in defense of Clooney

I care about art, but I did not loathe The Monuments Men as some would say I am obliged to do. Now in my school days, this difference would have me terribly alarmed. I feared retribution for liking what was derivative or feeling ambivalent toward what was revolutionary...according to others. Who am I kidding? I still fear that difference because it makes me feel like a fraud. It makes me feel like I missed something really important in that one seminar that one day, and now my future is irreparably off course.

But that fear can be calmed by realizing the unique position I have occupied for the past three years: not (just) as a sad little adjunct, but more as a "missionary" of art history to a population of rural neophytes. I do not and cannot approach the history of art as an elitist because I am guiding (not indoctrinating) new art viewers. Think about it. Would Clooney really produce a film that was only for the art elite? Only for those initiated into academia? The man knows how to make a buck or two in Hollywood, so to understand the nature of the film, we have to consider his intended audience.

How do you entertain that audience while telling a true story? How do you make art, and the preservation of it, sexy?

I myself played Lady Gaga and Queen in class last week, but Bill Murray and Cate Blanchett work, too, I suppose. We could surely dismiss this film just on the basis of who is in it: Clooney's clique, acting out his latest sad puppy cause, which happens to focus (to an obsessive extent) on the Ghent Altarpiece. But I liked it. And I understand why certain elements were condensed and why others were overplayed.

In order to immerse a viewer in this true story, you have to make them care about the art. So which art? Everything known to man? I can't even get through that much material in one semester, let alone two hours. So Clooney used particular pieces as emotional foils, if you will. The daring escape of the aforementioned altarpiece opens the film, the abduction of Michelangelo's Madonna in Bruges is somehow more important than the death of a main character, and the torching of Raphael's Portrait of a Young Man is played out like we're watching a hero's unjust execution. I found it to be a good and inevitable device to make the viewer care about the art without requiring at least a bachelor's degree.

Now, if this elicits talk of art as puppies, then so be it. I'll admit to referring to Mona Lisa as a woman, not a portrait. I'll gladly admit to objectifying these objects in an overly sentimental way, because I cannot disconnect the object from the artist I read about in school. It's like meeting Leonardo without a time machine. Yes, it is anthropomorphism, too...but this is a blog written by someone who loves lolcats, mind you. Look for realism elsewhere.

I know there is a segment within the "art world" that does not share in my objectification. There are people out there who will argue that a reproduction is just as good as an original, or bemoan the millions exchanged at Sotheby's for paint on wood or canvas. We all judge value differently. And in this postmodern (or postpostmodern?) age, the idea of the art object itself is questionable. Words are art, as are actions, sounds, and fleeting sights on a screen. Art today can seem immortal, like an digital image, or it can succumb to the ravages of time like latex sculptures dissolving in storage like old rubber bands. Is art something to be owned and stolen and found again, or is it just the idea?

And by focusing on the object, do we necessarily undervalue the idea? The film might not have touched upon the inner workings of art history, and like many Hollywood versions, there are inconsistencies visible to the trained eye: like Matt Damon sauntering along with a canvas in a way no curator would. I think it is both confusing and understandable that character development takes a back seat to the art objects, too. To really get a sense of and learn to care for the Monuments Men themselves, we'd need a different type of film.

We use objects, not just art, to contain, symbolize, and embody ideas like the Monuments Men. Like the shoes in the Holocaust Museum, or the gold fillings found alongside the art in a salt mine, the work of the old masters carries the weight of a loss of human life, the loss of a way of life, and the efforts to save it. At least, that's the parallel I am drawing, whether Clooney meant it or not. And he might as well say he meant it all along, to shoot back at the puppy criticism.