There are two principal objections to the kind of modern art whose claim to significance depends upon the philosophical or social theory it allegedly illustrates, embodies, or exemplifies. The first is its aesthetic nullity, and the second is its intellectual vacuity. Providing nothing grateful to the eye, such art fails to evoke serious emotion, thought, or reflection. There is no reason why artists should be philosophers, of course, but there is every reason why they should not pretend to be.
It was therefore with some surprise, and with a strange sense of relief, that on a recent trip to Colombia I found myself reacting strongly—and favorably—to a piece of conceptual art. It surprised me because I am so hostile to the genre in general; and it was a relief because I discovered that I do not yet suffer too severely from what a psychologist acquaintance of mine calls the hardening of the concepts, a condition that afflicts the middle aged and does to thought what cholesterol does to arteries. I learned that I am, despite my age, still open (or at least ajar) to experience and even, sometimes, to persuasion.
The work of art in question was called La Bandeja de Bolívar(“Bolívar’s Platter”) by Juan Manuel Echavarria. It consists of a series of ten photographs of identical size and shape in a horizontal row, which depicts the destruction of an elegant porcelain platter—la Bandeja de Bolívar. This platter was given to Bolívar to commemorate the constitution
