This is the most wonderful thing I’ve seen in ages:
A Russian art gallery guard has been accused of doodling on a Soviet-era painting he was responsible for guarding on his first day in the job. During a visit to the Yeltsin Center in Yekaterinburg in December, two visitors spotted eyes drawn in ballpoint pen on Anna Leporskaya’s work Three Figures. The avant-garde painting features three abstract, and usually eyeless, figures. The security guard has since been fired and the police have opened a criminal investigation.
Seriously, if you click on the link, you’ll see how nicely placed the eyes are. Why would he do such a thing though?
“His motives are still unknown but the administration believes it was some kind of a lapse in sanity,” she said. She added that he drew the eyes onto the painting with one of the Yeltsin Center’s own branded pens, penetrating a layer of the paint.
Or…was he saner than anyone else in the world? Unhappily, he could face jail time, and also, amazingly, it’s going to cost a lot of money to make everything ok again:
The painting was returned to the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, which had loaned the painting to the Yeltsin gallery, for restoration a day after the vandalism’s discovery. The restoration is estimated to cost 250,000 roubles (£2,468; $3,345). Protective screens have since been installed over the other works in the Yeltsin Center’s exhibition.
I suppose because the artist is no longer with us, she can’t just come and paint over the eyes. I hate to say it, but I think the people in the picture look nicer after this innovative security guard got hold of that pen. Shows what a philistine I am, I suppose. (Not to say anything against Philistines!)
Anyway, I have a lot of things to do today, like clear up the celebratory wreckage of my youngest child turning eleven yesterday, and the various Twitter outrages that occurred while I was trying to bake a pie. For example, it seems that a man (how dare he) told all the women in his Twitter feed not to post pictures of themselves less the outer garments usually worn over the underneath ones. In particular, he said he didn’t like the before and after weight loss pictures, and the nursing mother pictures, and the ones of the pregnant ladies with their large tummies gleaming in the sunlight–that’s just my own editorial spin on his rather short tweet. I think it was actually the “birth story” option. Here is a video if you really want to catch up on all the drama. The person in the video is on the side of the pastor, so if you hate him, you best not click.
So anyway (just continuing on with my own summation, which is many hours behind because several hundred tweets seem to be appearing every moment on this important subject and I can’t possibly, in good conscience, keep up with them, or I would then in danger of becoming someone who is “very online”), Beth Moore told the original tweeter to back off and worry about his own “unders” and then lots and lots of women started posting alarming photos of themselves on his feed–shockingly, the very kinds of photos he was wishing to avoid in the first place. I probably could have told him that would happen if he had asked me but he didn’t, because no one ever wants my advice.
I suppose it will astonish you to learn that I have many thoughts about this important matter. First, gosh I love the decadence of this latter age before Christ returns (please, dear Lord, could it be today???). The fact that this is a “controversy” at all is a…what’s that called? I feel like St. Paul used some prescient word…oh! That’s right! A Defeat. We are already defeated, using “we” in its least obnoxious sense. The fact that so many people today of every religious persuasion find it comfortable to post pictures of themselves without enough clothes on is a defeat for civilization and a disempowerment for women. Still, I do have my favorite version and it’s this one.
Second, I don’t know if all the ladies (like “we,” I mean that in an expansive and inclusive sense of course) know this, but posting a lot of pictures like that as “gotcha” or “I’ll show um” has the opposite effect. If I had been inclined to the side of the MOAR FLESH ALL THE TIME before, scrolling through for less than two seconds tumbled me into the PLEASE COVER YOURSELF community before I could even draw breath. I imagine I am not alone.
Third, it leapt out at me while watching Revoice, how important dress is to a constructed identity (that’s not what I said in the piece, I didn’t have time to get to it, but I was thinking about it here:
While many of the speakers showcased the experiences of being lesbian, gay, and transgender, always marrying those experiences to the call for obedience, Elizabeth Delgado Black represented the bisexual experience. Her talk, “Spiritual Maturity as Sexual Minority Christians,” began this way:
“I’ve just been thinking the past day and a half now how amazing it is to see all the fabulous haircuts, the button downs, the nice-fitted shorts, the ‘they/them’ labels and stickers and all the while worshiping God in such an amazing and powerful way….I would like to represent all my bisexual friends in the house here. We do exist. We talk about sexual minorities and gay people, well, you know we’re all a part of this. So, I’m speaking for you friends today….I have wanted to express myself in all my black and brown ways with whoops and hollers.”
Working through texts in Hebrews and Ephesians, Black called “sexual minority christians” to mature in their “sexual identity,” and prophesied that Revoice would become one of the “vital ligaments of the church.” She concluded, in agreement with other speakers, that it’s about “working to move beyond shame, self-loathing, self-pity, to grow in confidence and self-love, pride in how God is working in your identity.”
Of course how one dresses, in every age and place, is a way of telling the world who you are. That’s why the Bible spends a certain amount of principled time on it. What is interesting is not that people express their identities through their choice of garments and the number and quantity of them, but rather what they are saying at this particular moment. And on that cliffhanger, I had better go because I’ve got stuff to do. But I will try to pick up the thought tomorrow because, honestly, I think it’s an “important” issue about which you will doubtless long to hear my thoughts. And, if you want to know what my soul looks like, it’s in the picture attached to this post. Have a nice day if you’re into that sort of thing!
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