It seems to me that this discussion suffers from a failure to disentangle ethical and political or legal questions: questions of what is of value and what one should do in one's private capacity, on the one hand, and questions of when a government institution, such as a legislature or a court of law, may legitimately exercise coercive power, on the other. For instance:
I don't know why this has turned into a weighing of value between a human life and art. Art is valuable because it embodies the essence of being human. I believe that every piece of great art and every great writing and every great piece of architecture (often subjective, of course) reveals more about the human soul than we all recognize on a daily basis. If we are going to measure our wishes, let's wish that great art and every human life can last forever. But they can not...
I see nothing here to quarrel with; and I don't know if anyone else posting in the thread would have any objection. Surely anyone, regardless of political persuasion, can grant that great works of art, like other great human achievements, have a value other than their monetary value. I certainly
hope that no one here means to deny this (though I haven't read every post in the thread, so I don't know). But up to this point, Nicenycdick's statements have no legal or political implications. It is one thing to say that something has value; it is quite another thing to say what consequences the destruction of a thing of value "should" bring (it will become clear why I put the word "should" in quotation marks in a moment) -- as here:
and we should do all we can to preserve it all. Let's hope we don't have to come down to making a choice. With that said, I believe that the preservation of great art (be it a painting, a writing or a building) is an obligation the owner owes to all of us. If that obligation is not met, there should be consequences. Sometimes those consequences include prosecution or litigation...sometimes only social castignation is appropriate. But there should always be consequences...
As soon as one starts talking about "consequences" that acts of destruction of great works of "should" have, one has to answer such questions as: who determines these consequences, and by what authority? So I think that Thadjock's response is justified:
describe the tribunal you'd engineer to mete out such consequences.
and who decides what constitutes "great art" or architecture, or writing?
is christo's work great art? it only exists for a limited time, how do you preserve that?
To be fair, Nicenycdick was expressly vague about what the consequences should be, allowing even mere social disapprobation to count. But then it is not clear what the force of the "should" is, since popular disapprobation will either occur of itself or not occur at all: it's hard to see how any "should" can apply to it. For that matter, it is not clear how it applies to prosecution and litigation: if someone destroys a work of art that is his own property, then, as far as I know, he has violated no law and done no party any harm, and therefore
cannot be prosecuted or sued. If, on the other hand, the work was not his sole property, then it may be possible to prosecute him under some law or bring suit on behalf of some injured party. But if so, then the legal process takes care of itself, does it not? Does it add anything to say that consequences "should" occur?
So I am not sure that what Nicenycdick says is really at odds with what Thadjock says in the rest of his post, at least if Thadjock's statements are interpreted as merely concerning legal rights:
despite what some romantics contend, art is a commodity that trades on a free and open market. there are private owners, public owners, artists, governments, museums, institutions, all engaged in acquisition and sales. the soul of the artist, and if you really want to get carried away with it, the embodiment of our entire civilization might be contained within it, but in our civilization everything has a price.
if an owner (governments & museums included) is willing to sell it, then the buyer has every right to do whatever he wants with it. he can sell/lease/option the image/manuscript/music for commercial gain, or lease the great building to a saudi oil family to use as a parking garage for their fleet of maybachs & rolls. regardless of who painted the ceiling.
Yes, as a matter of law, one
can do these things: that is, it violates no law and commits no actionable injury to do them. Did Nicenycdick mean to deny this? I don't think so (though I don't know); certainly I would not.
Yet surely there is some sort of disagreement here. To take a trivial but obvious example for comparison: it is one's right under the law -- any system of law on earth that I know of -- to be an obnoxious, selfish, mendacious, scheming, manipulative jerk; it hardly follows that there is nothing objectionable about behaving that way. Similarly, it is my right under the law to buy a masterpiece of art and destroy it; it hardly follows that it is unobjectionable of me to do so. The legal issue and the ethical issue are distinct; indeed, in cases in which there is no legal issue, there can still be an ethical one.
I'm sorry not to arrive at a clearer and more satisfying conclusion. I find the issue very troubling and elusive.
