Art is under attack. Another week, another expensive poke in the eye. Last Sunday, Miami artist Maximo Caminero destroyed a $1 million vase by Ai Weiwei in protest at the museum ignoring the work of local artists. Before this, there was Wlodzimierz Umaniec’s defacement of a Tate Modern Mark Rothko in the cause of ‘Yellowism’, which saw the Pole jailed for two years. Then came the story of the kids caught clambering over a $10 million Donald Judd.
It’s hard not to smile. The irony of it all is too delicious. An art form that has for 100 years demanded that practitioners shaft society’s norms is, in turn, having its norms shafted. The art establishment is being out-transgressed. We can’t have that.
Caminero’s case is instructive. Here is a man who smashes a vase made by an artist who made his name smashing a vase.
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