Thursday, January 20, 2011

Poetry, Art, and the Nature of Theft

Hello Internets.

We're still doing acrostics poetry today, yes, but the subject matter is a little more serious than you will probable ever read in this blog definitively before, and most probably after. I live near-ish to Philadelphia. Philadelphia has a lot of art museums and such likes. Lots. And I've been in the Art museum, you know the fake-roman looking one with the Rocky statue out front, and let me tell you -- it isn't anything special. And I'm not just saying that because I've been in the Louvre. (The Louvre is of course better) I mean I've even been in photography museums and things and yes "Oh Edward Weston!" everyone says, yeah ok, man was great at doing innovative stuff for that time but I hardly think he is to photography what William Gibson's Neuromancer is to cyberpunk fiction. What am I getting at? Oh yes,

The Barnes Museum. F'Philadelphia and Ed Rendell and all the other stupid people. You do not mess with Albert C. Barnes. You can't just move his stuff. I know they went threw all the legal loopholes and yad, yad, yad. Still it's annoying, and dumb, and insulting to the nature of art. Mr. Barnes used his collection as a teaching tool, the building was a school, closed to the public, open to people that actually care. Most people don't really care about art, frankly. Not in the way where it is more than a social, money thing. Art is meant not to be looked at for it's monetary value, or even for aesthetic beauty, but more for what it shows us about ourselves as humans. This move shows us how horriblly greedy, selfish, and disrespective people can really grow to be.

And that, I think, is the biggest shame.

So only one poem today, on account of how long my rant has been.


"Albert C."


Built up a fortune
Argyrol was the liquid gold
Rising up out of the smoke
Netting paintings worth the ransoms of nations
Establishing a true art school.
Stolen after death, legacy lost.

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