Could someone please explain this to me? I never quite understood it when Buddha
statues because the latest interior design fad when they started selling them by the
dozens at places like Crate and Barrel.
Why, people, why? Why is it OK to
knock off another religion’s sacred art and turn it into scenery?
Now,
if you are a Christian, or an Athiest, or a Jew or whatever else that is not a
Buddhist, and you are a collector of East Asian art, or you spent two years in
Japan studying Japanese history, or your beloved
daughter-in-law/stepfather/friend is from Vietnam and gave you a Buddha statue,
then I understand owning one. If you
backpacked around China with your college buddies one summer and brought back a
souvenir that was a Buddha statue, by all means display that beauty in your
apartment. But why why why, dear
friends, would anybody ever buy a fake Buddha statue made in some factory to be
sold in America or Europe as a decorative object? It makes no sense.
Luckily,
a sporting goods store in Germany has decided to make the people who bought
their Buddha statues at Target look like the sane ones. I wandered in last week to pick up my husband’s
birthday present, and low and behold, there was Buddha, sitting by the gym
bags. Maybe the sporting goods store is owned by a religious Buddhist family - nope it's owned by a giant publicly held German company. Maybe it's a valuable work or art in a corporate collection - nope, I'm an art historian and that thing is no fine work of art, believe me on this. It bothers me that this is
disrespectful to actual Buddhism, but it’s also inconsistent. Sorry guys, until you have a giant Jesus
standing next to the sports bras, I think you need to send that Buddha back to
the tacky and vaguely offensive concrete statue factory from which it came.
No comments:
Post a Comment