Eric Gibson wonders why the art world accepts the altering – read “vandalism” – of important classic artworks. Tying string around a Rodin sculpture or defacing Goya prints isn’t art, he writes, and it doesn’t make sense to dignify these acts with serious consideration. “It says something that in our own time it has always been the lesser talents who have left their imprint on the works of their superiors. And you can be sure that, whatever motivated Rubens, it had to do with an artistic impulse far more profound than simply “thinking again about a familiar image.”