A few days ago, a pair of pro-Palestinian activists attacked a Picasso painting to protest against the genocide in Gaza, perpetrated by the Israeli government and army. The activists belonged to a British organization called Youth Demand [El Jovent Exigeix]and the events took place in the National Gallery in London, where one of the many maternities painted by Picasso is on display. The two activists posted, precisely, an image of a Palestinian mother holding her bloodied son in her arms. It is the first news we have of an attack against a work of art in a museum in protest of the tragedy in Palestine, but we have recently seen several similar ones, carried out by activists against climate change.
The message that both parties intend to convey is understood, but the result could not be more wrong. Art, literature, theater, music, everything we call culture, are not bourgeois privileges, but conquests of humanity. They represent the best we are capable of doing as a species, and they are, precisely, responses against barbarism and violence: responses signed by one author or another, yes, but signed in the name of all of us. At its core, art is always collective, because it is born from the concerns, pains and fascinations of its time, and it is always political because it speaks to all of us, it asks us, it questions us (or it insults us or it amuses us or it enthralls us). to everyone.
Therefore, those who destroy art and culture are always the authoritarians, the totalitarians. The fascists, the neo-fascists, the imitators or those nostalgic for fascists, or those who allow themselves to be dazzled by them. From a neighborhood movie theater or a popular athenaeum to the most elite museums, the places where culture is exhibited, the places of culture, should always be respected. Attacking a museum, or a bookstore, or a library, or a theater is not going against the system, quite the opposite: it is reinforcing the darkest part of that same system. It is an act against the common good, which is the first thing that someone who intends to champion a just cause must respect.
Fascists, historically, have always made very tall bonfires with books. Fundamentalists and religious fanatics attack painters and cartoonists because their images offend them. Dictatorships – from the right and the left – have always persecuted writers, filmmakers, playwrights, actors and comedians, because they cannot tolerate being subjected to criticism of their words. The Nazis (and their dirty version, Franco’s national Catholicism) condemned most modern art – like Picasso, without going any further – as “degenerate” or “repugnant.” Someone who was not a Nazi, but was quite unpleasant, like Margaret Thatcher, defined the painter Francis Bacon as “a horrible man who paints horrible pictures.” All of them were, are, convinced that they were right. Like those who vandalize museums and works of art in the name of whatever cause.
