Thank you for the links, Indigo!

The first web site listed below was interesting and quite
informative.  The second is a manifesto against recognition
of masterpieces of world culture ("No more masterpieces"),
mirroring the art counterculture in Paris of the late 1960s,
IMHO deserving hardly a glance.  I will not discount the
benefit and need for counterculture.  The destruction of
past world culture is vandalism committed by thugs.
(Obviously, Laszlo Toth, the man involved in the Pieta
attack was mentally ill, so I'll not condemn him as a thug
committing vandalism.)

I stumbled across this, on the Guardian web site
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-256
5,00.html) in answer to the query, "What happened to Laslo
Toth, the man who attacked Michelangelo's Pieta in 1972?"

"LASZLO TOTH, who damaged the Pieta with a hammer on 21 May
1972, was never charged with a criminal offence. On 29
January of the following year he was declared by a Rome
court to be a socially dangerous person and was ordered
confined to a mental hospital for at least two years. On 9
February 1975, the Hungarian-born, Australian geologist was
released from the hospital and deported from Italy as an
undesirable alien. He was sent back to Australia, where he
was not detained by the authorities; Despite his recent
absence from the public eye, he has managed to achieve some
level of immortality, even aside from the perpetual linking
of his name with the attack on the Pieta, in which he
wielded a hammer and cried, "I am Jesus Christ - risen from
the dead." He is the eponymous inspiration for at least two
books by Don Novello, better known for another creation,
Father Guido Sarducci, who appeared frequently on Saturday
Night Live during the television show's funny phase. In "The
Lazlo Letters" ed by Workman in 1992. The similarity of
names is not coincidental. Novello has said that Toth was
the inspiration for the name of his deranged letter writer,
but that it was the sound of the name, not the act of
defacing the Pieta, that attracted him. (Novello was also
the source of the sausage-factory rumor.) That's not all.
The Russian-born composer Nicolas Slominsky reported in his
autobiography that the American composer Ken Friedman was
writing an oratorio dedicated to Laszlo Toth. Perhaps Toth
is entitled to even more by way of recognition. About six
months after the attack, the Vatican announced that the team
of restorers attempting to repair the damage that Toth had
inflicted on the Pieta had discovered a previously unknown
monogram or secret signature of Michelangelo on the palm of
the Madonna's left hand - an "M" fashioned from the skin
lines reproduced in marble."
[Contributor: W V Dunlap, Hamden, Connecticut, USA
([log in to unmask])]

I hope some find this of interest . . .

Sincerely,

Jay Heuman, Visitor & Volunteer Services Coordinator
Joslyn Art Museum, 2200 Dodge Street, Omaha, NE, 6810
342-3300 (telephone)     342-2376 (fax)       www.joslyn.org


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Museum discussion list
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> On Behalf Of Indigo Nights
> Sent: Thursday, March 07, 2002 2:16 pm
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Pieta attacked (formerly "Re: query about
stanchions")
>
> As I recall, the person who attacked the Pieta was
> mentally ill.
> I did find somethings in a quick search:
> http://is.dal.ca/~thtrwww/dtdp/museum/art.html
> http://www.halcyon.com/robinja/mythos/KarenEliot.html

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