We saw The Monuments Men this weekend and enjoyed it.
The movie had what we liked: Europe, art, humor, pathos, and heroic military guys. Lots of fun.
And it reminded me of my first visit to Europe at the gangly age of fourteen.
Like the Monuments Men, my family was on a mission: to see all the great art works of Europe.
Mom was determined we would learn about art and culture. After the third straight museum, I figured out what was important about art and what I liked. You can read about my perspective here.
But all that exposure to good art served Mom’s purpose. I saw familiar canvases in the movie and whispered the names of artists, even as I cringed at seeing those works piled against an army truck.
My father’s focus was on history. He wanted us to know what happened in Europe–particularly during World War II.
So we visited Dachau, saw the Black Forest, hiked in the Alps and eventually headed to the Austrian Salt Mines not far from Salzburg.
Reading about it in Europe on Five Dollars a Day, the salt mine tour sounded like a European version of a Disneyland ride. We wore white coveralls over our clothing and waited in line a long time to sit astride a wide log and slide in the dark 
through the interior of a mountain. We even floated across a dark lake on a boat and saw stalactites.
(I began to understand claustrophobia for the first time when I thought about how much of the mountain was above my head).
My father was energized at what the salt mine represented–and we heard the same surprising story the Monuments Men discovered: that a salt cave deep inside a mountain maintains the perfect temperature in which to store works of art. Hitler’s alpine residence, Berchestgarden, wasn’t far from Saltzburg and it was here in Altaussee that Nazi thieves stored purloined art.
This is the salt mine at the end of the movie where more than 6500 paintings, estimated in valuable of about $3.5 billion, were stored, including works by Michaelangelo, Durer, Rubens and Vermeer. The Altaussee Salt Mine web site explains:
In April 1945, the Nazi Gauleiter decided to destroy all masterpieces. For this reason, he had eights airplane bombs moved into the salt mine. To prevent damage to the artwork, the entries to the mine were blocked with explosives. When Altaussee was occupied by the American troops, works to reopen the tunnels and save the cache of masterpieces began.
I knew the story, but it was fun to watch it on the big screen.
What does it say about an army that resources would be dedicated to saving art during a war?
It’s an interesting question that has been the theme of several recent books–to what end will art lovers go to ensure the safety of artwork?
My friend Tricia Goyer and Mike Yorkey wrote Chasing Mona Lisa, the story of French efforts to hide Leonardo daVinci’s Mona Lisa from the acquisitions Nazis. It’s a fast-paced romance involving danger, French Resistance and heroism–with the painting of a beautiful woman with a mysterious smile as the prize.
Another fine story about the driving quest for art is the recent The Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes. Her tale is a quest in the present to discover what came of a Frenchman’s painting during World War I. The Germans are the bad guys once again and a fine painting is at stake.
They’re both enjoyable reads.
The Monuments Men asked an interesting question and it’s touched on in the two novels:
Is a work of art worth a man or woman’s life?
Who should decide?
Is a work of art worth a life?
No. Never. A work of art is a human creation – a person is created by God. God trumps.
An artwork can’t love. It can’t feel pain, or sorrow, or pity, or compassion. An artwork can’t beg for its life, and try to hang on even in the face of a determined effort to kill it.
I would cheerfully torch every masterpiece of earth to save a single life.
I have qualms about this as well, but how can you tell someone they died in vain, as happened in the movie? The argument made there is when you destroy the great works of art of a society, you are attacking the society itself. What can be left if the art, music and books are all gone?
It’s not an easy question, by any means.
I don’t believe that anyone who died for what they believed was a good and just cause died in vain; even the Kamikaze pilots of WW2 died for something that was ultimately noble – the defense of their home and people against an enemy they thought – mistakenly – would wipe them out in an orgy of victorious bloodletting. (For a sensitive treatment of this subject, see Sheftall’s “Blossoms in the Wind”)
If all of the art, books, and music are gone, what’s left is the strength and faith of the people. Societies change; cultures decay and fall. But the God-given qualities of faith and hope are much harder to extinguish.
As usual, Michelle…you’ve given me a lot about which to think!
I should have prefaced my earlier comments by saying that I do have a deep love of art and literature. I received a classical education, and have a fairly deep knowledge of Western painting, from the early medieval period to the Post-Impressionists. I also have some knowledge of various musical genres within the ‘classical’ group. Don’;t know much about opera, though!
The cultural significance of artwork is fundamentally a tricky question, since the decision as to what belongs “in the canon” is typically made in retrospect, and is made )or heavily influenced by) critics and academics.
At the time of their creation, most works of art were more commodities than cultural testament.
That said…it’s easy to say that the Mona Lisa is significant. It is considered to be the most valuable work of art in existence.. So it’s importance is obvious.
Or is it?
Today, the painting is an icon because of the sheer presence of the model, and the mystery of her smile. But its real importance is as a milestone in the technique of painting – it’s one of the earliest surviving paintings that uses ‘modern’ methods to indicate depth-of-field, using color and tonality to describe recession of the background into the distance. Hardly very romantic.
The question of “painting as commodity” is well-illustrated by Frederic Church’s “Niagara”, now on display in Dallas. It’s a stunning work. You can almost hear the roar of the water if you are privileged to sit in quiet contemplation.
The painting fulfills its intended role, but most people don’t realize that its primary purpose was the generation of a revenue stream. “Niagara” was a one-painting traveling exhibition, for which admission was charged. It was displayed in rented halls, with gaslamps placed to show it to best advantage.
And then it was forgotten for years, to be rediscovered rolled up in a warehouse.
The other significant question is…what’s really important? We can pretty well agree that Mona Lisa is important, and so are the works of Claude Lorraine, J.M.W. Turner, the Dutch flower and seascape painters, and the Impressionists.
Uh, wait. Only the French, or the Americans, too? The American Impressionists had a profound influence on the development of uniquely American art in the 20th century, and that influence continues today.
And what about Jasper Johns, Pollack, and Warhol? Personally, I’d ignore them, but there are those who would place them firmly into the artistic canon.
What about Thomas Kinkaid? Panned by the critics and loved by millions…are his originals worth a life?
I guess what I’;m trying to say is that it’s a bit dangerous to define our cultural and societal selves by specific works of art. We know they’re famous; we know we should revere them. But so often, we don’t really know why.
And when we do know why, the critics say we shouldn’t!
So, no, I don’t think any specific work of art is worth a life. I could never have ordered a man to risk his life to save a painting or protect an artifact, but I could easily have blown a priceless historic building if its occupation by an opposing force posed a danger to my far-more-priceless mercenaries.
However…the freedom to create art…it is THAT for which we don, and should fight.
And, if necessary, die.
I’d never give anything for a . . . . (well, no point in bashing an artist I can’t stand).
I’ve been thinking about this question, too, Andrew and wondering if the fact we have so many copies of things makes a difference. Sure, it’s intriguing that Leonardo painted the work and I understand completely it’s about more than just seeing the Mona Lisa, but many, many copies are out there now. If you go the Louvre, you can’t get close to the painting anyway (at least I couldn’t the last time I was at the Louvre in 2009). I wouldn’t give up my life for her nor ask anyone else to do the same.
You think about the library in Alexandria that burned all those centuries ago and great learning WAS lost–it had not been duplicated. But today, you can find almost any book you want–civilization would not be lost if a library burned. Horrible, yes, but not the end of the world.
Similarly, music can be found and listened to after a short stop at Itunes. I don’t know that we’re in such danger of losing everything if a work of art is destroyed.
I’m not a collector, though. 🙂 You can see my rational in this post: http://wp.me/p3HcoH-gC
The freedom to produce art: ah, well there’s a subject worth fighting for, you’re right! 🙂
You have a good point about the ready availability of copies; it’s hard to imagine that any artwork will truly be ‘lost’ at this point. And we have to remember that the originals are deteriorating, and the only way they’ll last ‘forever’ is through digital storage.
You look at Claude Lorraine’s seaport paintings…they’re simply a dim shadow of the original, but we can’t really know the original at this remove of time.
The loss of the Alexandria Library was tragic, and quite irreplaceable, as has been the loss of individual artworks up to and even beyond WW2. There is much which we see only in exhibition references.
And there’s a lot that the artists themselves destroyed – Monet burned stacks of paintings. When I invent a time machine I’m going to take a fire extinguisher. And a roll of duct tape, for the wrists of that idiot genius.
Another thought – while we may want to think that art defines our society (I sure do!), it really only defines a small part. For most people, the enigmatic smile of ‘Hello Kitty’ is a far more meaningful image than the Mona Lisa.
Monet is known among the population for the Lily Pond paintings, frequently reproduced as posters, but how many times have you seen a framed reproduction of his seminal “Impression: Sunrise”, the painting that was the ‘nomenclature’ progenitor of the Impressionist movement?
In the end, I think we can enjoy art, but the definition of who we are has to rest in a common denominator that”s far more uplifting, and that’s faith.
Michelle, as you know, I answered this question elsewhere; but after the invitation to join in over here, I thought I would answer it again with some added thoughts.
The short answer is no. However, that really looks at the surface of the issue – the real question is, should we not make every effort to ensure that the memories of the past are not wiped out by the hand of tyranny? Art, which encompasses visual art, music and literature, are integral clues to past human experience. They help us understand and learn from the past. When I was in West Africa, one thing that really struck me was the lack of records from the past. Mostly oral records survive – there are few artifacts and no writings from the days before Arabs and Europeans began to write about the area. Only in the last couple of centuries have the local languages begun to be written down. In such a vacuum, myth and superstition grew easily and the fear they produced helped to paralyze progress. It emphasized the truth of Goethe’s statement: “Anyone who cannot give an account to oneself of the past… remains in darkness, without experience, living from day to day.”
There are times that a work must be destroyed because it is causing more harm than good, like Hezekiah destroying the bronze serpent of Moses; but Israel still had a written record of the serpent, so the memory of it was preserved. I remember reading how the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto kept a written record of events and buried it so that even after the Nazis wiped them all out (which they realized would happen) their memory would be preserved. The Nazis sought to erase memories by stealing art work or banning music by Jewish composers or planning to blow up all of Paris’ monuments as the Allies advanced. The Resistance and the Allies made every effort to see that those memories were preserved and we in succeeding generations are grateful for their efforts.
There is a danger of trying to preserve too much of the past and thus failing to make progress. For centuries, Chinese art consisted primarily in making copies of master works – the more exact the copy, the more skilled the artist was considered. In that sense, sometimes it is better to let things go. I sometimes feel that way about some of the obscure composers who are rediscovered, or even the lesser known works of famous composers. But we should resist attempts by tyrants to deliberately destroy the memory of a society’s history and culture; whether that means hiding manuscripts from Viking raids [Next to the burning of the Alexandrian library in terms of knowledge loss was the Viking’s destruction of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow monastery], or retrieving stolen art from the Nazis, or guarding the Egyptian, Israeli or Babylonian historical sites from extremists.
Wow, Roscuro, there’s so much wisdom in this response! I love your insights on the oral history and how in the vacuum of anything written down, myth and superstition easily grew. I don’t think I realized the Chinese were copying for centuries, but that may explain why so much of it looks alike to me. 🙁 I thought, too, of the Taliban blowing up those ancient Buddhas carved into the mountains some dozen years ago. Countless peoples and groups, probably even the UN, asked them not to and they blew them up anyway. That’s a tyranny of spirit it’s well night impossible to counterbalance. Thanks!