Third from last, to be precise, because as I write, news has arrived on the radio of the defacement of the facade of the Senate of the Republic, preceded by “The Millstones” in the Barberini Museum in Potsdam, smeared with a potato purée, dethroning Van Gogh's "The Sower," which was defaced in the National Gallery in London. Meanwhile, daily reports detail everything from chips in Piazza Navona and Piazza di Spagna to stones being stolen from Pompeii or affectionate messages scrawled on the Colosseum. The motivation? Since art makes news, it's best to attack it, as it cannot defend itself and is often not defended by those who ought to be protecting it, or they do so poorly. Then, there's the rush to restore and intensify security, which, after an initial surge, fades, until the next madman (and I'm referring to the chap who broke the nose off a bust of a Roman emperor). Furthermore, the heritage is so vast that it's impossible to keep everything under surveillance, as they say nowadays, 24/7, all the time.
Greater vigilance is certainly needed, but the higher point of synthesis is another, cultural, educational one, which must ensure that everyone's heritage is protected by everyone, as happens with Piero della Francesca's “Madonna del Parto”, which has eyes and ears for all the inhabitants of Monterchi, diligent Tuscans who have not forgotten that they are distant Etruscans and, more recently, contemporaries of Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, and so on. Blaming those who throw ink on a Pollock or dye the Trevi Fountain red can and must be done, by teaching in a new way the relationship with artistic assets, which have been degraded by mass society and consumer subculture into material goods, not cultural and spiritual ones, to the point that someone even defined them as “our oil." What nonsense! They are not fossils, they are not oil, they are not tools for cheap economics. They are also a source of wealth, provided we do not use them recklessly as we are doing, boasting "two million visitors to the Uffizi"; they are our identity, without them we could consider ourselves foundlings. They are our history and a relevant part of our present, which feeds on true art and culture, so as not to descend from a rich biography to a disheartening biology. Works of art, ancient or modern, are a source of ingenuity and imagination of originality. So what?! So we are the ones who are scarred, in name and in image!
KLESSIDRA | EDITED BY FRANCESCO GALLO MAZZEO
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