A Disproportionate Response (This Time From France)

Evidently I angered the French more than I realized with my flag suggestion.

Reading the LAT today, I notice this front page story regarding the destruction of artwork by LA artists while on loan to the Pompidou Center for an exhibit celebrating LA art.


My flag suggestion is pink and yellow (see above), one of the destroyed artworks (see below) was pink and yellow.


Coincidence?

I say not (my original post was on 5th of July, the artwork was destroyed less than two weeks later on the 16th). The only time the French aren't ready to surrender is when blame is to be apportioned, then the French will fight tooth and nail to deflect the blame, from the article

The artists involved and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which owned one of the destroyed works, expressed bewilderment and a deep sense of loss. "It's tragic," said Lyn Kienholz, head of the California / International Arts Foundation, who acted as a go-between for the French contemporary art museum. "It never should have happened. There's no excuse." "It's not our guilt," Catherine Grenier, who curated the show for the Pompidou, said from her Paris home. "For me, it's not a coincidence. These two works were made of the same materials, and made in the same period. And both were incredibly fragile." But LACMA curator Lynn Zelevansky, who heads the contemporary art department, noted that the piece the museum lent had gone on and off display often — and survived several earthquakes — during its three decades in LACMA's care. That piece was Craig Kauffman's "Untitled Wall Relief," a 1967 work of acrylic lacquer on vacuum-formed Plexiglas that measured 52 by 78 inches. Pompidou officials told LACMA it fell and shattered July 16, just before the show closed. "It's extremely upsetting," said LACMA Director Michael Govan. "We're still investigating all of the details." The other total loss was an untitled piece made by Peter Alexander in 1971 and lent by the Franklin Parrasch Gallery in New York. That resin work, which resembled a black bar about 8 feet high and 5 inches wide, fell overnight in the days before the show opened to the public in March. "I'd been sort of holding on to it preciously," Alexander said from his Santa Monica studio. "I don't know whether it's arrogance or passivity, but I've never dealt with anybody or any institution that works this way."

Accusing the French of arrogance or passivity? No, not the French, c'est impossible. If my post caused the French to retaliate against those artworks, then I'm not too arrogant to apologize to those artists. I should have realized how fragile, petty, and assinine the French were, and been aware that they would displace their anger in the most childish of ways. For that I'm sorry.

I'll miss that large scale pink and yellow artwork (the picture above doesn't do it justice, it's large (52"x78"), and very sculptural and evocative with its sinuous and sensuous undulations), it really iswas impressive in person, It's like a three dimensional Rothko, but in candy colors. That may sound like a put down, but it's not, that's a compliment.