Art History Kitsch

We will, of course, return to the Online Therapeutic Ramblings shortly. Meanwhile, last weekend -- that would be the weekend before the Parental Unit Visit -- I had gone to visit the Gentleman Caller. I was the Caller on this occasion! At one point, we decided to go visit an art museum and to see a particular statue that was of interest to us both.

In the art museum gift shop, I found this wonderful item, a Plush Vincent VanGogh:When I first saw it across the room, I thought, "That will be so much better if it doesn't have an ear." Sure enough, if you will notice, the ear comes off. The only way that could be better would be if they had used red Velcro to attach the ear, and maybe if they had a little box in which he could deliver it to the prostitute. Of course, I find it rather sad that he doesn't hold a paintbrush and a palette. He did do something other than sever his ear, after all!

After the gift shop -- and the museum -- we drove down to the statue, which depicts a certain fugitive slave incident. You know that the statue depicts a fugitive slave because the fugitive is wearing torn pants.:

Just so you know: all fugitive slaves wore pants torn up to their thighs, even when they had been gainfully employed in the city for several years past. The text also make the incident sound like the whole city was involved in rescuing this particular fugitive when, in fact, the rescuers were mostly attendees at a national abolitionist meeting being held in the city. The city residents' attitudes were more along the lines of "we won't tell if you don't get uppity."

This tweaking of the facts in favor of the city is much like the frequent claims that every other house north of the Mason-Dixon was a stop on the Underground Railroad: everyone in the north -- or at least in the locale -- was an abolitionist. Abolitionists themselves would tell you that most of the north wasn't too happy to see them come to town because abolitionists disrupted too many status quo notions about race and property and just caused trouble, dammit! That was the reason that the abolitionists had to fight so hard for so long.

Still, I can't get too worked up about these flaws in the statue. You see, that second leg that you see in the picture belongs to the black abolitionist Jermain Loguen and the event actually does address a mass, somewhat non-violent action of abolition. You don't often see that as far as I know (and I may not know that far, but I will certainly be looking more).

By the way, the Gentleman Caller assisted me greatly in the second part of this post. By "assisted" I mean that he pointed out the telltale torn pants leg, the fact that the fugitive had been in the city for a while, and the fact that the city wasn't exactly happy to have that particular fugitive in town. In other words, I really should just credit him with this second part of this post since I took it all from him. He's pretty smart. He also made the whole weekend fantastic in ways that would bore you to nauseated tears but give me twitterpated butterflies.

ETA: On closer (and embiggened) examination, I see that Plush VanGogh does, in fact, have a very fuzzy paintbrush in his hand. It looks a bit like a lion's tail. The ear must have preoccupied me to the exclusion of that detail.