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The New York Times reports on the mysterious figure who has become known as “the Splasher” because he or she hurled colorful blobs of paint at prominent pieces of art on exterior walls in Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan, New York. The only clues left behind in the paint assaults were bold manifestoes — phrases like “destroy the museums, in the streets and everywhere” — that appeared to critique the commercialization of art.

The splasher draws on a long tradition of institutional critique, which dates back to 1909 when F.T. Marinetti wrote the 20th century’s ur-manifesto “The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism” which glorifies war and preaches iconoclasm by stating: “We will destroy the museums, libraries, academies of every kind”. In the 50’s the famous director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Willem Sandberg, stated that the main purpose of the museum should be to make itself redundant. But almost hundred years down the road there is still no sign of museums disappearing or being shut down, let alone being destroyed by agressive artists. Paradoxically, most works of art that criticize the art system eventually end up in museum collections, as the institutional acceptance of graffiti artists such as Banksy shows. But I’m afraid that the Splasher will neither succeed in bringing down the museum nor prove to be interesting enough for museums to acquire for their collections.

Read an interesting view on the Splasher on Hardcorbeau

Related posts:  Are Guggenheim’s True Colors Shining Through?  //

This entry was posted on donderdag, juni 28th, 2007 at 1:48 pm and is filed under Museum. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.