No one wants to be The Man

Be a fearless leader and alpha type

There is something viscerally horrific about seeing a work of art being attacked; like watching the English drink abroad, it’s a chilling reminder that civilisation hangs by a thread. The video of a woman hacking at a painting of Lord Balfour in Trinity College, Cambridge was made somehow more chilling by the fact that she seemed to be carrying a bag worth several hundred pounds, showing that abundance is no cure to the urge to destroy. So far, no arrests have been made while Trinity has expressed its ‘regrets the damage caused’ and is offering help to the ‘community’. 

It seems like an inevitable escalation of the recent trend for more symbolic attacks on works of art protected by screens. Violence always escalates unless stopped, and this sort of destruction is also alarming because historically violence against symbolic objects further escalates towards violence against people.

This act was carried out in the name of the Palestinian cause, a protest movement which has become increasingly assertive these past weeks. Last month it reached a crisis point when the British Parliament cowered before extremists, our representatives scared into changing established procedure.