Sunday e-mail 6th October: Vandalism and the crisis of meaning

Cathedrals, paintings, and stabbings

Hello, Crime & Psychology fan! An especially big greeting to those who have recently joined us. Crime & Psychology, mighty as it already was, has been fortunate to gain any number of recruits in the last few weeks. Let me tell you how welcome you are and how glad I am that you’re here. Perhaps it will help you to live the kind of life that you feel is worthwhile.

Exactly that topic has been on my mind of late. The philosopher Stephen Blackwood was interviewed on the Triggernometry podcast just the other week. His subject was ‘Why We Have a Crisis of Meaning’. I was so impressed, I listened to it twice. If you’d like to check it out, HERE is a link to the YouTube version: Why We Have a Crisis of Meaning - Stephen Blackwood (youtube.com)

When was the last time anyone you know contributed to a project that they knew they would never live to see completed? When was the last time you picked up a task that was begun by your grandfather’s grandfather? I’m guessing the answer to both questions is as close to ‘Never’ as makes no difference.

Imagine a medieval mason, carefully trimming the edges of the stone he is about to place into the edifice. ‘What are you doing?’ one might ask. ‘I’m building a cathedral,’ the mason replies.

A meaningful life is one in which we either create something new, or lose ourselves in a process which extends beyond our own mortal limits. Why should that be? Well, we are all going to die – and we know it. Few if any of our descendants, looking at our tombstones, will be able to say much of substance about us. Ultimately, that renders most of our daily occupations meaningless. Who will care which Netflix shows we watched, or how many Likes we got on social media? Who will even care how much money we had in the bank? Neither Rembrandt nor Van Gogh had Twitter; both died owing money to church-mice. Did it matter?

Two unfashionable words inevitably appear here. Both stand for big concepts that have left big holes in the western mindset. In the absence of religion and truth we flounder for something to make it all makes sense; something that is (to use a somewhat embarrassing term) ‘transcendent’. Very few candidates present themselves. And yet we do have concerns, we do have our graces and grievances. They manifest themselves in social movements and protests and programmes which in better times perhaps we would treat like sleeping dogs.

Is it revealing that my academic response - Pavlovian and reflexive as can be – was to put scare quotes around the worth truth? I think it is.

During the London riots, Black Lives Matter protestors vandalised a statue of Winston Churchill. They painted the words ‘was a racist’ under his name. How many books do you think the vandals had read about Churchill? How much knowledge do you think they had? I’m guessing the answer to both questions is as close to ‘Zero’ as makes no difference.

When two Just Stop Oil protestors were jailed for throwing soup over Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers 1888’, three comrades went and threw soup over it again, adding ‘Sunflowers 1889’ for good measure. Apparently one of them said ‘Future generations will regard these prisoners of conscience to be on the right side of history’, while attacking history. How many books do you think the vandals had read about Van Gogh? How much do you think they understand art? I’m guessing the answer to both questions…

To dismiss all this as wrong-headed, casual, petty crime may be to miss the point. Clearly, the protestors had a grievance. Although not all of the people who support them were necessarily in favour of vandalism, they may have recognised that these movements (BLM; JSO) did, at least, make an attempt to articulate their grievance. To employ another overused word, something ‘systemic’ was going on; something deeper than paint or soup.

Might Substack provide an answer? For sure it will, if you believe that Substack will last forever. For sure it will, if you hope and believe that it offers meaning, importance, transcendence. Or is it no more transcendent than Netflix or Twitter? Fact is, no one knows. The important thing may be to act as if Substack is the answer, even if it isn’t.

The topic of transcendence brings me to the subject of this week’s newsletter. Art is one of the few things to which we can certainly dedicate ourselves with some hope of achieving it. This week, Crime & Psychology features one of the greatest painters ever to walk the planet. What can such a fellow possibly have to do with crime, let alone psychology? You ask a good question. All will be revealed on Wednesday. I know it seems a long time to wait. Pass a few minutes banging the blue buttons below. You’ll soon feel better.

This week’s bullet list naturally features artists and crime:

·       One name springs immediately to mind when the words ‘painting’ and ‘crime’ are mentioned in the same sentence. Caravaggio was playing tennis with a pimp when they got into an argument. Surprisingly enough, it wasn’t about a misjudged line-call or underarm serve, but something even more exasperating. The painter, no even-tempered fellow, had once nearly murdered a waiter who served the wrong artichokes. The pimp bled to death. Caravaggio fled.

·       The great goldsmith, Benvenutto Cellini, was in trouble almost from the start of his career. Not content with starting giant fights everywhere he went and hurling himself like a berserker at his enemies during the sack of Rome, Cellini also took revenge on his brother’s murderer. Three more victims swiftly followed. Busy as he was, Cellini nevertheless did find time to make some lovely cruet. His autobiography is admired by fans of homicidal goldsmiths everywhere.

·       The watercolourist Olive Wharry burnt down the tea house at Kew Gardens. It is surely the most middle-class crime ever recorded in the annals of infamy. Wharry was a suffragette who was protesting in favour of women’s rights.

·       Egon Schiele once scandalised the natives of Neulengbach by paying its young ladies to pose for paintings. They assumed that he was also paying for sexual services. After one short term of imprisonment, Schiele left for Vienna, taking a model with him. She apparently just wanted to move in with her grandmother. When she grew sick, back Schiele went to Neulengbach where he found he’d been reported for kidnap and rape.

·       Finally, Banksy, for all the great fame he’s achieved – not to mention the fact that wherever he decides to put his work, the value of a wall goes up – is a criminal by definition. He’s a graffiti artist, after all. Vandalism is vandalism, no matter how good you are at it.