Etiquette and the art connoiseur

Before you raise that haughty eyebrow, I write this because I severly lack that etiquette. The unimaginable strain of having to walk around sculptures with your arms either tightly folded across your chest, or ferociously clamped together behind your back so as not to touch them! And yet, I got told off four times. For stepping in too close, for letting my coat touch the pedestal, for hovering too long under the suspicion of taking surreptitious photos, for exhaling with too much gusto, for waving my hands around without restraint..... fun way to spend an afternoon, yes? Well, to be fair, it was. The Frick collection is rather spectacular and compensates for it's peculiar recruitment strategy - only humourless, surly underachievers need apply. I have never come across such uptight art guards in my whole life - apparently, it is debilitating to the great masters hung in the room if you carry your coat/sweater in your hand. Such offending items must be worn on your person at all times, and failure to comply will lead to eviction from the hallowed premises. Perhaps I lie about the latter, but outer garments not covering your person are required to be left at the coat check. What fun, my first Art Nazis, and they're posted in every room, sometimes, even two to a room. Yay!
When an artist paints or sculpts, does he do so with the intention that it is never to be touched? I understand the degradation that many hands can bring, but isn't the point of art, particularly sculpture more than just clinical observation? All galleries stress me out deeply. The active repression of my natural inclination to reach out, for what touches and intrigues me, is fatiguing. Not to mention grossly unsatisfying. I can deal with the confines of visual appreciation when it comes to paintings (although Van Gogh does beg unrestrained fingers over those lush strokes), as long as we're allowed just a teeny weeny touch to confirm the medium. Sometimes it is hard to tell textures even from multi-angle squints. Actually, I do believe I lie. Paintings I like, I want to be able to touch. Renoir, Turner, Vermeer, Klimt, Holbein the younger, Van Gogh..... I lie copiously. How can you not want to touch a Van Gogh?? Well, at least I didn't get caught.
How about a trade off - I'll keep my sticky fingers off the canvas/wood/whatever as long as I can touch the sculptures. Surely sculptors understand and actually want people to run their hands over those exquisitely wrought forms? How else do you realise the extent of your awe of the perfect rendering of a grotesquely twisted neck, straining trapezoids, veins on a restraining hand? The Frick is home to two of the most beautiful sculptures I've ever seen. Compelling bronzes from the mid 17th century. The restrained violence, desperation and movement in the lines of the one depicting Nessus carrying away Deianira (attributed to Pietro Tacca) just stops you in your tracks, your hands itching to trace his straining flanks, the raised veins on the hand holding her down, her fluid limbs struggling, her fingers reaching, begging for divine intervention, that dominant second toe. It's just so perfect, it makes your heart beat faster. Then an indistinct voice behind you insists you're getting to close. Frown, deep breath, reminder to self that you come from the land of Gandhi, a token step back, and the breath leaves your body. Hercules battling Hydra. Unrestrained violence, startling and absolutely mesmerising. The viciousness of the twisted, striking heads oddly poetic in their frozen cruelty, it's spine thrown into relief like a knotted rope, each vertebrae screaming malevolence. The menace of Hercules' downward club vying with the brutal wrenching of one of the outstretched heads. The play of muscles across his bent torso defensive yet aggressive, focused on destruction while his tautening thigh acknowledges the fangs breaking skin. My hackles rise and a shiver twists down my spine. An unknown French sculptor.
The Art Nazi's don't like the attention I bestow on the two pieces and one of them asks me if I'm taking photographs. I look him in the eye and lie without a blush, but I've been marked. I'm followed not so discreetly by a posse as I make a cursory visit to the remaining rooms. The absurd dichotomy of our ready acceptance of all pervasive reality TV with the insistence on aloof and detached admiration doesn't make me smile. My need to touch is killing me. I covet. This is why art theft happens. I really need to know what Hercules, Hydra, Deianira and Nessus are feeling and living. These are three dimensional pieces that need to be felt. Let us touch them, close our eyes and feel the artistry that is no longer, the unadulterated pleasure of perfection. Please.....