Choose Damage
Thursday, May 15th, 2008
In 1970, a pipe bomb was placed irreverently under the feet of The Thinker. The Cleveland Museum’s version (one of the 25 copies made by the artist) of Rodin’s most famous sculpture was blasted from bottom up, causing the bronze legs and base to deform into a cloud-like shape. The Thinker himself was knocked onto the ground. It became the museum’s job to figure out what to do with their damaged Rodin. After some time, it was decided that they would keep The Thinker in its new damaged state. Thirty-eight years later, it appears that a whole generation growing up near that particular version doesn’t know about the accident, and believes that the work was intended to look that way by the original artist.
Although the fate of The Thinker was an accident of almost four decades ago, there are many more works that are in the process of purposely being changed, cleaned and restored into new versions, causing the future public to never know that the original might have looked quite different.
Just thought to put it out there.