The weekend before last a slightly tubby Taiwanese boy carrying a can of pop caught his foot against a low step, lost his balance, fell sideways and punched a hole through a 17th century painting supposedly worth a million dollars.
Rather generously, I thought, the world immediately decided that the incident was not his fault. Twelve can be an ungainly age, and it was obvious from his demeanour (caught on video) that his look of abstraction was not caused by any deep reflection on the art around him. He had clearly been brought.
Predictably — and agreeably — coverage of the story from Taipei soon included other recent examples of gallery disasters. My favourite since 2006 has been that of Nick Flynn, the man who tripped on his shoelaces on a stairway in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and totalled three Qing dynasty vases that had stood there since 1948. Norman Wisdom in his heyday could not have done it better.
But actually that sixty years of vasal inviolability should not be used as evidence of Flynn’s exceptional carelessness, but of everyone else’s precaution. If you think about it — all those people, all that art — it is extraordinary that it doesn’t happen more often.
I’ve seen it once. In the Pompidou Centre in Paris, looking down from an internal escalator, I saw a couple take a short-cut towards the café through an installation made up of huge Lego bricks. The man over-gesticulated and pushed over a couple of pieces. He and the woman looked around them and fled. No one was any the wiser.
Advertisement
Probably the installation as accidentally altered still stands. Perhaps it was even the artist’s intention. And in fact you can make out a case that the Porpora painting (which may not be a Porpora after all and may not be worth a million dollars) is more interesting with the hole in it than without.
Too much in the pasta
Never mind damaged art, my colleague Phil Collins drew attention this week to neglected art. Specifically he condemned the Italians for failing to properly maintain their heritage.
I remember once visiting a friend in Naples. We went for a pizza in the suburb of Pozzuoli (literally, “Stinkytown”) and passed the amazingly well-preserved but entirely shut-up amphitheatre there. Why, I demanded, was the place not open?
Because, said my friend, the Italians have so much heritage, so much art, so many ancient buildings, it would tax any people to try and maintain it all.
Advertisement
He was right. I was in Assisi last week. If you visit the Basilica of San Francesco you will see the St Francis cycle of frescoes supposedly painted by Giotto in the 14th century. One of them shows Francis renouncing his worldly goods in the Piazza del Comune. The buildings in the fresco — the Roman Temple of Minerva and the Torre del Popolo — are still there.
Throughout Italy this is true. Town after town has a civic centre with medieval buildings. Everywhere there are fabulous archaeological remains. Looking after it all is an enormous job.
So how about Britain? I took a town at random — Watford. It boasts the Grand Union canal and Cassiobury Park where, until 1927 stood Cassiobury House, the family seat of the Earls of Essex. And then it was demolished. Completely. Fortunately they kept the rather wonderful 17th century gatehouse. Until 1970 when it was pulled down for road widening. Our commitment to maintaining our heritage is, we should admit, a conveniently recent virtue.
Artistic slide shows
Of course, what we have lost in ancientness we have made up for in innovation. These days no new art concept is complete without visitor participation and very often this consists of a flume. For a time Tate Modern boasted a tube through which art-lovers could travel like sperm in one of those sex education videos, from the body of the gallery to be ejaculated into the outside world. Last month it was announced that the metal colossus designed by Anish Kapoor, that winds up out of the Olympic Park in Stratford, is to be fitted with a Super Flume. No Taiwanese boys allowed.