Splatter art despoils WA Museum

Without the Frederick McCubbin painting that was the target of vandal Joana Partyka, it is difficult to know what future visitors to the WA Museum will make of a clear piece of perspex with the name Woodside – one of the state’s most successful companies – spray painted on it. Partyka was fined $2000 and ordered to pay $5000 to the Art Gallery of WA to cover the cost of replacing the perspex covering McCubbin’s masterpiece Down on His Luck. The perspex sheet is now in the possession of the WA Museum.

The museum’s claim that the perspex has value as a piece of social documentary is wrongheaded. It glorifies the desecration of precious art and encourages a fashion among extremists to splatter great works in a vain and exhibitionist attempt at moral posturing. Van Gogh’s Sunflowers has been splashed with tomato soup, and mashed potatoes have been hurled at Monet’s Haystacks in culturally offensive displays akin to modern book-burning. Challenged over its decision, the WA Museum tried to deploy a don’t shoot the messenger defence.

Museum chief Alec Coles equated the acquisition to items of protest covering Aboriginal land rights, environmental protests, women’s rights, and LBGTQI+ rights. “As with other acquisitions, this one does not indicate the WA Museum’s support for the cause but merely its recording of the event,” Mr Coles said. Something does not ring true about that statement. It belies an activist institution that lives off public funds that often come from the very things the poseurs are too eager to discard.

Splatter protest is the messy approach of those who lack the humour or skill to argue their case with vigour or wit.