Pipe to the Spirit Ditties of No Tone

From The Tucson Citizen

March 28, 2006

Two men to be tried for defacing Mozart statue in Salzburg
The Associated Press

VIENNA, Austria - Two men who painted part of an avant-garde sculpture of Mozart and stuck feathers on it because they considered it pornographic will be tried on vandalism charges, authorities said Tuesday.
Officials identified one of the men as Martin Humer, 80, a former photographer who has gained notoriety in Austria as a self-proclaimed "porn hunter." Police identified the other man as a 79-year-old.
The public prosecutor's office in Salzburg, where Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born, said the pair painted part of the "Homage to Mozart" sculpture on Salzburg's Ursulinenplatz with red-and-green enamel and stuck white feathers on it last August.
Prosecutors estimated damage to the work by German artist Markus Luepertz at about $8,125, although the Salzburg Foundation claimed losses of $42,000. There was no immediate explanation for the discrepancy.
The sculpture, which depicts Mozart in the nude, "has nothing to do with art and is a kind of pornography," Humer told reporters.
A court date wasn't immediately set. Austria is holding a yearlong celebration to mark the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth.

Here is the statue before (or maybe after cleaning).


And here it is with its white painted face CathyG .)


Unfortunately I can't find an image of it with its feathers, but I say... It amazes me that the two self styled "Pornhunters" are octogenarians and the perpetrators of what they call a "Papageno assault". (In reference the the feathered bird collector in Mozart's opera The Magic Flute).

Humer according to Salzburg@orf.at justifies his actions in this way

Die Statue sei "auch eine Art der Pornografie", .... "Denn am Ende Mozart so darzustellen ist eine Abscheulichkeit. Das kann nur ein Psychopath machen. Solche Psychopathen sind auch in anderen Bereichen zu finden."

"Hat ja keinen Wert"
Mit der "Freiheit der Kunst, Menschen herabzusetzen", könne er "überhaupt nichts anfangen", ergänzte Humer, "Was Mozart herabwürdigt, hat nichts mit Kunst zu tun."

Dass er mit der Aktion fremdes Eigentum beschädigt, stört den Pornojäger nicht: "Das hat ja keinen Wert."

Translated this means:

"The staute is a kind of pornography,... Because ultimately to portray Mozart in this way is an abomination, Only a psychopath could do such a thing. These psychopaths can be found in other areas."

"It's worthless. Putting down people in the name of artistic license is beyond me," added Humer. "Anything that denigrates Mozart has nothing to do with art." The fact that he damaged someone else's property, the article continues, does not bother him. "It's meaningless (worthless)," he said.

On the one hand (as dispicable as his opinion is), I have to applaud Humer for making public art an area of controversy and discussion - I believe we need more guerrilla art in the world and more acts that provoke public controversy and enngagement. On the other hand, of course, his act represents an extreme form of prudery and narrowmindedness. To believe that art must be beautiful, that it cannot criticize or that the human form is pornographic (in my mind) is the height of psychopathology. To think of the monstrous beauty of Picasso's "Guernica" and the idea someone might ever consider defacing it because it is not beautiful, because it shows nakedness and rape, because it is disturbing or a political statement with which s/he might disagree brings me to tears.



I conclude with the last lines of Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn.

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

Or perhaps that is all I need to know.

Update:

I had a chance to actually visit this statue in September. I only saw it at night, but here it is in its current state:



 

Personally I do like it better without the painted face.