Hero Reader Punches Priceless Work Of Art

by Mallory Ortberg · April 12, 2016

Previously: Don’t You Dare Try To Tell Me You’ve Never Thought About Punching A Priceless Work Of Art.

“Fuck you right into eternity if you try to pretend even for a second that you are not consumed with jealousy for this man, that you would not be in exactly his positionif you possessed the merest suggestion of a spine:

A man who punched a hole through a painting worth nearly £8 million painting has been jailed.

Andrew Shannon, 49, ruined the Claude Monet masterpiece hanging in the National Gallery Ireland in 2012 by attacking it in front of stunned art lovers.

On Thursday a court finally brought him to justice for his crime.

The famous painting, titled Argenteuil Basin with a Single Sailboat, was left with a large hole through the middle of it.

It is valued at $10 million (£7.8 million).

Mr Shannon told the police after his arrest he committed the thoughtless act of vandalism in an attempt to ‘get back at the state.’

1. That is a perfectly good way to get back at the state.

2. Look at how incredibly satisfying that punch-hole is. Just imagine punching through an old piece of art with your own hand. It feels incredible. Don’t pretend you’re not thinking about it.

3. Monet painted like 800 paintings of sailboats, we’re not exactly hurting for pastel dots in the shape of old French boats, as a society, and also Monet is dead. It’s not like this guy punched something rare.

4. DON’T PRETEND YOU’RE TOO GOOD TO WANT TO PUNCH ART. YOU’RE JUST RULED BY YOUR FEARS. THIS MAN IS BRAVER THAN US ALL.”

Toast reader Lydia Marik has taken a while to come up with the correct response to this post, but all good things eventually arrive. She writes:

“Don’t You Dare Try To Tell Me You’ve Never Thought About Punching A Priceless Work Of Art” was the best thing I read online in 2014. I talked about it so much that my Secret Santa gift that year was based around it. My coworker Jamal printed out Argenteuil Basin with a Single Sailboat in full color, punched it, and framed it for me. Now it hangs on my wall.

I go to a weekly, themed potluck. One week, the theme was “inspired by art.” Taking my fake, desecrated Argenteuil Basin from the wall, I made a palette of icing and food coloring and recreated Monet’s scene as best I could on a white sheet cake.

Over dessert, I read “Don’t You Dare Try To Tell Me You’ve Never Thought About Punching A Priceless Work Of Art” to the group, then solicited a volunteer to punch the cake. Here is my muscular friend Luke daring to punch a priceless work of art.

lydia1

Over dessert, I read “Don’t You Dare Try To Tell Me You’ve Never Thought About Punching A Priceless Work Of Art” to the group, then solicited a volunteer to punch the cake. Here is my muscular friend Luke daring to punch a priceless work of art.

lydia2

Then we ate the cake.

Your fan,
Lydia

Go thou and do likewise.

Go thou and do likewise.

Mallory is an Editor of The Toast.


97 Comments

  1. tabbylavalamp +85

    Can I punch through Art instead? Garfunkle’s ethereal voice is too beautiful for this world.

    1. lil_gary +14

      I feel like Art could use a good punching, if only to snap him out of the funk that has him giving interviews like this one.

      1. dorianneemmerton +16

        I’ve only gotten to:
        Take his habit of listing on his website every book he has ever read. “You notice it’s heavy sh*t,’ he says. ‘It’s not fluff.”
        And already I want to punch him.

      2. ayelltee +12

        I’m taping my hands after reading his dismissive comment about his parents’ “middlebrow” musical tastes. What an ass.

    2. jenihackett +161

      My great-uncle actually DID punch Art Garfunkel once, and broke his nose doing so. They went to the same high school, and I’m really not sure what he did to justify it, but man, I wish I did.

  2. Linette +129

    Where are these people who can recreate the work of the masters and why aren’t they making MY birthday cake?

  3. Lucky +140

    “Monet painted like 800 paintings of sailboats, we’re not exactly hurting for pastel dots in the shape of old French boats, as a society, and also Monet is dead.”

    If anything, Monet probably anticipated just such an event and planned accordingly so that many more people could enjoy punching a sailboat painting.

  4. Frumiosa +105

    That picture is tremendously gratifying.

    I used to joke to my friends that my greatest dream was to have someone pop out of a cake for me. On my next birthday, one of them put on his wife’s bikini, took a sheet cake, and popped his head through it. I have the best friends.

  5. damanoid +234

    Meanwhile, Argenteuil Basin With A Single Sailboat has been restored and is on display again, now behind an indestructible barrier. You cannot destroy Argenteuil Basin With A Single Sailboat, it simply regenerates into a higher evolutionary form that is immune to your puny attacks. Strike it down, and it becomes more powerful than you can imagine.

    Ironically, art pugilist Andrew Shannon also remains on display behind an indestructible barrier.

    1. angrypedestrian +52

      This just means we have to try harder, destroying it ever again until it ultimately regenerates into some sort of Pacific Rim-esque kaiju and we have to create mecha technology solely so we can punch Monet paintings.

    2. rkfire +147

      “You fool! This isn’t even my final form!!” –Argenteuil Basin With A Single Sailboat

  8. literarysara +75

    This… this is amazing. I get a little lightheaded when I hear about people intentionally or accidentally damaging art–or if I read about it on purpose, since this wiki collection of people accidentally elbowing and tripping into art is a source of great fascination and horror to me. I think it’s the juxtaposition of something very physical and real (tripping, falling, tearing) against the terrifyingly vast and abstract calculations of things like artistic merit and monetary value. It’s dizzying.

    But punching a cake! That’s brilliant! And safe. But satisfying. I love it, I envy it, I want to copy it.

    1. ppyajunebug +105

      In 2012, an employee of Glenn Beck scrubbed clean a fish bowl that had been painted and signed by Orson Welles in 1940. The bowl had arrived from an auction that day and was left on Beck’s desk in his locked office.

      I laughed SO HARD at that one.

      1. Chance_Hale +42

        Somewhere in the Beyond, at a celestial screening of the original cut of The Magnificent Ambersons, Orson Welles smiled mysteriously.

  9. rawrbook +37

    There is just something inexplicably enraging to me about Rothko paintings, and I have only ever really wanted to destroy his works.

    1. 30Litresof +34

      There was a Rothko exhibition at Tate Modern a few years ago, which I went to with my family. None of us were impressed, and as we were leaving, we heard a woman say:

      “They’re just so nourishing.”

      To which my response was “Yeah, like soup.”

      3. walrathem +10

        I love Rothko exhibits but even I agree that statement was going a bit far into Précieus territory. (Note: first sign of the danger of being Précieus is using the term in the first place.)

    2. robotneedslove +12

      Rothkos feel deeply depressing to me. And he was deeply depressed, so maybe they’re just very effective.

  10. olive_cat +112

    Guys, (and i say this as an artist ) the most punchable art is obviously anything by Thomas Kinkade. My aunt gave my mom a big ugly glass Christmas ornament with one of his paintings on it and she had to hide it from my towering rage.

    1. Siddons Packard +58

      My only quibble with this is putting “art” and “Thomas Kinkade” in the same sentence. #élitism

        1. Siddons Packard +18

          🙂 It’s nice when those keypad instructions taped to the wall next to your desk pay off!

    3. Norsey +22

      Had to google that, and now I feel like I crashed an industrial bakery run by the witch from Hansel & Gretel and squeezed tubes of fondant into my mouth until security dragged me away.

      That is the kind of “art” I would ONLY expect to find on Christmas ornaments. How is that guy famous? I mean, even I can see that it’s more skilled Christmas ornament art than most, but I don’t understand why someone wants to be good at this, other than to get rich. It’s like making it your life goal to become the Beethoven of Eurotrance.

      I’m honestly in shock. This was a nice antidote, though: http://shawnmcnulty.com/artistblog/top-5-thomas-k…

      3. LeahJaclyn +2

        the Dollop guys did a podcast on him and he’s as bad at being a nice person as he is being a good artist

    4. michelle w. +9

      A waste of a good punch, I say! I have, however, wanted to spit on a Thomas Kinkade.

  11. spillyfilly +72

    My mother, who is a saint and I adore her more than any human being on the planet, gets crazy at museums and LOVES to touch shit. Paintings/statues, etc. She is so mild mannered usually its sort of hilarious. I thought I was going to have to deal with a guard throwing her out of the Philadelphia Museum back in the day because she snuck up and fondled the ballerina skirt of Rodin’s Little Dancer.

    1. jeanne +29

      My sister felt up the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum and nearly gave the security guard an aneurysm. She wasn’t normally the type to deface priceless artifacts, so her “I wanted to see if they’d rub off!” was especially disturbing.

      1. annebrontesaurus +22

        They have a replica on display that you are invited to touch now. Perhaps your sister played a small part in this?

    2. felaleof +22

      Your mom might enjoy auction houses, especially high-end ones. You can touch most of the art, though you still shouldn’t touch the paint on paintings, and the employees will take things out of their cases for you to hold with your normal hands.

    3. popelizbet +28

      My pagan then-friend got away with touching the Egyptian statuary by pure force of weirding the guard out by making obeisance everywhere. Good times.

    5. walrathem +26

      I almost passed out when I saw a tourist touch one of the painted wooden statues of saints from the middle ages at the National Gallery of Art in DC. Saw spots, room spun, my head felt cold. I’m glad I wasn’t there with your mom.

      I totally understand the impulse though. When I’m at museums I have to grip my hands together because I want to pet the marble.

    6. ellensemple +21

      Oh man. I work in a museum and people touch shit all the time! The most egregious was the guy who took a War of 1812 musket out of it stand and pretended to fire it. How could someone possibly think that was ok?

    7. Mamunia +4

      I once saw a guard reprimand Kira Sedgewick for holding out her hand to a painting at the Getty in L.A. Celebrities – they’re just like us! (And this is the first time I’ve ever had a reason to tell that anecdote.. haha.)

    8. Ursula +2

      I work in a museum, and normally I can handle people touching things (if you’re really not supposed to touch it, it’s behind plexiglass or something and we’ve got a bunch of antique and reproductions out for fondling) but sometimes we find food in weird places and it makes me want to hide everything from everyone.

  12. Poppy +47

    Not quite great art but: my mom made a piece of art for my grandmother which was being stored in a box in the attic. One holiday my grandfather got the box out, and thinking it was empty, painted a target on it and used it for shooting practice. Afterwards they discovered the bullet-ridden art. My grandmother was horrified but my mom and everyone else thought it was hilarious.

  16. askelade +25

    Guys my Life Plan 1.0 called on me to major in art history,so I did,which is how in 1998 or so I read an article (kicking myself for not keeping a copy of at LEAST the citation really) which calculated that the Great Artist whose works are most frequently vandalized is ….. Rembrandt.

    1. literarysara +7

      Intriguing! I wonder why? Or how? The most frequent victim in the accidental damage list I linked above is Picasso. But people are going after Rembrandt on purpose?

      1. askelade +12

        Yes! Or at least they were in the twentieth century.

        It makes sense though: if you want to knife a painting (or punch one!) to make a big point and get lots of attention, it helps to choose a target piece that is a) very expensive and b) an acknowledged cultural treasure which goes with c) made by someone who is a Big Name that most people recognize. Rembrandt fits the bill all around and he had a very high output of paintings — and museums keep them hanging up in permanent displays — which makes him an excellent target.

        I do like to imagine tho that 17th c Dutch painting really brings out the Biggest Emotions in people.

        1. Nashirakins +22

          Not gonna lie, I do think “asshole” every time I see that self-portrait of his where he freehanded a couple perfect circles. Just to show he could do it, the asshole.

          Stupid Rembrandt. It’s okay, hand tremor, we’re still able to make art stuff.

          1. AwayLaughing +8

            What a JERK, that guy.

            xo, art student who has spent countless hours drawing circles in pen just so that their drawing professor can loom about & make grumbly sounds about lumpiness (go AWAY, Gary!)

  17. bethcorriveau +7

    I am currently working on a project at work that involves bakers making cakes inspired by art. But they are display cakes and made of styrofoam so probably not so satisfying for the punching.

  18. saoki +50

    1. Let me just congratulate Lydia on her superior icing skills. Were this real life, I’d kneel, salute and implore sifu to teach me her superior kung fu.
    2. As an art major I can’t help but think the whole make cake with famous painting / read article / punch cake / eat cake thing is a great piece of performance art. Not sure it was the objective, but it is a great performance.

  19. ashurredly +46

    Punching art seems fun, but let’s also consider the satisfaction of punching cake on its own merits.

    Putting my fist through a wedding cake would be aesthetically, emotionally, and politically satisfying.

    (Now to punch from the top layer down or just go for the middle?)

    1. michelle w. +21

      Top down. If you want to whack at the middle, do it with a bat, or a roundhouse kick.

      1. popelizbet +7

        Oh, I actually love the Guernica, I just love “And babies?” even more. (trigger warning for child death at that link.) Defacing the Guernica was an actually relevant political act, unlike punching the Monet.

  22. OoTheHumanities +20

    “6. Look at that idyllic goddamn scene, there’s like one and a half colors in it, this painting looks like it is asleep. This painting needed a good punch in the middle to liven things up.”

    I am so glad I opened the earlier post because I needed this part today (and it just reinforces my desire for a guided museum tour by Mallory, the app would be worth billions).

    1. OoTheHumanities +6

      …although the docents and guards might not appreciate the incessant giggling. STILL.

  23. tidepool +18

    … I just keep thinking that someone, somewhere, experiences cake-art punching as a legitimate kink.

  24. askelade +13

    Reminds me that St Basil the Great, in support of iconodulism, notes that the honor paid to the image passes to the prototype.

  26. Deelux +2

    So you painstakingly iced that cake, delivered a dramatic reading, granted an exceedingly delightful — though vicarious — wish to another another human… And some butt-nugget shows up to the party with a bowl of popcorn?!? Even if it was ironic popcorn, it is still wack.

  27. bignorseblog +3

    What’s with the anti-vandal agenda, Toast? Vandals are the most persecuted and maligned minority in today’s stifling, priceless-art-preservationally correct society. That guy was only saying, and punching, what everyone else is thinking, and thinking of punching. I know this because what I’m thinking is the only possible way of thinking because it is the right thinking. I DO have an imagination, shut up.

  28. Norsey

    What's with the anti-vandal agenda, Toast? Vandals are the most persecuted and maligned minority in today's stifling, priceless-art-preservationally correct society. That guy was only saying, and punching, what everyone else is thinking, and thinking of punching. I know this because what I'm thinking is the only possible way of thinking because it is the right thinking. I DO have an imagination, shut up.

  29. naomi

    He'd probably be disappointed that /more/ of his art hasn't been punched.
    Like, c'mon guys, I made so many.