KINSELLA: Thomson’s extraordinary art on receiving end of extraordinary idiocy

Punish him. Make it hurt.

A “climate activist,” some media called him. A “terrorist,” others might call him.

I come from a family of artists, you see. “Art is the greatest form of hope,” the British artist Banksy once said, and it’s true. To deface Thomson’s painting — which took two years to complete and is considered one of the greatest works of art ever produced in this country — was to deface hope itself.

My initial reaction, I confess, was that someone should break the fingers and arms of the paint-thrower, so that they can never do it again. I was that angry.

But, no. That’s extreme. That’s the kind of thing the Taliban does, isn’t it? Ironically, the paint-throwers share quite a bit in common with the Taliban, the fundamentalist Islamic terrorist group that now rules over Afghanistan. They try to murder art, too.

The Taliban burn books, prohibit music and — infamously — kill works of art. Upon seizing power in the 1990s, the Taliban systematically and efficiently destroyed thousands of works of art at the Afghan National Museum and elsewhere because they were “un-Islamic.”

In all, 70% of the museum’s artifacts — some 100,000 individual works — were destroyed by the Taliban. In 2001, they obliterated the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan because they were considered un-Islamic and blasphemous. The statues were more than a 1,000 years old.

And, of course, fascists and extremists often target art first. The Nazis destroyed thousands of works of art by cubists, expressionists and impressionists in Germany and France — because they considered them “degenerate.”

So this week’s attack on Thomson’s masterwork is not without precedent. (It was not permanent, either; glass protected it from permanent damage.) Lunatics and monsters are always using beautiful works of art to make a political statement.

And Thomson’s Northern River is unquestionably beautiful. It is extraordinary.

It’s not known where Thomson saw what would later become Northern River. Algonquin Park formed the subject matter of many of his masterpieces, of course, but a friend of Thomson’s later said it wasn’t a scene from there. So it could be anywhere in Canada, really.

Why would anyone want to destroy something like that? Why attack beauty? Why would they smear paint on it?

Maybe. Perhaps. But the ones who try to destroy art that depicts the very environment that On2Ottawa claims to be concerned about?

They’re the ones who were the most immoral this week.