Brancusi

A couple of issues rattling around in my head this afternoon bumped into some old flotsam cankered there for half a century. The other issues I plan to develop and relate, some of my relationships not normally seen, but the old sore I must excise right now.

Back in the 1950s I heard that US Customs refused to admit some Brancusi pieces into the US until the import tax was paid on it. Works of art are exempt, but customs refused to recognize the acknowledged masterpieces as "art." Customs said that far from art, the Brancusis were just some wood and some bronze and some string.

The museums, the galleries, had the items valued at say $24,000 per. So customs wanted a whopping tax.


Hey, wait a minute. The Brancusi's were worth $24,000 per only as works of art. As wood, bronze, string the value was maybe $3. So pay the tax on the three dollars and consign Customs to the subhuman oblivion it belongs in. If Customs recognizes the value as $24,000 per, then it must also concede the items to be art: it was only as art that the value was "real." So: either let it in valued at $24,000, exempt, or value it at what you're taxing it as: $3 worth of string.

Related question: by what vanity does Customs imagine that it can distinguish art from string? First any government bureaucracy should demonstrate that it can tell shit from Shinola.