Destroying a $30,485 Painting
Gabe Whaley bought an original Damien Hirst painting for $30,485 and cut out 88 sections — each section a solitary dot. He then sold the 88 dots for $450 each and put up for auction the remaining canvas. The canvas — with 88 holes in it — is now an original piece of art that sold for $261,400. If you’d like to know more a manifesto accompanied the project.
Gabe is the founder of MSCHF, a company that does shenanigans on the internet. In another stunt, MSCHF installed six of the world’s most infamous computer viruses on a laptop and sold it as an art project for more than $1.3 million.
Gabe nearly became an officer — he was a cadet at West Point and left prior to his junior year. Had Gabe stayed he would have coasted to graduation and been commissioned as a second lieutenant.
I sometimes think about what kind of officer Gabe would have been. And more than that, I think about what his bosses would have thought of him.
As demonstrated, Gabe is immensely talented and has the ability to see the world in an unconventional way. He is also kind, funny, and annoyingly humble. He would have been an invaluable asset to commanders by developing unique and creative solutions to Army problem sets.
On the other hand, I think he would have been unsuccessful due to a culture of non-imaginative thinking that is often found in senior leaders. The senior leaders, of course, who evaluate junior leaders and decide who follows in their footsteps.
As creative as Gabe is, and as innovative as the Army is trying to be, there is a systemic reluctance to doing things in an unconventional way. And more concerning, there is a reluctance to even talk about doing things in an unconventional way.
If you want to test this theory, ask a senior officer if soldiers should be allowed to do PT on their own. Or ask why soldiers in non-combat arms need to go to the range every six months. Or why the barracks needs a CQ desk.
The answers to the questions may be that the status quo is the best way. And that’s fine. But what I have found is that even raising these types of questions can brand you as an outcast and someone who hasn’t “bought-in” to the Army’s way of doing things.
If the Army wants its innovation ventures — such as 75th Innovation Command or Army Futures Command — to be successful, it must change its culture to encourage free-thinking and discussion on the Army’s sacred cows. If the personnel who are assigned to those commands were promoted based on their ability to “buy-in” and rock the boat as little as possible, they may be unable to develop the creative solutions needed to fight and win in today’s strategic landscape.
While changing the Army’s embrace of innovative thinking will take an enterprise-level focus, we could start now by openly discussing whether the truths the Army holds to be self-evident are actually self-evident.
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Brennan Randel
@BrennanRandel
