Originally published at: Art gallery declared insensitive for selling ear-shaped rubber eraser and other gag gifts at Van Gogh exhibit | Boing Boing
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Well, the stuckists aren’t so insensitive as to wear iron crosses in public, but apparently they do intentionally provoke (sometimes to annoyance)
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At least they’re not selling a Goatse pencil sharpener 
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I guess that was a little tone deaf.
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Of course there is a competing theory that Van Gogh didn’t cut off his own ear and merely started that rumor to protect his friend/rival Paul Gauguin who cut the ear off during a duel.
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Vincent would laugh his ear off at this.
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I don’t have any strong opinion on the ear erasers, it seems in poor taste, I guess, but I also think some of the hand wringing is maybe a bit much. Maybe I’m just jaded from seeing far worse and I really shouldn’t be OK with it, I’m not sure.
However:
I’ve got news for him, commercialism has always been a major driver of art, at least as long as we have had commerce. I don’t want to defend commercialism, but I think more harm has been done to modern art and in particular modern artists by promoting the notion that art is supposed to be pure expression not crass commercialism. That mentality is a tool used to take advantage of the artists who actually make the art and for the benefit of the patrons, collectors, gallery owners, and speculators for whom the commercial value is almost always front and center.
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Humor = Tragedy + Time. I guess 132 years is still too soon?
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Heh. Actually my first reaction wasn’t that it was insensitive as much as that it’s just… too stupid.
Here in LA there’s a big flashy Van Gogh exhibit of corny and poorly animated projection mapping of his work. All their marketing is bad puns - GOGH on a date! Even the bathrooms had signs that said Gotta Gogh?
I don’t think art appreciation has to be solemn or reverent, but a touch of basic human decency seems like a reasonable bar.
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Ohh, now this would make a good movie.
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Basic human decency doesn’t bring in the crowds.
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— Donald Trump, 2016
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Plus, Gogh doesn’t even rhyme with go.
Gonna have to wak down the street to the van Gogh museum to see if they sell these in the gift shop. I wouldn’t be surprised…
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Is this an American thing? Because AFAIK only Americans pronounce it like that. And even though i know his name isn’t pronounced Van Go i pronounce it like that anyway, because nobody knows who I’m talking about if i say Van Goff.
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Add it to the list of horrible things gauguin has done.
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The Brits don’t pronounce it correctly either. Both g sounds are more guttural.
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Yeah I’m not doing that either. Van Go even sounds better to my ears than Vincent Van Choking Sound.
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