
Remember the story of Namdakov ’ s “Guardian ”.
Why did it happen?
The sculpture itself is simply gorgeous, but there was an instruction to increase it.
The author increased it, and it became creepy.
Size does matter, though.
The artistic image in a monumental form and in the form of a small statuette is perceived differently.
“I do not see a gap between the Volga Bulgars and modern Tatars ”
- You mentioned the female warriors, and indeed, the appeal to the female image for some reason in the form of valkyrie seemed to have become a common place in the Tatar fine arts.
What does this have to do with it
I often think about it myself.
Is it necessary to promote it, is it not something...
- Artificially?
Not artificial, but harmful.
Just now feminism, which we all once welcomed, is taking on extreme forms, and it can turn into something bad.
Do you want a connotation with feminism?
- No, I wouldn't.
Of course, it is impossible to be against the movement for equality and social equality of the sexes.
But there are physical differences, there are traditions, and they arose for a reason.
They make sense just for the survival of the human race.
- So your warriors - what are they?
Feminine?
- Oh, yeah.
Some even reproach me - she can not, they say, the girl to hold such a weapon, it is unbearable for her.
I just had that task.
At least, I saw these legends through a certain contrast, dissonance: here are warm, fragile girls who are completely unaccustomed to war, and now they are forced to take up cold weapons and stand up for the defense of the Motherland.
The image of sacrifice intensifies, and the feat becomes doubly special.
That is, there is an additional tragedy, an additional conflict.
Let us now turn to your obvious sympathy for the Bulgarian subject.
I noticed that the interest in it, as well as the tendency to identify with the Bulgars, is common among the creative intelligentsia.
Historians have a different opinion.
What do you conditionally answer to a historian who tells you that the Tatars are the heirs not so much of Volga Bulgaria as of other historical periods?
- I have studied this issue and do not see a gap between the Volga Bulgars and modern Tatars.
We speak the same language, we live on the same land, we celebrate the same holidays.
Nardugan, Karga Botkasy, Kaz Omase and Sabantuy are all pre-Islamic Bulgarian holidays, there is no Mongolian component.
In Kul Gali ’ s poem “The Tale of Yusuf ” the same language, some parts of it in the original are even more natural and understandable than the modern literary translation.
Kul Gali wrote before the Mongol conquest in his native language.
Are you sure it ’ s a Bulgarian language?
- Of course.
I don't think the scribes wrote anything in another language.
Some manuscripts indicate that there are two editions of the poem - 1212 and 1233.
Perhaps in 1233, Kul Gali supplemented and processed it.
In any case, he was an eyewitness to six campaigns of the Mongols on Volga Bulgaria until 1236, when it fell.
By the way, I have such an illustration in one of the books.
Here (shows): the author writes that this was composed by the weak servant of God Ghali in such and such a year, in each line he put 22 syllables.
Here is the Bulgarian city, here is Idel, here are the Mongol warriors who are already knocking at the gate.
There is an assumption that Kul Gali died during the Mongol pogrom in Bilar.
Our language has not changed.
As well as our self-consciousness, way of life, basic activities.
The famous historian and archaeologist Alfred Khalikov in private conversations was unequivocally for the Bulgarian version.
“The Russians have a strong association of the Horde with evil, existential threat ”
But these conclusions he voiced in that period, which can be called Tatar historical romanticism and which is long over.
- Yeah, but it's not just Khalikov.
Even at the beginning of the 20th century, when our people were still self-determining, Bulgarism was considered as the main version.
In addition, there is no such potential for confrontation in Bulgarism as in Tatarism.
The Bulgars have been living together with the Russians since the time of Kievan Rus, this state was built and defended by the Slavic and Turkic peoples together.
Berendeys, Kovuys, Torks are all Bulgarian subethnic groups.
Khan Kubrat founded ancient Russian cities, including, according to some sources, and Kiev.
And especially Poltava, where his bet was.
That is, we have coexisted with the Russians throughout their history.
At the same time, the Russians have a strong association of the Horde with evil, an existential threat.
So the Tatar imperial concept is ultimately destructive.
The Russians and I will continue to live together.
The ideologists of Tatarism present bulgarism as an idea that aims at stripping the Tatar people, at its division, but in fact it, if you look at it, has a collective beginning.
I think that the surviving Volga peoples would well accept the Bulgarian idea of   joint existence.
Because, apparently, there was something in the Bulgarian tradition and in the Bulgarian state, which allowed these peoples to survive and live to this day.
– Do you think the Tatars will return to the Bulgarian project?
- I hope so.
It seems to me that our people have yet to make a choice in the future.
– Do you feel that the number of supporters of your concept has increased or decreased over time?
- I think they're getting smaller.
At least in the 1990s, the Bulgarian movement was much more powerful.
All the movements were more powerful.
- Oh, yeah.
If then a referendum on renaming was announced and there was some discussion in the media, thanks to which ordinary citizens would simply think - usually they still live their lives, I do not exclude that they would vote for renaming the TASSR in the Bulgarian Republic.
– When you are called a Tatar artist, it does not cause internal protest?
- No, I am calm about it, maybe even ironic.
I do not lead such a confrontational line as some people in the Bulgarian movement, who rigidly separate themselves from the Tatars and conflict.
“They buy a painting in Monaco for a lot of money to show off at their party ”
A few years ago you said that the art market in Tatarstan is undeveloped.
Has anything changed during this time?
- There are positive aspects, but in general, the trend continues.
There is no stable community in which, say, collectors who know artists work.
Everything happens quite casually.
Paintings are usually bought either on occasion - as a gift, or spontaneously, simply because the thing liked.
There is no such thing as a buyer to study which artists we have and what is worth buying and what is not.
Although it is not difficult to find information now, everything is on the Internet.
It is not necessary to communicate directly with artists, experts or read reference books.
However, this is not the case.
Maybe the Tatarstan elite is interested in our art, understands it?
For the vast majority, probably not.
I am deeply disappointed about this.
Maybe that ’ s why I moved away from exhibitions and projects, from all this movement.
What exactly is the disappointment?
- The idea that culture can be promoted in contact with the national elite.
If something happens to her, it happens as a result.
Roughly speaking, he went somewhere in Monaco, saw something there, he liked it, and he wants the same.
“Do me the same. ”
Or he ’ s lucky right there to show off in his party: here, he took a picture in Monaco, paid a lot of money.
How to change this trend, I don ’ t know.
Apparently, there must be some tectonic changes, something must move in the heads, in public relations.
Because we have creative potential and a powerful legacy, but there is no understanding among the elites of what to do about it and whether there is any benefit in it.
Maybe it just needs to change a generation?
Their children are different, it's a story about a 300-year-old lawn.
- I am not sure, by the way, that if their children studied conditionally in England, they will come with something else in their head.
Well, maybe on rare occasions.
I don't think that's the solution.
I don't know what the solution is.
They should have the understanding that they draw their wealth and power from a national source and that it is a guarantee of the preservation of all this.
But there is no such understanding yet.
So I just stick around and do what I have to do, and whatever happens (laughs).
Let it be unprofitable.
Have businessmen or officials ever bought your paintings?
- Officials do not, and businessmen, although very rarely, bought.
Tatars are a rare case.
Although, in theory, the paintings of our artists can be approached purely utilitarian, decorating their premises and offices.
This is good for business, for the future, and artists will be able to survive and do something else.
There will be a rich field of national culture, it will become denser, better.
At the very top of this understanding, perhaps, there is.
Mintimer Sharipovich is noticeable, if not admiration, then at least respect for art.
Apparently, he somehow sees and feels this beauty, understands its value.
It was the same namdakova he took.
This is either an innate understanding, or it comes from the fact that in Soviet times, art was presented as a really valuable and sublime thing.
“I don ’ t think that the Tatar culture is hermetic ”
Let ’ s move on to the Tatar culture as a whole.
There is an opinion that it is quite hermetic.
- You mean self-obsessed?
Ah, yes.
And that it has no connection with the world cultural context.
Can you say that about painting?
- No.
In general, I do not believe that the Tatar culture is hermetic.
We had a very powerful Jadidic movement that kind of released our culture into the world.
Many even criticize him for this, because such a step, in their opinion, pushed the Tatars to assimilate.
No, our culture, including the visual arts, reacts quickly enough to the global context.
Is there contemporary art in Tatar painting?
Is there any activism there?
- I won ’ t say about actionism, but there is modern art.
There is, for example, Tatar ethno-futurism.
His study, as well as the study of the Tatar avant-garde, was carried out by Yulduz Galimzyanovna Nigmatullina.
She published the book “Late Modernism in Tatar Literature and Fine Arts ”.
This phenomenon is explained there, modern Tatar artists are considered in the context of world art.
But modernism is still late.
What artists are we talking about?
- About modern us, about my acquaintances.
Basically, there is about the Tamga group, which was engaged in the development of the national language.
It consisted of Magyar Khaziyev, Khamza Sharipov, Riyat Mukhametdinov, me.
Kostyak Chelninsky, although there were Ufa artists.
Recently, we do not exhibit, but at one time we actively exhibited and participated in various projects.
All these artists are now alive and well, working outside the group, independently.
In general, we had quite a strong movement at the time.
And there are good, original artists now, including in Kazan.
A bright representative is Ilgizar Khasanov.
A beautiful modern artist, a modernist with a national foundation.
You're friends with Alfrid Shaimardanov, aren't you?
- Yes, at one time and worked in the same workshop, and lived together.
Is it true that artists don ’ t consider him an artist?
That ’ s what he says (laughs).
He is an artist, of course.
When considering his candidacy for the Union of Artists, voted in favor, although there were those who spoke of his "amateur".
Well, he's a real nugget.
It is believed that Bucky Urmanche was very strong as a sculptor, but as a painter he is overrated.
What do you think of that?
- Yes, no, he is a really gorgeous, very versatile artist.
He is recognized both as a classic of the realistic school, and as the creator of an original national language.
And his painting is the most beautiful.
It is painting as such, that is, the interaction of warm and cold colors.
This interaction is like music, it is very difficult to achieve it in painting.
Here is the actual music gets directly into the heart, a person immediately understands it and perceives it, but with painting it is not so.
To achieve music, an artist needs to develop this skill.
“In my youth I thought: I have everything accurately conveyed in the picture, why is there no musicality and beauty? ”
How did it go to you?
- It's very hard.
I finally understood this music quite late.
Even in school I felt that I had a misunderstanding of painting.
I perceived color only as a certain characteristic of the object, as something that needs to be conveyed accurately and realistically.
And the understanding that this is the same “wavelength ” that beats directly into the heart came much later, with practice.
Some people, especially women, get it right away.
We had girls in school who felt painting.
I ’ ve seen them do things differently.
Seems crooked, but beautiful.
And I thought: I have everything accurately conveyed in the picture, why is there no musicality and beauty?
On the subject of female artists.
My daughter entered an art school this year, and as a father, I would like to understand where a young artist can go to work today to feel normal.
I will offer you options, and you will evaluate them.
All right?
The first, the most obvious: to paint paintings and sell them yourself at online auctions.
- Yes, an option.
The second is to offer your services in the cinema as a production designer.
- In principle, the cinema is now being filmed in Tatarstan.
I myself recently called from Tatarkino, offered to participate in their project this autumn.
But I apologized and refused – I did not have time.
I was involved in several film projects and it was interesting.
So that ’ s also an option.
The only thing is, we don ’ t have a lot of movies.
But it is a specific thing.
But you can go to Moscow and get involved in the work, for example, as a decorator, learn all this cuisine and only then pretend to be a production designer.
Or start as a costume designer.
- Yeah, that's it.
There are a lot of theatres in Kazan.
Another option is to draw manga.
Can we monetize it somehow?
- I think so.
Publish in the form of books or monetize via the Internet.
I guess it's possible.
And the last option is to paint urban objects, including private ones.
- Of course.
Listen to you, it turns out like a chocolate story.
I mean, the young artist is all right with perspective, right?
- Yes.
There are other options.
You can do animation.
Maybe there will be something related to the Internet.
However, there is a question with artificial intelligence, those who are engaged in it can take out design orders.
But, I think, only purely utilitarian.
No artificial intelligence can illustrate a book as thoughtfully, artistically, and beautifully as a human being.
To do this, you need to live your human life, use the human experience, your sense of the culture to which the writer belongs.
A relative of mine recently told me about artificial intelligence and said that soon I will be out of work.
I was scared at first, and then I thought and realized that he should think about it.
Because writing programs and applications to artificial intelligence is much easier.
Gilvanov Bulat Alfirovich is an artist, a member of the Union of Artists of Russia.
Born in 1972 in Elabuga.
He graduated from the art department of the Naberezhnye Chelny School of Arts, the graphic faculty of the St. Petersburg State Academic Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture named after I.E.Repin.
Laureate of the State Prize of the Republic of Tatarstan named after M. Jalil.
In 1999 – 2001 – teacher of the Department of Fine Arts of Naberezhnye Chelny State Pedagogical Institute, in 2001 – 2005 – artist-trainee of the creative workshop of the Russian Academy of Arts in Kazan.
In 2011 – 2014 – lecturer at the Kazan branch of the Moscow State Academic Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture named after V.I. Surikov, in 2012 – 2018 – assistant at the creative workshop of painting of the Russian Academy of Arts in Kazan.
Since 2018, he has been a freelance artist.
autoscroll _ news _ right _ 240 _ 400 _ 1
autoscroll _ news _ right _ 240 _ 400 _ 2
news _ bot _ 970 _ 100

However, drawing from the theme and structure, a typical report on vandalism against the Little Mermaid statue would look like the following:

---

**The Little Mermaid Statue in Copenhagen: Incidents of Repeated Vandalism**

The statue of the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen, created by Edvard Eriksen in 1913, has become an enduring symbol of Denmark.

Over the years, it has frequently been targeted by acts of vandalism, often receiving significant attention in mass media.

Title:

Content: Right now
+ 20 ˚ C
Now in St. Petersburg
+ 20 ˚ C
Cloudy, No precipitation
Feels like 18.
4 m / s, zap
751mm
57%
Read more
Traffic jams
5 / 10
Rituals on graves and lost gilding.
St. Petersburg museum workers about the growth of vandalism
1274
Valentin Egorshin / Fontanka.ru
The Museum of Urban Sculpture is sounding the alarm: in St. Petersburg, the level of vandalism is growing.
Experts ask citizens and tourists to save the budget money and stop picking priests sphinxes.
And yet not to remove the gilding from the monuments, because to sell it still will not work.
The sphinxes from the Egyptian bridge were returned from restoration only in December 2022.
The restoration work lasted more than three months.
The sculptures were cleaned, treated from corrosion, gilded parts and painted in the color of oxidized bronze.
All the splendor cost almost 5 million rubles.
For restoration, by the way, the price is not surprising.
As Nadezhda Efremova, a senior researcher at the Museum of Urban Sculpture and curator of the collection of monuments, explained to Fontanka, in such matters, in any case, we are talking about millions.
Repeat the whole process was planned no earlier than ten years later, but in June, damage was noticed on one of the sphinxes.
The cover moved away from the sculpture exactly near the fifth point.
The Museum of Urban Sculpture concluded that the character of the chip is mechanical: “We will not take it to say what exactly they (damage. – Approx. ed.) were inflicted.
A shoe, a hand, anything.
Unfortunately, the pedestals are low, there is a lot of transport and people there.
These sphinxes are among the most “affected. ”
Share
The victim was promised to patch up before the end of the summer - this is the deadline for the end of the restoration season.
For this, you will most likely have to request additional funding.
As it usually happens in state organizations, the budget in the Museum of Urban Sculpture is drawn up immediately for a year in advance.
The hole on the cover of the monument, as the photographer of “Fontanka ” was convinced, meanwhile, is expanding.
By August, it will certainly increase in size.
By the way, the neighbor of the sphinx on the other bank of the Fontanka also had time to suffer: he had chips closer to his back.
Share
“By the middle of this year, we are almost at the point of just 2022 in terms of the number of acts of vandalism.
Last year there were 32 of them, this year there are already 22, ” the press service of the museum says.
The statistics included cases with graffiti, traces of paint, scratches and other damage to the paint layer.
The curator of the collection Nadezhda Efremova laments that in St. Petersburg there is no longer that reverent attitude to the monuments, which helped to preserve them to the present day: “The war began on June 22 [1941], and on June 25 the museum has already received a directive on the urgent shelter of monuments in the city.
All employees of the museum received instructions where to go to get the necessary building materials.
And the Bronze Horseman?
Since the time of Alexander I, the legend has been preserved that as long as he stands in his place, no enemy soldiers will enter the city.
During the historical excursion, the employee recalls Klodt ’ s horses on the Anichkov Bridge: “For many citizens, the end of the war was marked by the fact that on June 2, 1945, the horses returned to the Anichkov Bridge.
Then people finally realized that the war was over. ”
Share
In December 2022, not only the sphinxes from the Egyptian bridge were returned from the restoration, but also the lions that stand on the Admiralty Embankment.
From the side of this can not be seen, but the back of one of them after six months has already been pierced.
“They give the impression of such powerful lions, but in fact they are very fragile.
Inside the lions are hollow and have no supports.
Pushed copper, from which they are made, in thickness from 3 to 5 millimeters.
Almost like a piece of paper, ” explains Nadezhda Efremova.
Share
The damage was discovered after the "Scarlet Sails".
Experts believe that the lion could have been pierced by accident.
For example, a bottle or some other object.
But graffiti, for example, can not be written off on the will of chance.
Most often, inscriptions appear on pedestals that are easy to reach.
Special anti-vandal coatings do not always save: the matter is in the characteristics of the material.
The pedestal of the same Klodt horses is made of forged granite, which is distinguished by small notches.
As a result, the paint is clogged in the pores of the stone and can be removed only with a special compressor and after many hours of work.
It is no coincidence that the disappearance of gold.
According to experts, it is cleaned in the hope of reselling.
Disappointment awaits the vandals immediately: “Gold leaf is thinner than a human hair.
It turns into chips, rubbish.
For what?
Completely senseless act.
The naked surface is not protected, so the monument is again waiting for restoration.
We don't have much choice.
We have to do something — or watch the monuments being destroyed before our eyes. ”
A separate pain of museum workers is rubbing the protruding parts of the sculptures “for luck ”.
Rubbed to shine noses and shoes are both thinning of the metal, and the loss of author ’ s study.
The curator of the collection explains that such a sign eventually leads to the destruction of monuments: “The most reliable protection of metal is natural patina (a coating that is formed under the influence of the natural environment and is able to protect the author ’ s metal. – Approx. ed.).
When it is removed, acid rain, guano, and other contaminants fall on this bright area.
And the metal itself can not protect itself, the surface begins to corrode, corrosion processes develop. ”
Such monuments are also restored, but on the sculptures especially beloved by tourists, the artificial patina can disappear in a few hours.
Share
Rubbed for luck sculptures are found even in protected areas.
For example, in the Necropolis of Masters of Arts, which is also part of the Museum of Urban Sculpture.
Especially visitors love the leg of an angel at the burial of Pyotr Tchaikovsky.
Head of the department of memorial sculpture Daria Zaleshina says that rubbing the leg began only in 2019.
This is probably due to a new urban legend.
Share
Fans of mysticism here in general and pulls: the jewelry on some tombstone thrown, the photo with burned eyes will leave.
As the guardian of the necropolis suggests, all these artifacts are associated with certain rituals.
The trend for magic emerged after the series “Battle of psychics ”, filmed in the museum secretly.
However, the findings, although terrible, do not harm the exhibits.
At least nothing needs to be restored.
LIKE0
LAUGHT0
SURPRISION0
RAGE2
FURNITURE3
JOIN NOW
The brightest photos and videos of the day - in our groups in social networks
Did you see the typo?
Select a fragment and press Ctrl + Enter
report news
Send your news to the editor, tell about the problem or throw a topic for publication.
Upload your video and photo here.

Here is a summary of the major incidents:

**1.

Decapitations (1964 and 1998):**
   - **1964:** The statue’s head was sawn off and stolen.

Title:

Content: In Russia, Marmorica Luca was stolen
From the mountain park "Ruskeala" in Karelia stole his symbol, the statue of Marmoric Luke
In the famous Russian mountain park “Ruskeala ” in Karelia, the statue of Marmoric Luke, a man who is the main symbol of the tourist complex, has disappeared.
This is reported on the page of the park in “Vkontakte ”.
Employees of the complex said that the main Marmoric, the “owner ” of the mountain park, who“ always received guests with great love, respect and warmth ”, was stolen.
The incident was called an act of vandalism and theft of someone else ’ s property.
"We would like to remind you that the consequences of vandalism can be very serious, because it is a crime that causes material and moral damage," the statement said.
Staff warned that the culprits would be brought to justice.
At the end of May, in another Russian city, Ufa, the famous monument to Mite Valera was stolen - the culprits were two graduates of a local school.
The object was considered the smallest monument in Russia.
It was a silver-molded figure of a tick, mounted on a pedestal with the inscription “I just, like you, want to live! ”.
It was not possible to return the monument, but less than a month later a new monument appeared on the site of the Valera Mite.
It was decided to call him Valery II Valerievich.
The good tape is deactivated.
Welcome to the real world.

The head was never recovered and had to be replaced with a new casting.

Title:

Content: Moscow 24
Accidents
6: 40 PM
Home / Stories /
The lawyer compared the damage to the paintings of the student Malevich and Ilya Repin
Activism or hooliganism.
The figures in the picture of the pupil of Malevich “returned sight ”
The story of the damage to the picture of the pupil of Kazimir Malevich Anna Leporskaya at the exhibition in Yekaterinburg was continued.
The man who drew a ballpoint pen eyes abstract figures on the canvas, was an employee of the private security company, designed to protect the paintings.
A criminal case on vandalism was opened only after almost two months.
We understand the details of the history and motives of the suspect.
Photo: yeltsin.ru / ALEXANDER MEKHONOSHIN
Pulled the pen out of his pocket
The incident occurred on December 7 at an exhibition at the Yeltsin Center in Yekaterinburg.
One of the paintings by the student of Kazimir Malevich Anna Leporskaya "Three Figures" from the collection of the Tretyakov Gallery was spoiled.
On suspicion of vandalism detained a guard of the center, told Moscow 24 in the press service of the cultural institution.
Eyes (on the abstract faces of two figures. – Approx. ed.) in the picture was drawn by an employee of the private security service, who was entrusted with guarding the works, – with a souvenir pen “Yeltsin Center ”, which was lying in his pocket.
Anna Reshetkina
organizer of the discussion on the incident at the Yeltsin Center
It is reported that for the 60-year-old suspect, it was the first day of work in the gallery.
Immediately after the incident, he left the scene of the crime and for several days did not communicate with the administration of the Yeltsin Center.
After the incident, the guard was fired.
The work was removed from the exhibition and sent to Moscow for restoration.
In the Tretyakov Gallery, damage from damage was estimated at 250 thousand rubles with the insurance cost of the canvas at 75 million rubles.
According to Reshetkina, the picture has already been fully restored.
The case of the painting by Anna Leporskaya led to the revision of security protocols at the Yeltsin Center.
Protective screens were installed over all exhibits of the exhibition in the gallery.
The exhibition "The world as immateriality.
The birth of a new art "will continue its work until February 20.
Vandal painted a picture for 75 million rubles
Cultural affairs
The police initially refused to open a criminal case for damage to the painting, citing a small amount of damage to the work of art.
However, after the complaint of the Ministry of Culture of Russia to the Prosecutor General ’ s Office, law enforcement officers in February initiated a case of vandalism.
The police interviewed the suspect in the damage to the picture, noting that he behaves quite aggressively, “demonstrating that the whole process is not to his liking. ”
Maria Spiridonova, a member of the Russian Bar Association, told Moscow 24 that the suspected guard from Yekaterinburg faces arrest for up to three months.
However, he can get off with a fine of up to 40 thousand rubles or his three-month income.
At the same time, if the suspect makes amends for the harm caused to him, the judge may terminate the criminal case.
The lawyer recalled that a similar case occurred in 2018 in the Tretyakov Gallery itself with the painting by Ilya Repin “Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan November 16, 1581 ”.
Shortly before the closing of the gallery, Igor Podporin entered the hall and hit the canvas of the standing fence several times.
The man damaged the frame and canvas in three places.
He explained his actions by the fact that the picture, in his opinion, offends the feelings of believers and is unreliable.
Vandal was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison.
Maria Spiridonova noted that in the case of Ilya Repin ’ s painting, the attacker received a real sentence, in particular, because he was tried under a more severe article – “Damage to the object of cultural heritage ”.
Photo: Sergey Vedyashkin / Moscow Agency
Avant-garde and actionism
Employee of the Ural branch of the State Museum of Fine Arts.
Pushkina Natalia Tsibanova told Moscow 24, what is the artistic significance of the damaged painting.
The work belongs to the avant-garde, which has become a transitional stage between classical and modern art, said Tsibanova.
"The work of Anna Leporskaya" Three Figures "is an example of the method of Suprematism developed by Kazimir Malevich - the reflection of the world through basic geometric forms.
We see the figures of people and the landscape, but we can ’ t say anything concrete about either.
So the artist gives the viewer the opportunity to complete the details in their imagination, ” said Natalia Tsibanova.
The art critic noted that acts of vandalism in relation to works of art can be considered as artistic only if they contain a conscious statement, and are not banal hooliganism.
In addition, actionism is possible only in the field of contemporary art, Tsibanova added.
In relation to classical works of art, such actions are unacceptable, the expert notes.
Modern art is created here and now, and very often artists themselves draw attention to their work due to strange acts.
For example, as in the case of British street art artist Banksy, who spoiled his painting “Girl with a Balloon ” on the shredder immediately after selling at auction in 2018.
Natalya Tsibanova
employee of the Ural branch of the State Museum of Fine Arts.
Pushkina
Banksy ’ s as-yet-uncut painting sold for £1.04 million, or $1.36 million, in 2018.
In 2021, it was sold at auction for 25.4 million dollars.
However, it is impossible to compare the story of Banksy and the guard from the Yeltsin Center, because they had different motives, the art historian notes.
“In Banksy ’ s case, the act of vandalism can be considered artistic because it is the author ’ s protest against the system and the market for the sale of works of art.
In the case of the painting of Leporsky, the man himself refers to the fact that he unknowingly spoiled it.
There is no need to talk about actionism, we can consider this act only in the legal field, ” said an employee of the Ural branch of the State Museum of Fine Arts.
Pushkina.
Another argument in favor of the inviolability of classical art is often the inability to reproduce it due to the death of the author.
Anna Leporskaya died in 1982 and will never paint such a picture again, Tsibanova added.
She called for condemnation of the act of vandalism against the painting, because otherwise it could set a dangerous precedent.
close
Contact Us
Feedback form
Attach file
Send
Follow the news:
No more showing

The perpetrator was never caught, but the act was believed to be a form of artistic protest.

Title:

Content: In Russia, Marmorica Luca was stolen
From the mountain park "Ruskeala" in Karelia stole his symbol, the statue of Marmoric Luke
In the famous Russian mountain park “Ruskeala ” in Karelia, the statue of Marmoric Luke, a man who is the main symbol of the tourist complex, has disappeared.
This is reported on the page of the park in “Vkontakte ”.
Employees of the complex said that the main Marmoric, the “owner ” of the mountain park, who“ always received guests with great love, respect and warmth ”, was stolen.
The incident was called an act of vandalism and theft of someone else ’ s property.
"We would like to remind you that the consequences of vandalism can be very serious, because it is a crime that causes material and moral damage," the statement said.
Staff warned that the culprits would be brought to justice.
At the end of May, in another Russian city, Ufa, the famous monument to Mite Valera was stolen - the culprits were two graduates of a local school.
The object was considered the smallest monument in Russia.
It was a silver-molded figure of a tick, mounted on a pedestal with the inscription “I just, like you, want to live! ”.
It was not possible to return the monument, but less than a month later a new monument appeared on the site of the Valera Mite.
It was decided to call him Valery II Valerievich.
The good tape is deactivated.
Welcome to the real world.

- **1998:** The head was again removed, this time discovered nearby.

Title:

Content: In Russia, Marmorica Luca was stolen
From the mountain park "Ruskeala" in Karelia stole his symbol, the statue of Marmoric Luke
In the famous Russian mountain park “Ruskeala ” in Karelia, the statue of Marmoric Luke, a man who is the main symbol of the tourist complex, has disappeared.
This is reported on the page of the park in “Vkontakte ”.
Employees of the complex said that the main Marmoric, the “owner ” of the mountain park, who“ always received guests with great love, respect and warmth ”, was stolen.
The incident was called an act of vandalism and theft of someone else ’ s property.
"We would like to remind you that the consequences of vandalism can be very serious, because it is a crime that causes material and moral damage," the statement said.
Staff warned that the culprits would be brought to justice.
At the end of May, in another Russian city, Ufa, the famous monument to Mite Valera was stolen - the culprits were two graduates of a local school.
The object was considered the smallest monument in Russia.
It was a silver-molded figure of a tick, mounted on a pedestal with the inscription “I just, like you, want to live! ”.
It was not possible to return the monument, but less than a month later a new monument appeared on the site of the Valera Mite.
It was decided to call him Valery II Valerievich.
The good tape is deactivated.
Welcome to the real world.

The vandal was never officially identified.

Title:

Content: In Russia, Marmorica Luca was stolen
From the mountain park "Ruskeala" in Karelia stole his symbol, the statue of Marmoric Luke
In the famous Russian mountain park “Ruskeala ” in Karelia, the statue of Marmoric Luke, a man who is the main symbol of the tourist complex, has disappeared.
This is reported on the page of the park in “Vkontakte ”.
Employees of the complex said that the main Marmoric, the “owner ” of the mountain park, who“ always received guests with great love, respect and warmth ”, was stolen.
The incident was called an act of vandalism and theft of someone else ’ s property.
"We would like to remind you that the consequences of vandalism can be very serious, because it is a crime that causes material and moral damage," the statement said.
Staff warned that the culprits would be brought to justice.
At the end of May, in another Russian city, Ufa, the famous monument to Mite Valera was stolen - the culprits were two graduates of a local school.
The object was considered the smallest monument in Russia.
It was a silver-molded figure of a tick, mounted on a pedestal with the inscription “I just, like you, want to live! ”.
It was not possible to return the monument, but less than a month later a new monument appeared on the site of the Valera Mite.
It was decided to call him Valery II Valerievich.
The good tape is deactivated.
Welcome to the real world.

Arm Removal (1984):**
   - One arm of the statue was sawn off and later returned anonymously to a local TV station.

Two young men were later charged for this theft.

Title:

Content: In Russia, Marmorica Luca was stolen
From the mountain park "Ruskeala" in Karelia stole his symbol, the statue of Marmoric Luke
In the famous Russian mountain park “Ruskeala ” in Karelia, the statue of Marmoric Luke, a man who is the main symbol of the tourist complex, has disappeared.
This is reported on the page of the park in “Vkontakte ”.
Employees of the complex said that the main Marmoric, the “owner ” of the mountain park, who“ always received guests with great love, respect and warmth ”, was stolen.
The incident was called an act of vandalism and theft of someone else ’ s property.
"We would like to remind you that the consequences of vandalism can be very serious, because it is a crime that causes material and moral damage," the statement said.
Staff warned that the culprits would be brought to justice.
At the end of May, in another Russian city, Ufa, the famous monument to Mite Valera was stolen - the culprits were two graduates of a local school.
The object was considered the smallest monument in Russia.
It was a silver-molded figure of a tick, mounted on a pedestal with the inscription “I just, like you, want to live! ”.
It was not possible to return the monument, but less than a month later a new monument appeared on the site of the Valera Mite.
It was decided to call him Valery II Valerievich.
The good tape is deactivated.
Welcome to the real world.

Title:

Content: You will not miss us!
8,336 followers
How and for what the goddess Athena punished the mythical weaver Arachna
“The spider, hated by Minerva, hangs her loose nets at the door, ” Virgil wrote in Georgica.
And it is not surprising that one of the most fascinating stories in Roman mythology is the myth of Arachne.
First mentioned by Ovid, the myth follows the fate of Arahna, a weaver so adept that she was able to summon Athena / Minerva to compete.
Eventually, Arachna turns into a spider to do what she knows best - weave.
Terracotta lequitos with women making woolen cloth, attributed to the artist Amasis, circa 550-530 BC.
Spinning and weaving were the main social activities intended for women in both ancient Greece and Rome.
In a world where the vast majority of women were excluded from public life, weaving was a creative activity that allowed them to gather and communicate.
It is noteworthy that textile production was an exclusively female and important activity.
Good weaving skills were considered an advantage for women of both the lower and upper classes.
As for the slaves, they had to weave and spin.
In many cases, male slaves were also involved.
The Spinners, or the Fable of Arahna, by Diego Velázquez, 1657.
Photo by revistagq.com.
The ideal of a good weaver wife has existed for centuries.
In Homer ’ s Odyssey, many probably remember Penelope, Odyssey ’ s wife, who was praised for her weaving skills.
For Penelope, this artistic experience was not only proof of her noble origins, but also a trait closely related to her femininity and fidelity.
Through weaving, she managed to remain faithful to Odysseus for ten years and protect herself from a group of fans.
In the Iliad, Homer praised Helen of Troy for her weaving talents.
Among other famous mythical weavers were the Moirs, three women who weaved the fates of both mortals and gods.
However, the most famous weaver in Greek mythology and the patron deity of this activity was Athena.
Arachne, Phillips Halle, 1574.
Photo by britishmuseum.org.
The first literary mention of the myth of Arachne is found in the epic Metamorphoses of the Roman poet Ovid.
This story was written somewhere between the first century BC and the first century AD.
It is unclear whether this story was a fictional fairy tale created by Ovid or a popular myth recorded by a Roman author.
The name Arachna in Greek literally translates as "spider".
The taxonomic name Arachnida describes all spiders, scorpions and other octopus insects.
According to Ovid, Arachna was first a girl from Hypaepa in the ancient kingdom of Lydia.
Pliny the Elder in Natural History (7.196) ascribes to Arachne the invention of linen cloth and nets, and to her son Kloster the invention of the spindle.
Minerva, Gustav Klimt, 1898.
Photo by pinterest.ca.
The family of Arahna was not royal.
Ovid notes that she was of modest origin.
Her father was Idmon of Colophon, a purple dye maker.
Her mother came from a simple family, in which there was nothing special.
Despite such a modest beginning, Arakhna managed to become famous throughout Lydia for her weaving skills.
It was so good that local nymphs often left their homes to see the work of the young weaver.
Arachna was obviously so good at weaving that the nymphs not only wanted to study her fabrics, but also to watch her create them.
The beauty of Arachna ’ s art was so great that it was obvious to everyone that Athena (Minerva) herself had taught it.
However, Arachna denied that she had learned this art from anyone else.
In fact, she was offended and even provoked the goddess: “Argue with me, I will not object, even if I get beaten. ”
(Ovid, VI.1-25)
Athena, of course, did not take long to notice Arachna ’ s disrespectful behavior.
But she did not punish the proud and impudent girl at once, but only took the form of a weak old woman and went to meet Arachne, to give her one last chance: “Not everything that old age has should be avoided: knowledge comes with age.
Do not reject my advice: seek great glory among mortals for your weaving skills, but yield to the goddess and ask her forgiveness in a humble voice, reckless girl.
She'll forgive you if you ask. "
(Ovid, VI, 26-69).
Arachna immediately rejected the idea of apologizing to Athena.
Instead, she said she had done nothing wrong.
Her art belonged to her and only to her.
No one else should have taken credit for it, even if it was Athena.
Angry Athena and Arahna.
\ Photo: storonaslov.ru.
And not restrained, Arachna challenged the goddess, looking at the old woman and wondering why Athena did not come to fight her.
Confident that Arahna did not want to ask for forgiveness, Athena opened up.
At the sight of her nymphs and Phrygian women in the workshop of Arahna began to worship the goddess.
Only Arahna remained motionless.
Despite her fear, she was stubborn enough to stay true to her word.
After a few moments, she was ready for a weaver competition, although she knew that nothing good would come of it for her.
Arachna and Pallada, by Peter Paul Rubens, 1636-1637.
Athena began to weave her tapestry.
In the center, she weaved the story of her rivalry with Poseidon (Neptune) for Athens.
A contest she won by naming the city in her honor.
On the tapestry, Athena presented a powerful image of herself in armor with a helmet holding a spear and a shield.
She also depicted the twelve Olympian gods with Zeus (Jupiter) in the center, admiring her victory over Poseidon.
The tapestry ’ s message to Arachna was clear: “How dare you, mere mortal, defy me, a powerful goddess whom even the gods respect and admire? ”
Then Athena began to weave scenes of four myths: Rhodope and Hemus, Pygmy, Antigone and Cynirus.
Triumph of Minerva, Francesco del Cossa, 1467-70.\ Photo:
Common to all these myths was that they told the story of mortals who disrespected the gods and were eventually punished by being turned into something by the gods.
Rhodopa and Gemus were turned into mountains, Pygma into a crane and forced to fight against her people, Antigonus into a stork, and the daughters of Cynus were turned into steps of the temple after he declared that they were more beautiful than the gods.
With these four myths, Athena clearly warned Arachne of what awaited her.
Arachna learned this and realized that her life depended on it.
Her work represented a completely opposite image of Athena.
While the goddesses appeared virtuous and omnipotent on the tapestry of the goddess, they were presented as childish, abusive, unjust and unethical on the tapestry of the Arahna.
Statue of Emperor Augustus of Prima Port, 1st century AD.
Photo by google.com.
Arachna has woven eighteen examples showing how the gods are transformed to deceive mortals and take advantage of their advantages.
These were mostly stories of mortal women raped by the gods, mostly Zeus and Poseidon.
The most notable examples include the rape of Europa, Proserpine, Leda, Antiope, Danai, Medusa, and Mnemosyne.
Arachna's work was a direct challenge to Athena.
It represented a completely different reality than that depicted on the tapestry of Athena, where the gods deceive and insult mortals for no reason.
Minerva and Arahna, René-Antoine Ouass, 1706.
\ Photo: tech.everyeyee.it.
After Arachna finished weaving, Athena carefully examined her work in search of flaws.
However, the tapestry was so perfect that there was nothing to indicate.
In fact, it seemed that Arachna had indeed surpassed Athena.
The goddess could not accept it.
In anger, she destroyed the tapestry of Arahna, tearing it with her own hands.
She then struck Arahna with a loom shuttle on the forehead.
Arachna could not stand it, so she ran and hanged herself.
But for the angry goddess, this was not enough.
Before leaving, Athena sprinkled Arahna with the poisonous herbs of Hecate, turning her into a spider.
Athena saved the life of her opponent, but at the cost of her humanity.
Ironically, Arachna was sentenced to life in weaving.
A painting by Hermann Postumius depicting Athena revealing herself to Arachne and the crowd.
Photo by owlcation.com.
Athena was a patron of arts and crafts, mainly spinning and weaving, and was often depicted with a spinning wheel in her hand.
Her cult was also closely related to weaving, and, according to Greek and Roman mythology, she was the source of artistic skill associated with this art.
In addition, in ancient times, there was a widespread belief that artistic talents are gifts of the gods.
As a result, it becomes clear why Athena was upset after Arahna rejected the goddess as a source of her weaving skills.
At first glance, the myth of Arahna is a classic story about a mortal who crossed the boundaries of divine law and received punishment.
However, towards the end, the same uncertainty remains.
Painting by Francesco del Cossa: The crowd gathers around the loom of Arachna.
\ Photo by zenysro.cz.
Yes, Arachne offended Athena, but did she really offend the gods?
Her tapestry was so perfect that even Athena could not find the slightest mistake on it.
Athena, who destroyed him and then punished Arachna in such a cruel way, eventually begins to doubt her action.
What began as the usual story of a mortal insulting the gods ends as the story of the arrogance of the gods, unjustified rage, and lack of mercy.
It seems that only Athena can cross the boundaries of what is allowed.
By the end, it becomes clear that this story is about the irrationality of divine punishment.
The Triumph of Virtues by Andrea Mantegna, 1502.
Photo by el.m.wikipedia.org.
One can interpret the myth of Arahna as a history of censorship.
In this case, Ovid draws a parallel between the censorship of art under the emperor Augustus.
In fact, it can be argued that Ovid draws a parallel between himself and Arahna.
This idea is reinforced by the fact that weaving was a common metaphor for poetry in Rome.
Ovid, expelled from Rome in 8 AD, is very similar to Arachne.
He saw his work destroyed by his superiors and his talent suppressed.
His fair criticism of power has been unjustly punished, and he has been denied access to the world.
In this case, Arahna is the symbol of the creator who creates beautiful art only to be seen by the censored authorities (Athena).
Ovid describes the tapestry of Arachne in detail because he wants readers to be shocked when Athena destroys it.
Apparently, this is how the poet himself feels when his work is not allowed to reach the audience.
The myth of Arahna and Athena.
Photo by twitter.com.
Although this was not Ovid ’ s original intention, it is not difficult to read Arachna ’ s myth from a feminist point of view.
One look at Ovid's description of her tapestry is enough.
Her work, centered around rape stories, is a fiery criticism of the established order and a powerful voice against the injustice of power.
In addition, it is a real challenge to Athena, the patroness of virginity.
Tournament between Athens and Arahna.
Photo by google.com.
In this reading, Arachna represents a talented, skillful woman who is ready to judge and finally overcome the tradition to discover what lies beyond.
Athena is the exact opposite.
It represents an oppressive patriarchal tradition.
She is a woman who embodies masculine traits (warrior maiden) and, at the same time, an ideal virtuous woman (patron of weaving) and the triumph of public morality over nature (revered for being forever a virgin).
Athena is a desexualized woman who idolizes the established hierarchy represented in her tapestry, and does not tolerate any other opinions and contradictions in her address...
source
If you liked this post, please share it with your friends:
And don't forget:
Subscribe to my Instagram
Link to the original source
Picture of the day
top

Paint and Political Statements:**
   - The statue has been doused in paint multiple times, often to draw attention to political or social causes.

For example:
     - **1961:** Painted red as a protest.

- **2007:** Painted red again with “The Sea Witch” graffitied nearby, referencing the original Hans Christian Andersen tale.

Title:

Content: Little Big presented NFT eggs of Ilyich
Kinder surprise as an adult.
NFT is gaining momentum and gathers more and more people around it – including celebrities.
His digital art objects were created by the soloist of the group Little Big Ilyich – and not alone, but together with media artist and founder of the art group Instigators Denis Davydov and Peppermint agency specializing in the publication and production of NFT projects.
“This is one of the most sophisticated and technologically advanced collectible drops on the digital rarity market at the moment.
Thanks to the efforts of our team and openness to the creative experiments of the Little Big group, we were able to create an actual and ironic project that explores and popularizes the memes of the crypto world, expanding the Little Big universe in a new format and medium, ” says Denis Davydov.
Instagram content
View on Instagram
The collection of 1000 eggs will be available for purchase from December 3 at Opensea, one of the world ’ s largest marketplaces.
This is almost an adult kinder surprise - inside each egg is hidden a unique meme.
The buyer finds out that he was caught only a week after the acquisition of the NFT object.
Each collectible “figurine ” is presented in the form of a video sculpture and its static image.
“Why eggs? ” he asked.
“Here, of course, a huge number of references, because throughout the history of mankind, the“ egg ” has always been near (I answer and laugh, but there is some truth in these words).
In folklore, in legends, in rhetorical disputes, in the collections of imperial families, the perfect form of solid (but at the same time fragile) matter from which the new is born.
But still, the source of inspiration was the story of the bronze sculpture of Constantine Brancusi “Bird in Space ”, its shape resembling an egg.
In the first half of the 20th century, Duchamp and Stahein brought Brancusi's work to the United States.
At customs, they demanded to pay a fee, since they considered the “bird ” not a sculpture, but a piece of precious metal.
Brancusi sued and won, the court officially ruled that "the bird must be recognized as a work of modern art."
Now there is an active debate in the art world whether it is worth recognizing the work in the NFT medium as art, and in general “what the hell is it ”.
We cannot answer this question, but it is quite ironic! ” explains Denis Davydov.
What kind of memes?
Of course, with Elijah in the lead role.
Or rather, with his character – crypto billionaire Ilya, who tries on different images: from mythological to anime heroes.
All these stories are united by the idea of “this is how cryptocurrency changed Ilya ’ s life ”.
There may be another character – Sonya Tayurskaya, the soloist of Little Big.
“My hero comes from the CIS and recently broke out of its borders into a large, transnational and decentralized world.
Jumping out of his Khrushchev, he, like Sailor Moon, flies to the moon.
With him, he takes his faithful dog Shiba Inu to pierce the gray ground of the Earth satellite with a flagpole, on which, contrary to the laws of physics, the symbol of BTC develops - a cryptocurrency that broke the established order of things, "Ilyich himself says about the concept of the drop.
“I really like the approach of Little Big, they are rare representatives of socio-cultural hackers.
After all, it is important for any creator to be integrated into modernity, to feel the nerve of the present.
Someone does it by accident (let ’ s say, unintentionally), someone deliberately participates in current agendas, and someone breaks the code of modernity and integrates himself into it.
Little Big for me is an organic assemblage of contradictions, post or meta – whatever.
And when the guys told me about their desire to try themselves in NFT, it seemed to me that this is the most logical medium for expanding their universe.
The entire drop is built on plots taken from the mythology of the crypto world, its heroes, images and, of course, from memes.
Such an extreme form of irony (and admiration) for this new part of the digital community, which rhymes perfectly with the creative capital of the group, ” Denis Davydov talks about the idea of   collaborating with a musical group.
This is Little Big ’ s first NFT collection, but is it the last?
“While NFT is a new kind of art and business for us, we are actively contemplating the expansion of our universe.
However, we do not yet know what results our collection will achieve, so we do not build specific plans.
We will observe: if everything goes well, then we will do something else interesting!
But in any case, we will continue to introduce new and relevant technologies into our projects, ” Ilyich assures.
You may also be interested in:
How Men Conquer the NFT Market
Tarantino got into trouble because of the sale of deleted scenes from “Pulp Fiction ”
How art has changed with the advent of new technologies
How Russian artists master augmented reality

Explosives (2003):**
   - The statue was blasted off its base with explosives, causing it to fall into the harbor.

This attack was significant due to the level of destruction and apparent planning.

No group officially claimed responsibility.

Recent Incidents:**
   - The base or the statue itself has been covered with various slogans, such as “Free Hong Kong” and feminist or climate-related messages, reflecting contemporary protest cultures.

- Attempts to cover the statue with a burqa or other garments have been reported, usually timed with international debates about women’s rights.

**Motives and Media Framing:**
    - Many acts are attributed to protest, satire, or as statements against the perceived commodification of culture.

Title:

Content: What is contemporary art?
Elizaveta SMIRNOVA Tikhon SYSOEV
19.02.2022
Contemporary Art: Its Brief History, Origins and Meaning
The wife of one of the employees of the editorial office of Kultura describes her experience of acquaintance with modern art, which happened to her a few years ago not somewhere, but at an exhibition in the building of the New Tretyakov Gallery.
“My friend and I entered a completely darkened room, divided into compartments of dark curtains, walked through this maze to the TV screen, on which a naked man was fighting and writhing in convulsions.
Then he stood back to those watching, leaned over, and there were loud characteristic sounds. ”
Of course, the curator of that exhibition could (could) indulgently comment that the girl does not understand the very deep idea laid by the author in this project that it requires special training and some special knowledge, and then fifteen minutes without hesitation would set out (set out) a folding text about those very secret meanings.
But the obvious truth is that if there are any meanings in a work of art, even the most theoretically unsavvy viewer will definitely feel them.
This, in fact, was originally the essence of art - to repeat the act of creation, while evoking in others on the basis of their own life experience unconscious associations and exactly the same unconscious desire for their own creation (transformation).
Or — just imagine — you approach a painting by Raphael or a white-stone cathedral in Vladimir, and you are given a booklet for several pages, explaining in detail why it is actually beautiful and valuable.
Funny, isn't it?
Art was not something, sorry for the tautology, artificially invented.
Neanderthals did not arrange hot theoretical disputes in the caves in order to develop some of its specific forms.
Art for tens of thousands of years has naturally grown out of man ’ s view of the world and how he came into being was synchronized with the growth of his self-awareness.
All the main subjects of art - man, God, the world in which we live - appeared not on someone's whim, but from life itself.
That is why both the Raphael painting and the Old Russian cathedral already contain meanings that we, even if we cannot explain, are quite capable of feeling.
In the subject of this issue, we tried to trace the origins of modern art, which, in our opinion, is very important for the classification of this phenomenon.
The left turn at the beginning of the last century, the need for large-scale social changes inspired part of the creative intelligentsia with the idea that it is necessary to completely break with the “old art ”, supposedly existing exclusively for the elite, and come up with a“ new ”, which will be both art and at the same time an instrument of large-scale social transformations.
As a result, the traditional chain of meanings God — man — the world, which has been the fuel for art for thousands of years, the idea of   constantly reproducing the act of creation is replaced by the meanings of social progress.
Art with the help of a certain set of techniques should catch the viewer on the hook and build into the desired social construct.
It was then that all the characteristic features of modern art were born, first of all, the desire for outrageous, which was a kind of competitive advantage in opposition to traditional art.
However, at least due to the fact that ideas about “social progress ” are constantly changing, this model quickly lost all its ideological baggage.
Modern art experienced its “rebirth ” after the revolutionary situation of the late 60s in the West.
There were several factors at once.
The ruling Western elites were looking for a way to tame the leading intelligentsia and at the same time direct social protest into the channel of “creative protest. ”
In addition, inflated prices for modern art have become a serious tool to attract the capital of the rich nouveau riche of Asia and the Middle East to the West.
However, exorbitant purchase prices are not an argument for a significant part of citizens, for whom the corisk often causes rejection precisely because of the absence of any meanings in it, except for those secret ones that are known to this or that curator.
The very same modern art, maintaining its image “for the elect ” and making good money on the service of the elite, so far, it seems, quite the existing status quo.
The end of the summer was marked by a noticeable “cultural scandal ” in the capital.
The reason is the sculpture of Urs Fischer “Big Clay No. 4 ”, installed on Bolotnaya Embankment next to the building of the former HPP-2 power plant.
For Glyna, the embankment in Moscow is not the first exhibition venue.
In 2015, the sculpture debuted in New York, from where it then moved to Florence.
And everywhere it was accompanied by ambiguous assessments of critics and the public.
The incident once again reminded of the main paradox of modern art.
On the one hand, it has become an integral part of urban spaces: artists actively cooperate with urbanists and architects, conduct joint projects to integrate art objects.
On the other hand, it continues to cause loud scandals and partly feeds on both them and the lack of understanding of the public, continuing to deliberately shock it.
As a result, it often seems to the ordinary viewer that elitism and incomprehensibility are an integral part of modern art, something without which it instantly ceases to be relevant and is lost against the background of the constantly changing information agenda.
Social request
How did it happen that art suddenly became everything?
It's not an exaggeration at all.
Let us recall at least the famous urinal of Marcel Duchamp, presented in 1917 at an exhibition of independent artists.
If in the classical interpretation of the same XIX century, the artist was romantically perceived as a creator, in some ways repeating the actions of the Creator himself, the creator of not only a new meaning, but also a new material object, then Marcel Duchamp and the artists who followed him demonstrated that all material objects can be artistic objects, and the role of the artist himself is to create and increase meanings.
And, apparently, the meanings are applied, social.
“The new role of the artist is to create a socially significant figure whose tasks have accordingly become wider than pure art.
This is a very important process - the exit of various fields of culture beyond their own borders, and to our time it is only intensifying, - says in an interview with "Kultura" artist and teacher of the Institute of Contemporary Art Stanislav Shuripa. - A new role of an artist is to be a "cultural worker", like constructivists with their ideal of an artist-manager or Duchamp - "manager of meanings".
This shift was primarily due to the surge in interest in leftist ideas and the growing social demand for democratization in the early 20th century.
Politicians, artists and writers at that time existed in a single space of meanings.
Let us recall that even Vladimir Lenin, living in Zurich, often attended meetings of contemporary artists and poets.
For example, the leader of the world proletariat was friends with the Dadaists, often visited the cabaret “Voltaire ”, where artists and poets of the new avant-garde trend gathered.
Some thought about new social constructs, others tried to create new forms of art for him.
It is significant how the art of that time is actually imbued with ideology, “meanings ” that justify the break with the“ art of the past ”.
There are many currents, or better to say, teachings - artists are allowed to write theoretical works and manifestos in which they explain their innovative approach to painting.
Only the direction of abstractionism in painting breaks down into suprematism, tashism, luchism, systematism.
Abstract artists abandon narrative painting, focusing their attention on plastic, color, light and shade and form.
In 1915, the artist Kazimir Malevich exhibited the famous “Black Square ”, a study of the basic, zero possibilities of color and composition.
In the same years, Vasily Kandinsky develops his concept of “rhythmic ” color, refusing figurative painting.
On the other hand, for the birth of new art, the technical side of the matter was extremely important.
The explanation of what happened to art at the turn of the XIX – XX centuries is given by the German philosopher Walter Benjamin in his work “Art in the Era of its Technical Reproducibility ”.
As Benjamin believed, with the development of photography, cinema and other means of “reproduction ”, copying art objects went beyond elite consumption, ceased to be the lot of expensive salons and rich rights holders.
And having got rid of its “uniqueness ”, it not only became available to many in the form of copies, but at the same time gained independence from both the“ consumer ” and the artist himself.
Now the creator can be every spectator, stated Benjamin.
In other words, contemporary art, its ideological rationale and forms, has become a response to a specific social demand associated with the democratization of social life, as well as with the technological breakthrough that led to industrialization.
But what happened then?
In short, the actual art went underground.
The thirties and forties of the last century almost everywhere became a period of “tightening the screws ” and, accordingly, a completely different social demand.
In the USSR, the era of socialist realism began, which gravitated rather to the academic art school, and all avant-garde practices were put in a box, turning them into the specter of a once noisy revolutionary era.
The same thing happened in the West.
In the 1930s and 1940s, under the attack of the radical right-wing forces, avant-garde projects were curtailed here.
Persecuted are not only various exhibitions or schools, but also the artists themselves, up to their physical elimination.
And theorists, such as Benjamin mentioned above, commit suicide without seeing the opposition of the impending black wall of totalitarianism.
And only the sixties – already more free, well-fed and calm – re-ignite the debate about the role of art.
In the USSR, new artists refused to integrate into the socialist project, stating that only “pure ” art, independent of society and political conjuncture, can be recognized as true.
Actual artists already in Brezhnev ’ s time equally despised both “Soviet ” and“ anti-Soviet ”, including dissidents who opposed the official line of the ruling party.
At that time, talking about politics in the art space was like inheriting dirty shoes in a clean room.
That is, the autonomy of art returned here under the influence of the external environment, which, rejecting, pushed to a kind of creative escapism.
However, in the West, where totalitarianism (with the exception of Spain) fell and the Soviet “thaw ” was met with enthusiasm, art for a short time received another political, democratic impetus – under the intellectual influence of the new left, which became the main“ apostles ” of the “new ” approaches to art.
“Why didn ’ t I come to this show? ”
The student unrest of 1968, Red May, was not confined to the Paris streets and university auditoriums.
Galleries and workshops of artists, film sets and world film festivals were embraced by the idea of a new transformation of the world, the desire to stop the bourgeoisie, which was gaining strength in Europe, which many saw as responsible for the last war.
So, unforgettable was the case at the Cannes Festival, which opened just in the midst of the May student protests of 1968.
Then progressive filmmakers demanded to abandon the festival, while the whole of France was covered with barricades.
But the leaders of the festival refused such radical manifestations of solidarity with the strikers.
And then the filmmakers decided to act on their own.
They seized the hall where the premiere of the first competitive film of the Spanish director Carlos Saura “Mint cocktail with ice ” was to take place.
When the lights went out in the hall, Truffaut, Godard, Polanski and other oppositionists took the stage and simply hung on the curtain to prevent it from opening, and thus stopped the show.
What is this, if not actionism, as we are used to seeing it?
Actionism, which became the most important practice of art in post-war Europe and was directed against the rigidity of the political system.
It is characteristic that in Russia, actionism originated in the 1990s as a counterweight to total post-Soviet depoliticization.
On the capital's art scene appears the famous "Moscow actionism" Alexander Brener and Oleg Kulik.
Many remember the sensational actions of Brener in the 1990s, when he boxed half-naked on the Frontal Spot and summoned President Boris Yeltsin to a fist fight.
Or shouted at Lubyanka through the windows of the FSB: “Work, I ’ m your new commercial director! ”
But the actionists were not limited to criticizing only the political system, in many respects their pathos was turned against the emerging market relations in Russia within art institutions.
The same Brener broke into the academic vernissages with cries: “Why didn ’ t I go to this exhibition! ”
The shocking, which many still perceive as an end in itself, was for the participants of Moscow actionism, first of all, the desire to return art to the life of society, the desire to bring it beyond the secular evenings, where the works of artists served more as a decor - as the mother of Uncle Fedor noted in the famous Soviet cartoon, in fact covered a hole on the wallpaper.
Art as an investment
However, the return of the original democratic impulse to art, which came with the renaissance of the left political forces, was quickly cut short.
After 1968, capitalism took revenge almost all over the world, acquiring a new, attractive face of globalism and lenient rebellion - one that could be demonstrated without risking a baton on the head or being behind bars.
In the 1960s, a lot of money comes into contemporary art, and with it, the once rejected idea of autonomy, elitism of art.
Of course, rich people liked to spend surpluses on art before – at the turn of the century, the same New York turned into a new capital of art business precisely due to the overconcentration of successful businessmen.
However, in the second half of the 20th century, this process had a completely different scale and a different – already economic – logic.
With the development of global capital, new pockets of wealth began to emerge almost all over the world.
And with them there were new "fat bags", ready to spend the surplus on the "quirks" of artists.
Among the “newcomers ” there were especially many Japanese, Arabs, Chinese, and in the 90s, Russians.
For example, it is known that the triumph of contemporary art in the art markets reached a point of consolidation with the appearance of Japanese buyers in the auction halls of Christie ’ s and Sotheby ’ s in the late 80s.
However, this new world elite pursued not aesthetic, or at least not only aesthetic goals.
First, by buying up paintings or opening new galleries, they once again confirmed their special prestige, secured their elite status.
The “consumption ” of art today is a sign of social prestige: an art auction is a modern analogue of potlach, a demonstrative waste, the ability to“ blow money to the wind, ” writes, for example, the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard.
Secondly, buying an expensive painting is a good investment, especially in a period when an economic recession is expected.
It is no coincidence that during periods of economic instability, the art market begins to grow (as it was in the 1960s and 1970s on the eve of the oil crisis): paintings “save ” assets from high inflation.
According to research by Merrill Lynch Bank, in 2012, among alternative investments, art was in second place after luxury goods (aircraft, yachts, cars).
Finally, the elite often used the art market as a way to legalize black money.
A work of art in this sense has always had several advantages: it is impossible to define a clear boundary for its pricing, while commercial transactions here are almost always protected by confidentiality.
Thus, according to the most conservative estimates of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the share associated with money laundering and other financial crimes in the field of the art market is about $3 billion annually.
As a result, what used to be a tool for the destruction of the “bourgeois world ” and demanded social change, was gradually“ tamed ”, turning into a solid cultural industry.
According to a report by The Art Market, contemporary art now accounts for 15 percent of the global art market, up from three percent 20 years ago, with an annual turnover of about $60 billion.
It is not surprising that from now on, exhibitions and biennials have ceased to be purely cultural events - these are also huge projects to attract investment.
Pickled Shark for Middle Class
Against the background of this money pumping, the figure of the artist was transformed.
For example, he is increasingly involved in projects to improve the urban environment, and the art itself is increasingly acquiring design and decor features that create comfortable spaces for a citizen or an office employee.
Moreover, while art was rapidly involved in the media space and built into market relations, the modern artist turned into a promoter of himself: “If the artist goes beyond the artistic system, he himself begins to function in the same way as politicians, athletes, terrorists, movie stars and other big and small celebrities, his actions begin to cover the media.
In other words, the artist himself becomes a work of art, ” writes art theorist Boris Groys in his article “The Politics of Self-Design. ”
So, some began to trade not even works, but the very fact of their “high value ” and the artist ’ s own status.
Suffice it to recall the curious case when in 2018 the painting of the famous artist Banksy “Girl with a Balloon ” self-destructed after it was sold at Sotheby ’ s auction in London for more than one million pounds.
Others simply elegantly saddled these purely market categories, weeding out “art ” from“ non-art. ”
Recall at least the famous story about the shark, which the English artist Damien Hirst bought for 6,000 pounds, pickled and placed in an aquarium, calling the work “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of the Living ”.
Saatchi & Saatchi bought it for £50,000.
And then the Museum of Modern Art in New York and all gave for it 12 million dollars.
Still others began to direct all their creative forces to a deliberate outrage, which attracts media attention and therefore is fraught with completely different incomes.
In fact, the same actionism, as noted in an interview with “Culture ” famous art critic Sergey Khachaturov, largely came off the stage under the influence of just the logic of“ HYIP for HYIP ”, devoid of any social meanings, and, as it turned out, even purely technologically, it works much better in the world of digital media.
However, it would be wrong to believe that the commercialization of art only primitive it.
Much more often, big money led to the complication of art.
Modern art is a high culture, which is increasingly complemented by a philosophical text and in general often becomes very abstract.
Modern installations and performances are difficult to understand without art criticism or a special theoretical background.
It was not by chance that the middle class finally turned this art into a marker of bourgeois consumption.
As Stanislav Shuripa notes, “many features of modern art – irony, reflectivity, social involvement, a tendency to constant renewal and interest in theory – are due to the peculiarities of the worldview of the middle class, which is the main consumer of modern art. ”
However, commercialization, in fact, did what totalitarianism could not, putting us in that paradoxical situation, which was reflected in the controversy around "Clay" on Bolotnaya.
It would seem that art “goes in breadth ”, penetrating into a variety of areas of everyday life, has its target audience, even integrates into design and urban projects.
But it still seems as if deliberately continues to repel most of the public, parasitizing on its lucrative status of “occupations for the elect ”, and therefore abandoning that initial, social impulse, which was filled with the loud years of the beginning of the last century.
The article was published in No. 9 of the newspaper "Culture" for 2021

- Media representation often focuses on the symbolic nature of the statue, framing attacks as affronts to Danish national identity.

- Security measures have increased and each act reignites debates about public art vulnerability.

**Restoration and Response:**
   - The statue has been repeatedly restored, underscoring its continued significance as a cultural landmark.

- Public debates balance between preserving history and not glorifying vandals, with some seeing these acts as part of the statue’s evolving narrative.

---

This summary gives a chronological overview of major vandalism incidents, the motives, the societal and media discourse around the acts, and the statue’s cultural resilience.

For a precise account aligned with academic standards, specific archival or journalistic sources should be cited as per your dissertation requirements.

Title:

Content: Society 24.11.2023 at 16: 18
“You haven ’ t played yet? ”
In Novosibirsk, a teacher teaches children history with the help of miniature soldiers
A- A +
Text: Number one
33-year-old Novosibirsk teacher Mikhail Bondarenko in childhood loved to play soldiers and learn military history, and at the age of 14 bought the first set of miniatures and paint.
But after school, he entered law school, served in the army and became a police officer.
Married, in the morning took his son to the kindergarten - and two hours before work sat and painted historical miniatures.
Mikhail served in the Ministry of Internal Affairs for seven years and decided to fulfill his childhood dream - to become a history teacher.
It worked out.
And now his soldiers help to explain difficult historical topics to children.
He told his story to KP-Novosibirsk.
“Children are delighted ”
- It turns out that it was not me who defeated the soldiers, but the soldiers who defeated me: over the years of his hobby, he accumulated a collection of thousands of figures.
I wanted to teach children history in the process of historical play, and the accumulated knowledge about the military form, types and genera of troops, their tactics helped to enter the magistracy of the NGPU.
A year later, I was already working at the school, "Mikhail Bondarenko, a history teacher at School No. 50, told KP-Novosibirsk.
A new teacher struck high school students: teenagers were waiting for a harsh former investigator, who will force to study textbooks.
Instead, the historian brought hundreds of miniature figurines to the school.
Children could not tear their eyes off - they threw their smartphones and looked at, recorded, discussed and memorized the topic of the lesson better.
For example, the Northern war of Peter the Great with the Swedes was given only one lesson, but the guys learned it by heart.
- I teach lessons with children from 5th to 11th grade, most of them are delighted, especially ninth-graders.
The most active have signed up for a circle and now spend hours studying history in order to correctly paint a miniature.
Oddly enough, the most stubborn are girls, they are passionate about painting more than adult fashionistas - manicure.
One of the topics was the Civil War of the North and South in the United States.
Those who studied, with pleasure then read the textbook and received five, - said KP-Novosibirsk Mikhail Bondarenko.
Children don ’ t need smartphones.
The historian has always wondered why no one has used military miniatures in education.
In St. Petersburg, there is a whole Museum of the Tin Soldier and the Association of Miniaturists, where you can meet doctors of science.
In Novosibirsk, too, there are clubs of modelers, exhibitions are held, but there are mostly adult collectors with strict rules and elitism.
- A historical miniature is not a cheap pleasure: one box with 40 soldiers will cost 3 thousand rubles.
But for an adult, it's like going to a restaurant three times.
It's easier for me to sit at home for three weeks and paint the figures.
Now I am writing a master's thesis on interactive lessons with a miniature.
In addition to soldiers, I bring various artifacts: a coin from the time of Catherine II, cannon shrapnel.
All this can be felt and touched, - says Mikhail Bondarenko. - Children do not need smartphones - they need parents to borrow children.
And from my experience, no presentations give that sense of touch to history.
In life, Mikhail met a lot of skeptics: "You have soldiers in your office - you still have not played enough?".
But adult hobbies and children's games are different.
To correctly paint a miniature of the war with Napoleon, you need to read not one book, but even all the volumes of the novel by Leo Tolstoy.
Collectors even help to make films: the director of “War and Peace ” and“ Waterloo ” Sergey Bondarchuk was advised by a Soviet miniaturist, the result was world masterpieces of military-historical cinema.
- You give children to hold a bullet weighing 16 grams, you ask the question: why did the soldiers idolize the surgeon Pirogov?
He invented plaster bandages that helped treat fractures from such bullets.
Such things are not written in textbooks, - adds Mikhail Bondarenko. - This interactive helps to learn knowledge better than any presentation, to feel the story from head to toe.
Photo: Nikita Manko
Read also
More than 9 thousand families of Buryatia used the “Far Eastern ” matkapital
The total amount of payments amounted to 1.6 billion rubles
24.11.2023 in 16: 23
In Ulan-Ude can extend the route of buses No. 17
Now this issue is decided by the deputy of the city council
24.11.2023 in 15: 51
Chairman of the People ’ s Khural of Buryatia congratulated on the Day of the AIC worker
In the center of Ulan-Ude Vladimir Pavlov visited the agricultural fair
24.11.2023 at 15: 30
A resident of Ulan-Ude stood up for his sister in a labor conflict
56-year-old man charged with robbery
24.11.2023 in 15: 26
Next news
© 2012 — 2023
Editors of the newspaper GAZETA-N1.RU
All rights reserved.

Certainly!

Title:

Content: Dear reader, if you are walking in your car, then you find “bandits ” who stood in front of you, slept in front of the wheels and prevented you and prevented people from passing, or if you are in a museum and surprised by a group of people destroying and breaking art paintings or painting the exhibits in orange...
Don't think you're in front of an armed terrorist group.
These people are often “environmental activists. ”
Environmental activists seek to make a positive impact on the planet and the environment, but not through planting trees, but through the easiest way to balance from their point of view: to subvert art, paint and destroy monuments and artifacts and disrupt the movement of people in the streets, in order to balance the economy and the environment.
This may sound crazy dear reader, and remind you of the story of the sieve who criticized a needle because it has a hole!
But this is the view presented in the market of environmental struggle...
Either you accept it or you are not deep enough!
When art becomes a victim of the green struggle, there is no doubt that we are faced with a dilemma similar to the dilemma of having a preacher on a beach, wearing a green shorts, to preach to the redhead blonde with the red bikini...
Either way, you are faced with a mystery of modern civilization.
The article would have stopped here, but I finally got to know a critical school of fiction and art that not only analyzes texts, words and drawings, but evaluates works of art based on their environmental impact, meaning that a painting painted by your favorite artist may be guilty of polluting the environment, and you, him and the museum should be held accountable for that.
As environmental criticism intensifies, environmental literary critics emerge — as if the morgue is missing bodies — and many wonder if art and environmental criticism can coexist peacefully.
Can we find a way to make art more sustainable and environmental without the need for subversive works?
In the end, the aim of this article is not to make environmental criticism a mockery, but to question the actual solutions to environmental problems, rather than to direct efforts towards art subversion.
Is this the right path to change?
Or does environmental criticism need to rethink its strategies?
Environmental criticism may have come up with a noble idea, but the way it is applied is so controversial and ironic, we can use art as a means to spread environmental awareness and promote sustainability.
Ultimately, art and environmental criticism must coexist peacefully, as both seek a better and more sustainable future.
Anything that does not mention God ’ s name.
Amputation.
A short story:
Why did you steal the painting from the museum?
Preserving the environment, sir.
Preserving the environment...
How? How?
Thief: It has artificial colors that pollute the environment, and its stools are cut from a tree that was cut last month...
I wanted to send a message to the world that art that does not respect the environment must be removed.
Officer: Greetings to your brain Balanat, O Sea of Science, O Sea of Concept, O Philosopher of Donkeys!
@ moh1alatwn @

Here is a summary of the provided text, focusing on extracting useful nuggets of information related to your research on vandalism, particularly about cultural landmarks and the broader discourse around their damage, closely tied to the Little Mermaid statue (though the text does not mention the statue directly):

---

**Nuggets of Information:**

- There is a recurring concern in the text about the tension between heritage/cultural artifacts and the rapid changes brought by Western modernity.

This reflects a wider crisis in identity, where local traditions and crafts are replaced, leading to a sense of alienation and possible backlash—including destructive acts like vandalism.

Title:

Content: Loss, House, and Tool
Design: Alaa Salama.
This short article talks about the nature of relationships between man and his environment of matter and meaning.
There are extensive theoretical debates about relativity between them.
Is culture and material an extension of man?
Or is the human environment an integrated unit, with harmonious groups of social meanings?
Or are these different social phenomena that are difficult to put into stereotyped social structures?
This article looks at some of the interpretations of man ’ s understanding of what is around him; it deals with the cultural loss, the house, the tool, which this article will try to discuss, based on authentic theoretical references in this field.
Cultural loss
Junichiro Tanizaki, in Praise of the Shadow, recounts the Japanese citizen ’ s relationship to the shadow, and disagrees with Plato that the shadow is a fake, even believing it to be the truth itself, and is one of the aesthetic aspects of Japanese culture.
The text intensifies the description in the beauty of the lights in the Japanese house, and praises them, while it considers that the extraneous things of Western modernity, ruined the aesthetic dimensions of Japanese culture, but the same writer when he built a house, built it on the Western model, and did not build it on the Japanese heritage with its dim lights.
This contradiction is not limited to ideas and behavior in the Japanese example, but we find it in our contemporary Arab societies clearly and clearly.
For example, a Qatari folk song that says, "neither the camel nor the car...
Despite this, many Qataris own the most luxurious types of cars in the world, but they are a source of pride in the Qatari society, racing to build the most luxurious residential villas, and even the tents became extinct as a residence, and became an accessory on the sidelines of the house.
It is a crisis of the relationship between local cultures and Western modernity.
The citizens of these cultures engage in the ramifications of Western modernity and embrace it in all its forms, but feel alienated and guilty by abandoning their cultures and replacing them with Western ones.
It is a crisis of the relationship between local cultures and Western modernity.
The citizens of these cultures engage in the ramifications of Western modernity and embrace it in all its forms, but they feel alienated and guilty by abandoning their cultures and replacing them with Western culture; their memories are stuck in the old diaries of their lives or the beautiful novels of their ancestors; to atone for the guilt of denying their heritage, and to cling to their local culture as slogans. Or nostalgia and emotions or writing, not action and practice.
In Freudian language, one enters into a state of melancholy, and if one tries to escape this contradiction and engage in practices of complete cultural cutting, one moves to a state of eternal mourning by masquerading the past with which there is absolutely no break.
Western modernity has not accepted the self-awareness of local cultures; those who do not conform to their conditions are considered backward or traditional.
In other words, this crisis that people experience in cultures that do not belong to Western modernity stems from the exclusion of local cultures by Western modernity, which does not even accept to participate with them, or what is called “intercultural interaction. ”
Therefore, works of art that revive popular heritage and to some extent defy the rules of late Western modernity, such as Makadi Nahas, Lina Shammayan and May Nasr, are well received by some segments of Arab societies.
This does not mean a break with modernity and a return to outdated traditions, but an explicit call to sanctify human freedom and access in postmodernism; in its language the "recognition of the different other" culturally, gendered, marginally, or whatever form and type of emancipation it may be.
Human freedom, which has never been achieved in the Arab world, is capable of building political projects and liberating the place.
The house.
In The Aesthetics of Place, Gaston Bachelard links memory, consciousness, imagination, and understanding perceptions of the world through the house in which man is raised.
Bachelard ’ s key concept is ‘ condensation ’, an extreme state of memory in which time freezes at a given moment, a high emotional energy is formed to condense at a given time, and the memory is stabilized.
This memory shapes the person ’ s personality and his understanding of the world.
Bachelard considers that this condensing of memory takes place in the first house of man, as well as that man, who lives in a multi-storey building, loses the connection to nature, loses the aesthetics of life.
The text falls within the Phenomenological method of understanding the world, which is based on the fact that the world must be read through phenomena in life; it is not based on social structures as rationalist theories go.
Therefore, the perception of the world through the senses, feelings and emotions, far from the hegemony and centrality of the mind, there is a knowledge beyond the limits of the mind that cannot be read without feelings and emotions; the human body is central in its experience of the world, and has a memory through which it knows the world.
From my personal experience, I grew up in a horizontal single-storey house with no basement.
The house contained a small “attic ” or“ shed ” to keep some household items, which I rarely go up to because of their small size, in order to arrange their things or bring items from them.
Our house is adjacent to houses that are similar in size and design; that is, they are also horizontal within a beautiful rural landscape.
In my educational life, from school to university, my view of life was that individuals were equal and not different from each other as social grades, and I did not classify myself as a class despite my emotional tendency to distance myself from wealthy individuals.
My life in a horizontal house constituted a horizontal view of understanding the world in which individuals were equal, so I was not friendly with people who gave gestures and body movements that made others feel superior to others.
My view of life was based on the romanticism of looking at human behavior and loving nature.
The home is one of the places that shapes our consciousness of the world, through our memories and our imaginations.
The tool.
The Necessity of Art, by Ernest Fisher, examines the relationship between man and tool, presenting it in the most beautiful way, by explaining that the moment that relatively developed organism learned how to use things found in nature, it was transformed into a human, and when used in this way, these things became tools.
Just as the form of the instrument exists in the unconscious of the worker who made it before the work was carried out, the worker not only makes a change in the form of natural things, but also implements in the world outside it things that existed in his mind.
But the key concept in the study in generating tools and turning an animal into a human is work.
Fisher then tackles accumulation in action through language, simulation, and magic.
Time and space have fundamental roles in man ’ s understanding of the world, and time here in the sense of the temporal phasing of its biological divisions, coupled with the social role played by man in the places where he lives.
The study is based on Marxist thought in analyzing the relationship between tools and man, focusing on the role of labor and its divisions in the process of producing meaning for things that are no longer things as long as man began to use them, they became tools; in the sense that the material environment surrounding man does not only express him, but is an extension of him, but himself.
But what happens is that this tool accumulates knowledge history and work in it, becomes part of a collective property, accumulates its forms, and becomes independent of man.
This Marxist approach is perhaps the most capable of interpreting the relationship between man and the material environment surrounding him, as it is characterized by its analysis of human imaginations, its transition to the implementation of the work of natural matter, and its transformation into a certain form, according to images linked to human experience and memory; to turn it into a tool.
Then the work of this instrument accumulates, and it spreads into human collective consciousness with a symbol that refers to it, a certain instrument of its own.
Nevertheless, the Marxist approach is unable to interpret non-work-related tools.
For example, the ‘ pacifier ’ that a child breastfeeds for the purpose of entertainment, how can its relationship with the child be interpreted when it is without work and has not been a basic need in human history?
There are other tools that can be used to entertain the child.
Its producers are not its users.
How do you explain the emergence of tools that are not directly related to the working man, as well as tools that are related to instinctive psychological, emotional and desire tendencies, with which it is true that labor accumulates, but which do not arise from labor, but relate to the nature of the human soul?
Which remains an open question for the Marxist approach?
Time and space have fundamental roles in man ’ s understanding of the world, and time is here in the sense of the temporal phasing of its biological divisions, combined with the social role that man plays in the places where he lives.
Man ’ s understanding of the world is derived from the formation of the body by the cultural factors surrounding it; this does not mean that the body – and its behavior – is captive to these factors.
The body is able to free itself from the factors that shape it, to begin to change itself, to form new worlds different from those that preceded it.
PhD student in the Department of Social Anthropology at the School of Global Studies, Sussex University, UK.
He publishes his research and articles in various Arab periodicals and platforms.

- The analogy of pottery and mankind underscores the process of testing and distinguishing value (“good kind of the bad kind appears”), suggesting cultural artifacts often represent deeper societal resilience or frailty, making them targets or symbols in social conflicts.

Title:

Content: Chairman of Wafd Party
Dr. Abdul Sindh Yamama
Chairman of the Board of Directors
Dr. Ayman is an accountant.
Editor-in-Chief
I'm sorry.
My grandfather, Zainuddin.
Chairman of Wafd Party
Dr. Abdul Sindh Yamama
Chairman of the Board of Directors
Dr. Ayman is an accountant.
Editor-in-Chief
I'm sorry.
My grandfather, Zainuddin.
"Popular proverbs.
The human dimensions of the craft professions "Symposium at the Forum of Heritage in Qena
For the second day in a row, the sessions of the first cultural forum of intangible cultural heritage between stability and change, organized by the Community Development Association for rural and urban women in Qena, in cooperation with the Supreme Council for Culture, Qena Governorate and the National Council for Women.
The forum was held under the patronage of Minister of Culture Dr. Nevin Al-Kilani, Minister of Social Solidarity Dr. Nevin Al-Kabbaj, under the patronage of Major General Ashraf Al-Daoudi, Governor of Qena, Ayman Badawi Abdullatif, Chairman of the Community Development Association for Rural and Urban Women in Qena, Dr. Hisham Azmi, Secretary General of the Supreme Council for Culture and Dr. Mohammed Shabana, Rapporteur of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Committee. Dr. Ahmed Saad Gerio, Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Community Development Association for Rural and Urban Women in Qena and Secretary General of the Forum, and members of the Committee of Intangible Cultural Heritage of the Supreme Council for Culture.
On the second day of the forum, the activities of the forum witnessed the discussion of 5 new researches in a session moderated by the poet Massoud Shoman, head of the Central Department of Cultural Affairs at the General Authority of Cultural Palaces, in the presence of Dr. Mohammed Shabana, Rapporteur of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Committee at the Supreme Council of Culture and Chairman of the forum, Dr. Ahmed Hamdi Shoura, former Dean of the Higher Institute of Social Service.
The session included a discussion on “Sustainability of Heritage and the Horizon of Renewal ” by Dr. Wael Al-Najmi, a research entitled“ Folk Proverbs and Traditional Crafts in Qana – Al-Fakhar as a Model – by Dr. Harees Abduljaber Abdulla, and another research entitled “Environmental Crafts Research and Reformation of Awareness ” by Mohamed Saleh Al-Bahar. Entitled" The Human Dimensions of Craftsmanship - Pottery Industries as a Model "by Dr. Sawsan Al-Sharif.
Dr. Wael Al-Najmi, in presenting his research entitled "Sustainability of Heritage and the Horizon of Renewal", said that the research stems from the background of the prevalence of the concept of sustainability, which came against the background of the decision of the World Commission for Environment and Development in the United Nations, which warned of the need not to affect the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, including cultural needs. A material and moral heritage that should be preserved and protected to extend through successive generations and one of the ways of preserving heritage is to practice its data, arts and creativity. When a poet in the present time skips all the experiences of modernity, prose poem and other experiences and chooses to use the template of square poetry to express himself and his inner self, in his interaction with the changes around him, this is one of heritage sustainability phenomena worth studying. When the poet (Amr) Shamroukh in his book night and the end of it 2020 using the structural methodology in analyzing the poetic phenomenon in the book.
He said that the research reached a set of results, the most important of which is that the roots of heritage in the Arab psyche in general and in the south of Saidi in particular, so that its expressive forms become a basic manifestation of identity expression in the face of the challenges of reality, as well as the need to find an effective mechanism for communication between modern generations and generations. The oldest in the art of squares for the process of faithful transmission of heritage to future generations, trying to preserve a heritage that is perfectly pure seems to be very difficult in practice.
In her presentation of her research entitled "Folk Traditions related to Palms Between Field Combination and Preservation of Craft", Dr. Jacqueline Bushra Joaquim explained that the research aimed to study palm-based handicrafts and understand the cultural elements that formed in the consciousness of the popular community, which were the reason for shaping their customs, beliefs and practices that were rooted in their conscience in line with their history and popular culture. It also radiates on culture a number of elements that fall under the genus of folk traditions, starting from its inception on the banks of the Nile, where it is practiced by an individual or a group of individuals to produce these crafts from natural local raw materials with traditional methods for use in the daily needs of individuals or for the purpose of permanent acquisition.
She pointed out that the popular artist was distinguished by his plastic abilities to delete and add to produce us an innovative aesthetic product that reflects the philosophy of the historical stage in which he lives, and carries in every part and in every form of semantic symbols, where the handicrafts inherited on the sum of experiences inherited by the artisans from their parents and grandparents and familiarity with manual techniques and distinctive formations stemming from the characteristics of environmental raw materials. In a manual way subject to their societies by the cultures that bear signs and symbols are the deposits of times and were effective signs in the customs, beliefs and practices of society to become these symbols have a readable significance that the craftsman was able to formulate, and find an aesthetic function for them to become expressive values associated with the basic function of the producer, which is the utilitarian function.
She said that the governorate of Qena is one of the most important governorates in terms of archaeological and historical aspects and has a number of features of cultural heritage, which is reflected in adherence to many customs and traditions that are still alive, where the research aims to develop handicrafts in Qena, and develop an approach that serves the individual and society and has a payoff. The marginalization of artisans has led to a lack of opportunities for youth employment and a lack of marketing channels for products.
The third research, which was discussed in the sessions of the forum, was entitled: "Folk Proverbs and Traditional Crafts in Qena - Al-Fakhar as a Model" by Dr. Haris Abdul Jaber Abdullah Ammar, who pointed out that the issue of stability and change is one of the recognized issues in all scientific and social fields. A cultural trait that distinguishes a people from other people.
Folk proverbs are the vessel of knowledge that is passed down from generation to generation. During this process of transmission, folk proverbs - as well as other aspects of folklore in general and intangible in particular - have undergone many changes. Since folk proverbs reflect the reality of man and his various aspects of life, there are many proverbs that express traditional crafts of all kinds.
Pottery from the traditional crafts that have emerged since the settlement of the Egyptian people around the Nile Valley in the Neolithic period made pots, as well as was used by the middle and poor classes in the process of education instead of the papyrus that was not accessible to those classes, and that pottery was known as the "Ostraca" or shqaf.
He said that the research aimed to identify the aspects of stability and change in the folklore intangible heritage in Qena, and to identify the relationship between folk proverbs and pottery craft in Qena, and to identify the importance of folk proverbs in preserving traditional crafts, especially pottery. Popular in the preservation of traditional crafts, especially pottery.
The fourth research was entitled "Environmental Crafts and the Reshaping of Consciousness" by the writer Mohammed Saleh Al-Bahar, who stressed that no one can mention the importance of heritage in all its forms and types, whether at the academic level that is interested in study and research, or at the level of the state that strives to preserve it from tampering and extinction, or at the popular level....
Despite all this importance and spread, the actual dealing with heritage remains confined to the field of museum folklore, and the dealing with it remains a great deal of transcendence as the old that ended its era, and must hide under the feet of modern civilization, and the tremendous technological progress that is teeming with society now.
Saleh Al-Bahr added that the research tried to restore the heritage as a living presence in the lives of people, capable of reshaping them again, and constitutes a real way out of the crisis of contemporary existence - individualism and alienation created by modern Western civilization, and imposed on them to become the firewood raging since the beginning of the industrial revolution until now.
The researcher turned to one of the most important types of heritage affecting people ’ s lives to date, namely environmental crafts, following its most widespread form in Qena governorate, namely pottery industry, and through the analysis of the stages of its manufacture, the research concludes that if revived again, and developed to suit the current reality to form a central axis in the life of society, this craft can contribute significantly to the reshaping of contemporary human consciousness. From the predicament of modern civilization, which violated it, through two basic elements: self-reliance and belonging or attachment to the land.
Through the application of Zoom, Dr. Sawsan Al-Sharif participated in the activities of the forum to present her research entitled "The Human Dimensions of Craftsmanship - Pottery Industries as a Model". At the beginning of her speech, she quoted Engineer "Hassan Fathi" in his book The Architecture of the Poor, that heritage crafts can be revived quickly, and it needs to be reconsidered. Mastering the profession and doing it with ingenuity, mastery and accuracy, often relying on manual labor and associated with knowledge and skill.
When we talk about pottery industries, it is as a profession, and when you mention certain people who work in them, they are experienced, knowledgeable and skilled craftsmen.
She pointed out that each profession has multiple dimensions, focusing on the human dimensions of the professions in terms of their similarity with man in some of his qualities, and their relationship to each other, and its impact on him, professions that require skill and craft in the manufacture of a living organism can age if realized by forgetting and neglect and wither and disappear, and have a memory if the person is occupied with his work, which generates a material income for a profession He will return to you with all his secrets and details, and the authentic professions will never forget his owner.
He said: “When we talk about pottery, we find similarities between him and man, starting from the origin of their composition, which is clay.
The owners of the profession of "pottery" as a living organism with pores that make him breathe, purifies the air coming from the outside to the inside, and purifies the air inside also, because of its very healthy natural components, and there is another similarity between them, that the heat reveals the hardness and strength of each, the crises experienced by man, reveal his metal and nature, either breaks or holds up and tries to recover from them and search for solutions.
This is similar to the fact that pottery is exposed to extremely high heat, and then the good kind of the bad kind appears.

- The text evokes scenarios of public or institutional vandalism: “if you are in a museum and surprised by a group of people destroying and breaking art paintings or painting the exhibits in orange...” This highlights the spectacle and shock value of such acts, raising questions about the motivations, ranging from protest to frustration or just publicity.

- A ‘thief’ motif is introduced, where an individual justifies vandalism or theft of art on environmental grounds (“artificial colors that pollute the environment...cut from a tree...”).

This points towards a new kind of vandalism, where actions are rationalized as higher moral or ideological acts—mirroring recent real-life climate protests targeting art.

Title:

Content: Exclusive Conversation
Just Stop the Oil: We need real action, not climate conferences and people ’ s lives more important than art
Since the beginning of October, Britain and European countries have witnessed incidents caused by environmental activists, especially from the organization Just Stop Oil, or "Just Stop Oil", which affected museums, exhibitions and public and tourism facilities, in a move that the implementers said was aimed at raising awareness of the climate crisis, but drew criticism from artistic and official circles, which considered acts of "sabotage" warning of their adverse effects.
To highlight this issue, we interviewed Alex de Koning, spokesperson for the organization.
Announcement
Environmental and climate activists, especially members of Just Stop the Oil, have launched a series of incidents since early October across several European countries, targeting famous historical artifacts on display in museums, as well as tourist sites and public facilities, to warn of climate risks ahead of the COP27 climate summit in Egypt on November 6-18, with the participation of more than 30,000 delegates, including representatives from nearly 200 countries.
“Just stop the oil. ”
Who is she?
Just Stop Oil is a coalition of several environmental groups whose goal is to ensure that the UK government is committed to ending all new licences and approvals for the exploration, development and production of fossil fuels.
She considers that “civil resistance is a powerful means of non-violent demands for rights, freedom and justice ” and argues that“ when people wage nonviolent civil resistance, they use tactics such as strikes, boycotts, mass protests, and disruption. ”
The organisation drew particular attention on the morning of October 17 after two of its members, Morgan Trolland, 39, and Marcus Decker, 33, climbed the Dartford Bridge on the highway over the River Thames near London, causing major traffic jams.
The move came after other activists threw tomato soup at Vincent van Gogh ’ s famous “Sunflower ” painting on display at the National Gallery in the British capital.
Coinciding with a series of near-daily incidents in Britain, a young woman from the organization tried on Sunday to throw soup at a painting on display at Paris ’ famous Musée d ’ Orsay.
The museum, which houses the works of some of the most famous European artists such as Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Edward Manet, and Claude Monet, declined to name the painting targeted.
In The Hague in the west of the Netherlands, the museum "Morichuis" on Thursday saw a similar incident targeting the painting "Girl with a Pearl Earring" by Johannes Vermeer, by activists of the same organization who stuck their hands on the wall before spraying a tomato sauce on it, causing minor damage to the frame of the painting, the museum said.
At the Berlin Museum of Natural History, two activists from the Last Generation movement glued themselves on Sunday to one of the barriers surrounding a dinosaur on display, urging the government to step up its action against climate change.
Officials Criticize "Sabotage Acts"
Commenting on the series of incidents, Bernard Pléstan, Honorary President of the Pompidou Centre in Paris, said: “All museum officials have long taken measures against acts of vandalism.
Should it be strengthened?
certainly ".
French Culture Minister Rima Abdelmalik told Le Parisien: “This is terrible!
How can the logic of climate advocacy lead to the destruction of a work of art?
This is totally absurd. "
She noted that her country "is not immune to some activist who is illogical to the painting."
German Chancellor Olaf Schulz on Monday sharply criticized environmental activists for targeting famous works of art.
Schultz said: “I am very saddened by what is happening and I am very happy that it has not reached the point where an irreplaceable work of art is permanently damaged.
For his part, the director of the Barberini Museum in the German city of Bostdam, Ortrade Wistehader, said the incidents showed that "high international standards for the protection of works of art are no longer enough", after an incident on Sunday.
Didier Rickner, director and founder of the online art magazine La Tribune du Laag, said these works were "counterproductive".
To understand the demands of these environmental activists and why they launched this series of incidents, we asked Alex De Koning, a spokesman for Just Stop the Oil, who is also a PhD student in hydrogen production at Newcastle University.
Why did you decide to launch that particular series of incidents now?
At Just Stop the Oil, we know that we now live on a new planet, which is no longer the same as in the past, which may indicate extreme weather forecasts for the future, all while our government seeks to develop new sources of oil and gas, and these endeavors are tantamount to treason and harmful action.
That is why we will not stand idly by and let this happen.
Why do we have to wait any longer?
Thousands of people will die this winter from the cold as their homes do not have heat insulation to protect them.
Their energy bills are criminally high, although this can be easily avoided.
We can't wait.
Do you coordinate with other environmental organizations or climate activists?
Just Stop the Oil is a coalition of individuals and groups who decided to come together under the same slogan and demand to stop the exploitation of oil and gas.
We are among the coalitions of climate activists and our organization forming a network spread across 22 different countries, all using similar tactics to raise demands for change but better and more effectively than before.
Don ’ t you think that targeting works of art can damage your organization ’ s reputation?
We can ’ t know for sure, but we ’ ve seen support for our organization grow since the series of events we ’ ve organized since October 1, and we see it continue to grow.
For anyone who is angry at the fact that we targeted something as precious and innocent as artwork, why aren ’ t they outraged after 33 million people in Pakistan lost their homes to the recent floods?
Then why is it that two people throwing soup on a certain board prompted more people to talk about the climate crisis?
What is most precious to you?
Art or life?
Do you have any sympathy for your protest movement?
A recent survey in the UK found that 66% of the population supported action to protect the environment and climate.
Do you plan to launch similar incidents during the COP27 climate summit in Egypt?
Just Stop the Oil will continue to exercise civil resistance against our mischievous government until it starts working to protect us.
The COP27 summit kicks off in a week, but we have to remember that during the COP26 summit, oil and gas were not even mentioned in the final agreement.
We need to act in accordance with this emergency.
We need action, not conferences.
What about the prosecutions against your activists, especially after the Dartford Bridge incident?
Seven supporters of Just Stop the Oil are currently in jail for their involvement in peaceful civil resistance activities, as fossil fuel companies continue to make staggering profits, impoverishing millions of families and destroying the livelihoods of tens of millions of people in the global South.
What is the significance of the orange color for your organization?
Why did we choose orange?
Simply because it works, it succeeds in everything.
Orange is a combination of red and yellow, that is, it combines the first passion with the last hope.
Amin Zarrouati
NewsletterHighlights of International Events Every Morning
Stay up to date with international news wherever you are.
Download France 24 App

- There is a recurring question: “Is this the right path to change?”—implying a societal debate about the ethics and effectiveness of vandalism as protest or commentary on social/political issues.

- The media and art critiques link vandalism with broader societal malaise: “crisis of the relationship between local cultures and Western modernity” and “complexities resulting from abandonment of tradition.”
- Discussions about defending art and media suggest a shared responsibility to protect cultural artifacts against acts of vandalism disguised as advocacy (“How can the logic of climate advocacy lead to the destruction of a work of art?

That is why we will not stand idly by...”).

- The emotional and psychological dimensions are highlighted—artifacts, like the mother’s lap, are described as emotionally significant, reinforcing arguments for their protection but also possibly intensifying disputes over their symbolic meanings.

- Finally, the discussion touches on the need for “educating new generations on the culture of the image,” implying that misunderstandings or rejection of cultural imagery may fuel acts of vandalism, inadvertently or as a form of protest.

Title:

Content: Moroccan critic Habib Nasseri: Our history should not be taken from soap operas and drama should respect minds
The holy month of Ramadan witnessed the release of many dramas in Morocco, and always generate a community discussion about how dramas embody the life and reality of Moroccans. Some dramas are praised, while others are stigmatized as weak. What lens should we look through to Ramadan works, is it through the lens of artistic value or is the dramas expected to provide a cognitive, historical and valuable load? Helping to critique the mistakes of society for its development and development?
In order to understand the nature of the dramatic scene that feeds the Moroccan scene in the Ramadan time, Al Jazeera Net interviews the Moroccan film critic Dr. Habib Nasseri, a research professor specializing in film criticism, and the President of the International Documentary Film Festival in Khouribga.
• What is your assessment of Ramadan dramas in Morocco?
Is there a dramatic addition or is it mostly confined to repetition?
The question of evaluation, a question that makes us expect within the field of making judgments, such as saying that this is a good work, this is an average work, this is a weak work, etc.
In my opinion, such provisions make us not to serve our works presented in television, cinema, theater, etc.
More than this, we will fall into the trap of judgments that spread in social media, according to personal whims and attitudes, and others, even if this falls within the framework of freedom of expression, without offending, of course, any particular person ’ s position for or against a television drama.
Your question, my dear sir, is an important one, and it is possible to generate from it another question, which is, do we dissect our work into two scientific questions: What does this television drama tell?
How does this drama tell his story?
Most of us get stuck in the first question, which is, unfortunately, a factual question, through which we judge a certain dramatic action, and hence, from understanding the noise of what is going on, because the simple and ordinary receiver only understands the first question, which has limited value, while the most important question, which contributes to visual and taste education, and educates the spectator culturally and humanely, is how to tell the story of this drama. I don't know.
Here we are faced with components such as time, space, characters as art form (and not as they really are), dream, artistic vision (not vision), and the language of storytelling.
Is the work capable of interpretation, but is the work the generator of many manifestations of interpretation, etc.?
Of course, all this is conditional on the nature of the recipient, his cultural background, and the location of the image within the education system.
This is what is absent, and therefore the judgments of value, remain dominant, here and here, the limit of grappling between people, without asking deep and qualitative questions, and this is a bet that will not be achieved without making the school pay attention to the part of how any work of art tells its story?.
It is a bet that if we do not get him into school, so that the culture of visual and aesthetic awareness will contribute and consolidate, we will continue to ask the same questions whenever Ramadan comes.
It is even possible, Mr. Fadhel, to keep the same questions to ask me, or someone else, when Ramadan falls in 2025, God willing.
This can be easily observed whenever the month of Ramadan comes.
• In recent years, historical dramas have resorted to “darija ” (colloquial) instead of the standard Arabic language that we are familiar with in historical works, how do you see this turn?
And what are their effects?
What I have asked in my previous answer is very relevant to this question.
In Egypt, dear brothers and sisters, they say their famous saying: "The public wants such a thing."
Today, television and the search for “boobs ” pose more than one question to producers, especially public channels, which, in accordance with their public duty, must provide a public and cultural service that promotes the recipient – the citizen in his taste and visual culture, rather than competing with private channels in this“ booz-misery ”.
So we wonder about the historical series presented, what is the purpose of them?
Is the goal to develop the recipient ’ s historical and linguistic memory?
Or is it about getting the audience to see?
What is the nature of the historical series presented?
What's her time frame?
Is it old enough to take into account the language component?
Or is its frame contemporary to us, it is possible to "adventure" on the Moroccan bike?.
Are we in front of a single Moroccan bicycle in a homeland that extends from Tangier to Quera?
Or are we in front of a group of Moroccan dairjas (each region has its own degree born from its local social soil, including the new loads born of the new concepts of the era..?.
Those who live in the East may use a different word than those who live in the North, the South, the West, etc.?
Is it possible to bet on a middle bike that can solve the problem?
Can this be achieved outside the collective, academic and research work that can contribute to overcoming this problem?
The older generations grew up in the lap of history and classical Arabic, especially when it comes to historical series related to topics related to Andalusia (for example), or to a historical era.
But if the historical series approach popular historical themes, then it is possible to employ the Moroccan dialect that is relevant to the subject of this local popular cultural historical series.
• To remain in historical works, when any historical drama is released, some begin to shed light on what they consider to be “historical fallacies, ” does historical drama play a role in the accurate investigation of history?
And are the series a source for building a true historical background for the viewer?
The question itself depends on what was asked in the first answer.
The school, and in general, in the Arab world as a whole, and not only in Morocco, is still far from the qualitative use of the image in the construction of instructions.
It is the main reason why we have to read all the works presented in television and in cinema, from reality without reaching the stage of treating the work of art as a linguistic and artistic sign, starting from reality, but becoming independent of itself, at least while reading.
This is what makes people, institutions and individuals compare what is presented with what has happened or what is happening.
This is the work of the historian, who, when dating to a certain stage, through the document in his hands, can be asked and discussed, according to the document.
But the director or writer of television or film, or theater or novelist, has a wide margin through which he can repeat what happened historically, according to his artistic and aesthetic vision.
It is a vision that reflects what it has accumulated visually, artistically and culturally.
Hence, when we are witnessing, for example, a historical work, we should focus on the following question: How did this historical work tell us?
We should not, I think, confuse the role of the historian, the screenwriter and the director.
In order to reach this stage, we must educate the new generations on the culture of the image.
Is it possible to achieve this in societies that are still debating whether the image is halal or haram?, in an era that is the age of the image, but in an era that will become the illiterate who is unable to deconstruct the connotations of the image instead of illiteracy being the case of those who do not read or write.
How many of us are going to be in the Arab world?
• There are some works that have caused a stir, regarding what was considered by an important segment as an insult to the “men and women of education ”, do you think that television and film works should evaluate their value load? Do they affect the beliefs of the viewer?
Or do you have to pay attention to film and drama?
Here it is possible to ask, through this question, as follows: Should the work of art be independent of itself, and therefore should be analyzed as an independent sign of art by the question of "how?"
Instead of asking "why?"
Or do we have to bring reality to every work of art presented to us?
The freedom of art guarantees the operation of reality as a starting point, and then, according to what we have learned from the sciences of the curriculum, must "break" the link with this reality, and present the work to the recipient in order to receive and interpret it, according to its methodological and cultural references as a whole.
Protest here, born of the “holy ” vision of the teacher and the jurist, etc.
Does this mean that we should stay away from all professions in art?
Of course not.
The artist is free to write and direct his work, and the recipient is also free to interpret and interpret this work, but with sophisticated artistic tools away from the “real ” stampede that we have to“ forget ” even temporarily, as we pursue a work of art.
The question that must also be asked on this series, and others, is this work visually, tastefully and culturally rich, in order to generate from it many connotations, and through many readings?
Sociology, why did the teacher come up with this “vision ”?
Or isn ’ t it the school ’ s teachers?
What is the nature of the formal vision present in this work?
Does it amount to interpretation or is it a direct “report ” work far from being able to be interpreted visually, tastefully, artistically and culturally?.
We desperately need these kinds of questions, rather than individual, trade union, collective, and Facebook protests.
How can our Moroccan society, and all our Arab societies (because we are similar in the fact that the image embarrasses us) not be able to allow the arts to work on the unspoken, and make it a material to see in the mirror, to look for the arrest of what is aesthetic and deep semantics, but to deal with it as a visual body that can be dismantled according to systematic, critical, scientific, humanistic and research visions?
• While a significant segment of Moroccans criticize a large number of comedies, some independent comedies (which do not pass on public television) have received high praise, is this praise due to the series ’ discussion of bold topics?
Personally, as a researcher of certain arts, in general, and in the image in particular, I don ’ t get along with quantity.
And if quantum is to be studied and analyzed according to multiple methodological visions, and according to multiple human sciences, such as sociology, psychology and others.
It is possible to find a work of art that has only been seen by a very "weak" but aesthetically pleasing proportion, has the ability to face the erasure of time, which erases many works that may achieve a high viewing rate.
What was put forward in the "Si Alcala" is a psychological outlet for the recipient through which this receiver-citizen interacted with the series, because he saw in it a aspect of a pension in reality as presented.
Here we return to the complex and difficult question, do the arts have to mimic reality as it is?
Or does it have to start from it, fly independently, but it has to establish its independent artistic and aesthetic reality that is capable of many readings?
The poet Adonis asserts that every "mass" work is a work outside the standard of art and beauty, even if his poetry is also mass poetry.
In the sense that the mass artistic work, is a work that is not useful aesthetically, creatively and regeneratively.
Source: The Island

---

**Summary of Socio-psychological Roots and Media Discourse:**
The passage repeatedly frames vandalism against cultural heritage as a complex phenomenon rooted in identity crises, ideological fervor (e.g., environmentalism), generational divides, and the potent symbolism of public art.

Mass media, in reporting such events, often raises questions of motivation, legitimacy, and social impact, reflecting ongoing debates about tradition versus modernity, the role of protest, and the societal value of cultural landmarks.

The analogies and arguments outlined provide insight into the layers of motivation, public reaction, and cultural anxiety that surround acts of vandalism, setting the stage for a nuanced discourse analysis of incidents such as those involving the Little Mermaid statue.

Certainly!

Title:

Content: History of Roaming Art: Knight, Magic, and of course unicorns — unicorns in Medieval Art
The unicorn in the ancient narration of Europe is a strange beast living in the far east, and its looks are absolutely not good-looking, but such a beast, in the medieval legend and works of art and under the impetus of the church, gradually transformed into a pure and noble image.
◎ Liu Yun
In addition to King Arthur, Merlin and the Fairy in the Lake, the unicorn with a long neck and a silver-white glow under the moonlight is also an element of modern people's imagination of medieval Europe.
The Unicorn Rests in a Garden from the Unicorn Tapestries, 1495-1505, wool, silk, silver, and gilt wefts, 368 x 251.5 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (source: https: / / www.metmuseum.org / collection /) and / or search / 467642)
Unicorns that "literally" existed in the Middle Ages
Medieval Europeans were very sure that unicorns existed, unicorns were not just a part of folklore or fairy tales, they were real monsters. Although rare and extremely difficult to capture, the medieval Europeans did know how to capture them, and the evidence of their existence is that containers made of unicorns often appear on the tables of princes and aristocrats, many of which are still preserved in major museums. In.
But what we know today is that these legendary unicorn horns are actually from unicorn horns produced in Northern Europe, such as the part of the boat that is now hidden above the cup of the Wadsworth Atheneum, that is, from unicorn horns, and it depicts scenes in the sea of fighting unicorns, which may refer to raw materials. The source, and therefore the creator of the work, may have been aware of the identity of the unicorn.
Covered cup, c.
1670-74, Ivory, narwhal tooth, silver gilt, gems, 27 x 20.1 x 8.5 cm, Wadsworth Atheneum (source: https: / / 5058.sydneyplus.com / argus / final / Portal / Public.aspx? lang = en-US)
The true face of the unicorn?
What does the unicorn look like? The earliest reference to the unicorn in Europe is the ancient Greek scholar Ctesias (5th century BC) 's "India History" (Indica), which describes the unicorn as an Indian beast larger than a horse, although the body is white, but the head is dark red, it has a deep blue eyes, its largest. Characterized by a long angle of about 45 cm in length in the middle of the forehead, the bottom of the angle is white, the middle is black, and the sharp top is bright red. This creature has the most beautiful ankle bones that Ctesias has seen, which makes this creature have amazing speed and power, and because no creature can ride a unicorn.
A Pliny the Elder of Rome (23 / 24-79) also mentioned that the most ferocious creature in India is the unicorn, which has the body of a horse, the head of a buck, the limbs of an elephant, and the tail of a wild boar.
b
[Figure 3] Before the late Middle Ages, there were still some inconsistencies in European depictions of unicorns, such as in the reverse of a portrait medal made by Pizanello for the Italian aristocrat Cecilia Gonzaga of Mantua, the unicorn with a helpless face looked more like a long-haired sheep.
Pisanello, Portrait medal of Cecilia Gonzaga (obverse) and Innocence and a Unicorn in a Moonlit Landscape (reverse), 1447, bronze, 8.4 cm (diameter), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (source: https: / / www.metmuseum.org / art / collection / 46search / 1522)
The description of unicorns in ancient books is far from the unicorns understood in later generations, although these ancient books continued to be published in the Middle Ages, and at the same time, we can already see from the works of art at this time that the image of unicorns began to transform into the noble beasts we know today.
The birth of a white unicorn.
Traveling in the Middle Ages was a dangerous but marvellous affair, because people were not always able to travel far, and travel literature became a best-selling literary work of the time. The most well-known of these is Marco Polo (1254-1324) ’ s Le livre des merveilles (Book of Miracles).
For those who are familiar with Chinese history, Mark.
Polo was a foreigner who came to the East, but to Europeans, he was one of the few Venetian merchants who had gone to the East.
In this book, Marco Polo refers to the Kingdom of Basma (now Sumatra) as a land full of wild elephants, where unicorns the same size as wild elephants have long hair like bison, elephant legs, and wild boar head, with a thick black horn in the middle of their foreheads.
c
Livre des merveilles, Ms. fr.2810, detail of f 85r, 1410-1412 / 1470, parchment, Bibliothèque de France (source: https: / / gallica.bnf.fr / ark: / 12148 / btv1b52000858n / f175.item #)
From the description of Marco Polo, although we can not see the beautiful creatures we know well, but in a French "Marco Polo Travels", scholars find in the above text description of the unicorn next to the picture, modern people know, slim and beautiful unicorns.
This discrepancy between the text and the picture was common in medieval manuscripts. As mentioned in the article that produced the manuscript, the drawings and words in the manuscript were made by two different groups of artists, so the discrepancy between the pictures and the text did occur frequently, usually because the artist who made the picture did not read the text description in the book (also sometimes). The artist can only use his imagination, or according to the folklore he has heard, to fill the blank space reserved for the painting, and this is the case with the unicorn in this manuscript.
These pictures also reflect the fact that the unicorns in the French impression of the 15th century are already familiar to modern people.
[Extended reading: roaming art history article "Medieval bookmaking industry - the birth of clay and gold decorative manuscripts"]
Tales from the Unicorn Tapestry Collection
Perhaps we can fully see the medieval European imagination of unicorns from another work. The unicorns tapestry collection, now in The Cloister of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is the most well-known medieval collection in the metropolis. The tapestry consists of seven tapestry: The Hunter Into the Woods, The Unicorns Clean Water, The Unicorns Across the River, The unicorn is tamed by a woman, the unicorn is taken back to the castle by a hunter, and the unicorn is resting in the garden.
These seven tapestries fully represent the most popular legend of the unicorn in the Middle Ages: unicorn is a white and beautiful beast living in the forest, it is very strong, no creature can move it a hair; it is said that the horn of the unicorn has the effect of detoxification and purification of water, many hunters try to catch the unicorn, but the only way is to catch the unicorn alive. A virgin sits in the forest. When the unicorn smells her fragrance, it kneels down and rests its head on the woman's leg. The hunter jumps up and takes the unicorn back to the castle.
The unicorns in Unicorns Clean Water have been surrounded by hunters and hounds, but the unicorns still calmly dip their horns into the pool, the animals of the forest, including the lions that the artists imagined to look less realistic (unicorns look much more real than they do!) surround the water flowing out of it and take water from the unicorns purified by it. And...
Based on this legend, many medieval water containers were decorated with unicorns, and the aforementioned containers made of unicorns were also made with unicorns for the same reason.
The Unicorn Purifies Water from the Unicorn Tapestries, 1495-1505, wool, silk, silver, and gilt wefts, 368.3 x 378.5 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (source: https: / / www.metmuseum.org / art / collection /) search / 467638)
The legend of the use of virgins to capture unicorns is a bit interesting. None of the ancient texts mentioned above mention this feature of unicorns, but regardless of the origin of the legend, the Christian Church has found a reasonable theological explanation for the legend.
They believe that the clean and strong unicorn is the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Such noble creatures are attracted to a virgin (the Virgin Mary) in the woods and tamed, but the hunters on the side of the tiger are unwitting Jews who want to harm Jesus, and as the end of the Unicorn Tapestry series, Jesus is arrested / captured by these Jews and crucified. executed on the cross.
Unfortunately, there are only fragments left in Unicorns Tamed by Women, and it is impossible to see how the unicorn was deceived by the woman and attacked by the hounds.
Aquamanile in the Form of a Unicorn, c1425-50, copper alloy, 39.4 x 29.2 x 11.3 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (source: https: / / www.metmuseum.org / art / collection / search / 468634? ft = unicorn & fset = 0 & rpp = 40 & pos = 10)
In addition to the missing picture, art historians still have many doubts about the Unicorn Tapestry series and have done more research, such as the AE words in these tapestry, which may be the initials of the sponsor, but who is it?
In addition, scholars are not very sure about the order of the seven tapestries, Helmut Nikel (Helmut Nikel) used medieval deer hunting procedures to deny the Metropolitan Museum of Art ranking; d and the most amazing research, art historian Margaret B. Freeman (Margaret B. Freeman) and botanists to work together to find out the names of all the plants in this series of tapestries.
It is very likely that the Unicorn Tapestry Series is the prototype of the unicorn ’ s appearance in modern perception, especially the noble posture that is tamed in Unicorn Rest in the Garden, which is believed to be the appearance of a unicorn in fairy tales or fantasy novels that many audiences have imaged.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has published two books for this tapestry series, which can be said to greatly promote the unicorn image in the Unicorn Tapestry series.
The unicorn in the ancient narrative of Europe is a strange beast living in the far east, its looks are absolutely not good-looking, but such a beast, in the medieval legend and art works and under the impetus of the church, gradually transformed into a pure and noble image; and in modern times, due to the Metropolitan Museum of Art vigorously promote the "unicorn tapestry series", modern people to European unicorn. Beasts have a common imagination, that is, in the forest, with pearl-colored long horns of the noble horse.
a.
Margaret Freeman, The Unicorn Tapestries: The Paris and Cloisters Tapestries, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1975, p. 14.
b.
Ibid.
c.
Ibid, p. 36.
d.
Helmut Nickel, “About the Sequence of the Tapestries in ‘ The Hunt of the Unicorn ’ and ‘ The Lady with the Unicorn ’, ” Metropolitan Museum Journal 17, 1982: 9-14.
Bibliography
1.
Boehm, Barbara Drake.
A Blessing of Unicorns: The Paris and Cloisters Tapestries.
New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2020.
2. Freeman, Margaret B.
The Unicorn Tapestries.
New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1975.
3. Nickel, Helmut.
“About the Sequence of the Tapestries in ‘ The Hunt of the Unicorn ’ and ‘ The Lady with the Unicorn ’. ”
Metropolitan Museum Journal 17 (1982): 9-14.
4. Pansini, Stephanie Rianne.
The Unicorn Tapestries: Religion, Mythology, and Sexuality in Late Medieval Europe.
Master ’ s thesis, Harvard University Division of Continuing Education, 2021.
This article is reproduced by authorized experts from the history of roaming art depicting birds in Taiwan under Ho Hua-jen ’ s knife.
No need to smoke, no need to grab, now use the APP to watch the news, guarantee the daily winning point I download the APP
I've added friends, thank you.
Welcome to [Free Commentary]
It's a compliment. Good.
It has been praised, thank you.
Related News
Editor 's Choice

Title:

Content: My channel
* Drag categories can be customized sorting
Recover Default OK
Setup
Alert
Congressional riot investigation committee by subpoena source: Trump considered attending
Accelerate the unification of the Financial Times: Xi will warn the United States not to interfere in the Taiwan issue at the 20th Congress
"Attack" escalates environmental protester tomato juice Van Gogh "sunflower"
Two British environmentalists on Wednesday poured canned tomato juice on Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh ’ s famous painting “Sunflowers ” at the National Gallery in London to protest against fossil fuel extraction.
As the painting is covered with glass, only the gold-plated frame is slightly damaged, and the painting itself is not damaged.
London Metropolitan Police have arrested the two female protesters on suspicion of criminal damage and aggravated trespass.
This is the latest in a series of climate protests in recent months against famous paintings in museums around the world, which have drawn media attention and criticism from environmental groups for their radical actions.
Two protesters who poured tomato juice on Van Gogh ’ s “Sunflower ” painting from Just Stop Oil put their hands on the wall of the museum, and one of them shouted,“ Which is more valuable for art or life?
Another group of protesters later gathered in front of the police headquarters and sprayed yellow paint on the New Scotland Yard sign; several people stuck themselves on the road to block traffic.
Police said 24 people were arrested.
In July, Stop Oil, which opposes the British government ’ s approval of new oil and gas projects, also spray-painted and glued their hands to a frame under Leonardo ’ s early copy of The Last Supper at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, the same week they went to the National Gallery and glued their hands to the British painter John Constable ’ s The Hay. Wain) on the frame.
At the time, a series of protests lasted for two weeks, and protesters blocked London bridges and crossroads.
That same month, members of the Italian climate group Ultima Generazione glued their hands to Sandro Botticelli ’ s “Primavera ” with protective glass at the Uffizi museum in Florence.
Dana Fisher, a social scientist at the University of Maryland who studies the protest movement, called these “neo-radical ” environmental activists“ disruptors ”; she noted that they were constantly “winning by surprise ” in order to get media attention; the“ tomato juice ” was clearly a “tactical upgrade, ” and they also seemed to deliberately choose glass-covered paintings to“ do it ” in order to minimize damage.
Fisher said that previously noticed marches or sit-ins were quickly ignored after the media became accustomed to certain types of radical actions; previously, climate protesters had caused a small sensation by gluing themselves to art, but now the focus on such actions has cooled, and protesters have turned to defacing the appearance of art to gain attention.
Van Gogh ’ s famous painting “Pouring Tomato Juice ” did make headlines in British and European newspapers on the 14th, and a YouTube video of the incident was viewed 13.3 million times that afternoon.
But protesters also risk “escalating ” their tactics, and many of those who originally sympathized with them may feel offended or even cold.
"Research shows that this strategy does not change the mind or the mind," Fisher noted.
Preventing commuters from commuting to work or harming irreplaceable works of art may cause people to be reluctant to face the climate movement for at least some time.
Fisher asked, “The action was compelling, but did it really achieve its purpose? ”
Museum of British Petroleum
The last one.
Putin: No intention to destroy Ukraine, no need to carry out large-scale attacks
The next one.
Oregon Governor 's Election Emergency Democratic Party Votes' Big Three 'Biden Hustles to Secure Votes
Super-popular
More >

Title:

Content: The 5 rules of art training necessary to visit a museum and see an exhibition are basic.
Author: The Bund
Published: Updated:
The exhibition of civilization is a long way off.
Huang Yi, a mainland actor, took a group of photos in May and said excitedly: “For the first time in my life, I played the little swallow 20 years ago, so today I want to take her with me … ” She is wearing a diamond rose earring and holding a rose in her hand.
Unexpectedly, the photo caused controversy when it was posted.
After realizing the mistake, Huang Yi made a public apology at the first time, sincerely saying that she would be more strict in her work and life in the future, and deleted the photos.
And then there were those who cried.
Because there is no clear logo around the exhibits she took, it is easy to be misunderstood.
But her reaction also gave us a demonstration and warning.
In the past two years, more and more people have gone to the museum, and we have begun to realize the importance of spiritual wealth, but while feeling the art, we should be more awe of the works in front of us.
Touched and damaged exhibits
The photo props that Huang Yi held in his hand this time were part of a new exhibition “Cloud Sculpture – The First Academic Invitation Exhibition ” at the Pine Museum of Art in Beijing in early May. The artist placed a shiny“ rose field ” on the outdoor lawn.
Before Huang Yi took the photo, many people had already come here to check in.
Some influencers even hold a whole bouquet of flowers in their hands, unaware that it is also part of the artwork.
Sometimes, in order to better integrate art and the environment, artists will deliberately not set boundaries on the edge.
But often, it can lead to accidents.
At the end of February, during a preview of Art Wynwood in Miami, Jeff Koons ’ balloon dog sculpture was accidentally knocked down by a visitor.
The collection fell to the ground and fell to pieces.
This sculpture is worth $42,000, which is a shame.
After the incident, the visitor did nothing to make up for it, except to feel "very ashamed."
Fortunately, the organizer bought insurance, and the loss was paid for by the insurance company.
Related article ： Jeff Koons' balloon dog was accidentally broken in the United States exhibition cause of Luo Shengmen
+ 16
Some of them may be unintentional, and some may be driven by excessive desire to explore.
When Yayoi Kusama ’ s previous exhibition landed in Shanghai, an iconic pumpkin stood in the center of the square.
It is forbidden to touch the scene, and there are security reminders around, but there are still people who try to make intimate contact with it.
In desperation, the organizer had to surround it with a guard line.
Compromise artists.
After the destruction of the exhibits, it is often difficult for artists to claim compensation, sometimes claiming to re-create the artwork and co-exist with the destruction.
During May Day this year, the "wilderness country" of Luhu in Chengdu was loved by tourists.
A variety of imaginative art installations, childlike and romantic.
However, the work of the artist Joe Knife, “Giant Cat ”, was only put in for a week and found to be destroyed.
Looking at the injured cat, he and the staff were distressed and could only put a small tape on the wound.
When people come and go in public spaces, it is difficult for staff to stare at a certain exhibit all the time, and it is difficult to restrict the behavior of those who come and accept the status quo.
Recently, young felt artist Carrot Pie has also been distressed by the damage to the exhibits.
Her handmade felt sculpture, “Daydream of a Rainy Day, ” was originally a work that allowed“ touch and rely on. ”
I can ’ t believe it was only four days before the show, and the audience was pissed off.
Many bear children climbed onto the sculpture and kept pulling her, pulling her, and stepping on her. After seeing the pie, they were particularly sad and felt that their work had been completely destroyed.
She lamented, “Why do so many works require touching to be forbidden? ”
Because you never know how outrageous the scene will be! ”
Coincidentally, a banana exhibit at the Seoul Art Museum in South Korea was eaten by a student during a visit.
This banana is one of the important works by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, called Comedian, which was sold for $120,000.
After the incident, the artist put a banana on it, saying that he did not intend to pursue the university student.
Related Article: Seoul 's' Banana 'Artwork Eaten, Korean University Students Involved: No Breakfast Feeling Hungry
Many times, perhaps it is because the cost of making mistakes is too low that people dare to vandalize exhibits without restraint.
As for whether the exhibits should be surrounded in the end, there is no unified standard in the industry.
One curator said that they had tried to make an open exhibition, but the view was very poor.
Some people will secretly take away the exhibits, and others will sit on it and pose, and for safety reasons, they will agree to protect the exhibits in a conventional manner.
What should I pay attention to when visiting the museum?
In the past two years, the museum has become the preferred destination for many young people to travel in their leisure time.
The reason we go to the exhibition is not only to see the works of art, but also to experience the perspective of the artist to see the world and feel their expression.
Art in the subtle, nourishing people's spiritual world.
As Chen Danqing wrote in The New York Chronicle: “Strange.
When people come to the museum, they will look good... standing in front of the painting or statue, and quiet, and their eyes are exceptionally pure. "
However, the act of vandalizing the exhibits is not beautiful at all.
Regardless of the form in which the exhibits exist, we should maintain respect and distance.
What do you usually pay attention to when going to a museum?
1.
Comply with the Basic Principles of Public Space
For example, not eating anything, not talking loudly, not wearing shoes that sound too loud to walk, etc., does not affect other visitors.
2.
Do not touch the exhibits.
With the exception of the few interactive or interactive exhibits that can be touched, most of the exhibits are by default only farsighted.
Do not feel that it is irrelevant to gently touch, if everyone does, countless fingerprints and sweat left on the exhibits will cause irreversible damage to the exhibits.
There are some small items that may be worth even the city.
3.
Pay attention to the photo scale
You can ’ t turn on the flash when taking photos, and you can ’ t bring equipment such as selfie sticks and tripods.
This is because strong light can accelerate the fading, aging of some artworks, and even stab the eyes of other visitors.
4.
Take your backpack carefully.
Many museums have a bag storage service, if you carry a shoulder bag, try to carry it with your hands or on your chest, so as not to inadvertently touch the exhibits or others when turning.
5.
No pets
Pets are usually not allowed in the museum.
Because once they get out of control and run around, they will knock down and damage the exhibits.
Conversely, if the exhibits are heavy, or the surface is sharper, it will cause harm to the pet.
Different museums may have different details.
When you are not sure if you can do something, you can check the official requirements in the museum or ask the staff.
Nowadays, many museums are already doing education very carefully, such as the Chi Mei Museum in Taiwan, everyone must be taken to a special room before visiting to watch the must-know animation, to avoid violating the regulations without knowing it.
Respect the work of artists and museums, and show civilization, the road is long and long.
This requires the awe and self-awareness of each of us, believing in the light of one lamp, and the light of all lights.

**Questions of Ownership and Interpretation**: who decides what a statue represents, and who gets to interpret or even damage or modify it, are underlying issues.

Title:

Content: The Immovable King at the Metropolitan Museum of the United States
When we see a “statue ” in a museum, who decides whether it is a“ Buddha statue ” or a “sculpture ”?
If a person does not understand Buddhism, can he or she not appreciate Buddhist art? If he or she also “appreciates ” Buddhist art, what does he or she appreciate?
Wu Peirong
The Metropolitan of Art may be a must-visit place for travelers to New York, but will you go there to admire Buddhist works of art? This short article is not about a particular work, but I want to think about some questions with readers.
The first question is, when we see a “statue ” in a museum, who decides whether it is a“ Buddha statue ” or a “sculpture ”? Second, if someone does not understand Buddhism, can not appreciate Buddhist art? If this person also“ appreciates ” Buddhist art, what does he appreciate? Is there a different way to see Buddhist art?
King of the Immovable Ming statue, 12th century, 162 cm high, Metropolitan Museum.
I would like to invite you to watch a 2-minute video on the Internet. The link is as follows: https: / / 82nd and-fifth.metmuseum.org / stubborn
You can also find the official website of the Metropolitan Museum of America, and then search for the 82nd and Fifth series of short films, number 59.
The big title of the film is stubborn, stubborn, illustrated by Sinéad Vilbar and photographed by Paul Lachenauer.
The video also has a subtitle, "FudõMyõõões (Achala-vidyãrãja), Heian Period, 12th century, Japan".
For English or Chinese readers, this sign is not easy to understand: FudõMyõö, the Japanese pronunciation of “Immovable King ”, o The sign above means to make a long sound, Achala-vidyãrãja is the Sanskrit name, Heian Period is the Heian period (794-1185), the Heian period is long, and the museum believes it can be more clearly marked as the 12th century. Works of Japan.
The Metropolitan Museum of America Immovable King Statue. The 82nd and fifth series of short films Stubborn / Sinéad Vilbar 00: 20.
The Metropolitan Museum of the United States Immovable King Statue. The 82nd and fifth series of short films Stubborn / Sinéad Vilbar 01: 22.
If you watch this two-minute video, you may feel that the narration of the video is easier to understand than the small label.
It is roughly summarized as follows: The statue is called Fudõ, meaning immovable.
It seems rather intimidating / intimidating, but still attractive to you.
Although strong, the rounded belly makes the statue somewhat like a stubborn five-year-old. The squint eyes and protruding fangs make it quiet.
Monasteries dedicated to such deities perform a ritual of burning things to remove uncleanness.
The sword he held was used to cut loose objects, and the rope was used to capture people who obstructed Buddhism, which may also refer to the internal battle of the individual.
Try to meditate on this statue and feel the tension and stability of the statue ’ s body.
I like to imagine that I am among the elements of this statue and have experienced the past of the Jiupin Temple where this statue was originally located (the temple no longer exists).
Between where he stood and where I stood, everything that had gone through seemed to still exist.
For the sake of discussion, I have reluctantly made the above summary.
There are subtitles available for the narration of the film, but the subtitles in English, Chinese, and Japanese are subtly different.
The narrator uses a lot of colloquial expressions in English, while Chinese and Japanese subtitles choose more elegant words.
As a Chinese reader, how do you feel about this video?
If you ’ ve ever been in contact with Buddhist art, would you agree with this presentation?
Perhaps at first, I thought that the narrator was just saying it casually, but think about it carefully, she mentioned the history of iconography, style, and image! Although she did not introduce a certain Buddhist classic, "holding a sharp sword in the right hand, holding a Zen rope in the left hand, and making a decision and worrying posture", she did explain the characteristics of the object in oral language.
When I heard her say cut right through the crap, I was stunned, after all, cut the crap is a slightly vulgar expression.
Curiously, I turned to the Chinese subtitle, and the screen said, “Cut the redundancy. ”
Well, people who write in Chinese can be a little relieved.
In addition, the narrator said that the ritual of burning things to remove uncleanness is "protection".
If you look up Wikipedia, you will improve your understanding. Well, you may also be puzzled by the fact that there are too many proper terms on the wiki.
From my own observation, whether it is in Chinese or Japanese to introduce Buddhist art, the professional language is used a lot, but the introduction of English writing seems to have a deliberate tendency to avoid.
As a teacher who teaches the history of Japanese art in a university, a relatively small percentage of the students I meet are interested in Buddhist art from the beginning.
At the beginning of the first class, I will send out the syllabus and make it clear that this class has a high proportion of works related to Buddhist art, after all, this is the main content of ancient Japanese art.
I can see some students getting a little disappointed.
Next, I will choose to show some short films from European and American museums, such as this one, and remind that the way to see Buddhist art may not be the same as they expected.
At the end of the semester, many students said that the class changed their views.
Some students feel that they did not want to see works related to Buddhist art before, always feel that it is a very specialized field, young people are not easy to resonate, but after a semester of classes, the variety of viewing methods increased their willingness to see Buddha statues.
However, some students are still not used to it, and feel that it is strange to use general language to analyze the characteristics of Buddha statues.
# metkids explore the map.
Explore the map of the Ming dynasty.
For children, how can they “appreciate ” Buddhist art? This statue of King Ming is one of the“ main ” works of the Metropolitan Museum, and has also appeared in the # metkids website designed for children.
Use explore the map to find childlike sketches.
In this large image, some of the works with dots can be further clicked to see the original photos and other introductory materials.
Click on watch to see a short video created by the children themselves, inspired by the statue of the Immovable King (# MetKids — Animation Inspired by Guardians and a Japanese Protector).
# MetKids — Animation Inspired by Guardians and a Japanese Protector 01: 07.
A short film of about 2 minutes, first this picture of the 12th century immovable Ming king, followed by a short drama similar to a cartoon.
In my master ’ s class, I discussed this short film with my classmates.
The topic we discussed was, is this a successful museum promotion?
One student expressed surprise that the famous Metropolitan Museum put this short film on its official website.
She thinks that this short film is not exquisite, the animation image is not good, and the content is not particularly meaningful.
Several students tried to defend this short film.
"This is really done by children! Unlike in Taiwan, which is claimed to be done by children, it is often modified by large numbers of people, and even is done by adults from beginning to end." "Don't move, is a protector, is the core concept!"
"The idea of a child is so simple, why should we expect how profound it is?" Most of the students think that for Asians, there is often too much emphasis on the "positive meaning" of education, as if children do not learn anything at a museum.
As for what you have learned, it is best to design a study list and see how many questions you can answer.
Well, I don ’ t have the answer, just pick out some questions and let everyone think about it.
This article is reproduced by permission from the Roaming History of Art, The Immovable King at the Metropolitan Museum of the United States.
No need to smoke, no need to grab, now use the APP to watch the news, guarantee the daily winning point I download the APP
I've added friends, thank you.
Welcome to [Free Commentary]
It's a compliment. Good.
It has been praised, thank you.
Related News
Editor 's Choice