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tags:kissingvandalism
rel: Hans-Joachim Bohlmann Disordered Attention - How We Look at Art and Performance by Claire Bishop
Title
I’m continuing to research about vandalism (the various forms and reason), and attention.
There’s a Cy Twombly exhibit happening in NYC right now while reading about it, I noticed one of his works had been famously vandalized. This entry collects some information on this case.
A woman who kissed a £1.37m painting, leaving a lipstick stain, has been ordered to pay 1,500 euros (£1,074) in damages to its owner by a French judge.
Cambodian-born Rindy Sam told the court in the southern French city of Avignon that she was “overcome with passion” when she saw the painting in July.
Not all vandalism is paint and knives; in 2007, artist Rindy Sam kissed the Phaedrus, an all-white canvas, leaving a red lipstick smear. Attempts to remove the mark, using 30 different chemicals, failed. Sam was arrested and convicted of “voluntary degradation of a work of art.” She was ordered to pay 1000 euros to the owner, 500 euros to the gallery, and 1 euro to the painter. Her defense for her act was this: “It was just a kiss, a loving gesture. I kissed it without thinking; I thought the artist would understand… It was an artistic act provoked by the power of Art.”
Cy on his work stated To paint involves a certain crisis, or at least a crucial moment of sensation or release. Crisis by no means limited to a morbid state, but could just as easily be an ecstatic impulse.
In Court:
She wore the same red lipstick to court. “I just gave a kiss. It was a gesture of love,” she said. “When I kissed it, I did not think it out carefully, I just thought the artist would understand.” The prosecution described her kiss as a “revolting bestial act of cruelty,” “a rape,” and “aggressive as a punch.” The language of consent informed the statements made by the plaintiff’s lawyer, Agnes Tricoire, who said, “I do not share her vision of love. For me, love requires the consent of both sides.”
The action of Rindy Sam seems to illustrate Kenya Hara’s theory about how paper compels us to make a mark. Phaedrus being Plato’s work on erotic love it seems fitting that the mark is a kiss