The irresistible urge to destroy art

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Works of art have been physically attacked for different reasons over many centuries, becoming ‘palimpsests of terror’ in the process

Art Under Attack: Histories of British Iconoclasm edited by Tabitha Barber and Stacy Boldrick

This subject must have seemed like a curator’s dream, with its collection of objects and images enhanced for having been attacked or overwritten by anyone and everyone, including other artists, for political, religious, aesthetic reasons or just through madness. It is an enticing and engaging theme for a show that was held at Tate Britain during the winter and its accompanying catalogue. So, despite the fascination of these images, why is it that both show and catalogue leave one feeling a little dissatisfied?

I think this is because of taking on too much. Behind all the three big themes, Religion, Politics and Aesthetics, lay complex and contradictory narratives and these are unable to sit easily alongside each other in either a show or a catalogue. Each theme would make a separate exhibition or book with its own timescale historically and aesthetically and an overarching theme, although rich – as here – is unable to hold the elements of the three themes together in a coherent form.

Having said this, many of the individual images cry out with layers of meaning, palimpsests of terror in some cases, and we are left helplessly asking simply why someone could do this to an inanimate object.  Images do trigger powerful responses but in many of the cases shown here the destruction was due to instruction from others or perhaps fear. When, in 1905, someone savaged the eyes of a Durer self-portrait, the museum authorities suggested it was in response to ‘their alarmingly penetrating stare’.

Art Under Attack begins with iconoclasm and ends with destruction as an act of creation that itself has been a developing and accepted practice ever since Duchamp painted a moustache on an image of the Mona Lisa. These two poles of the book deserve more both in terms of curation and critical analysis, though the texts are both accessible and interesting enough, and among the exhibits there are some that are intensely moving. These include the magnificent limestone sculpture of the Dead Christ (1480–1520),which was discovered only in the last century in the ground beneath the Mercers' Hall in London, and one wonders if something in the art itself held the iconoclasts back. The body lies upon its bier, with stone blood freezing in the wounds. The feet, the arms and the crown of thorns are gone, and it must have taken sheer brute force to achieve this, but the attackers did no further damage to the face – why?

In the final section,  titled ‘Aesthetics’ the violence is shown to be sometimes  committed by artists themselves in defence of art. Carl Andre's Equivalent VIII (1966) was attacked by a painter who thought that modern art should be better than bricks; Damien Hirst's Away From the Flock (1994) was stained with black ink as a form of creative ‘improvement’ by another artist. Reg Butler's Unknown Political Prisoner (1953) was attacked by a Hungarian who believed that if the prisoner represented the suffering of real people during the Second World War, then he ought to be made out of something more dignified than scrap metal.

It is true to say that the show does prompt us to consider what art is, and how it affects us and many of the images attacked do tend to be representations of people, in the same way as many of those that tend to be worshipped or idolized. Landscapes and still-lives do not attract the same kind of response.

An area that is noticeably lacking is the role of those given the task of saving or restoring the damaged art works, the  museum nurses and surgeons putting them all back together again, behind the scenes.

It is arguable how much of the damage to the work covered here can be considered iconoclasm, but it does point the way towards a greater comprehensive examination of this field, perhaps in future with a more focused approach and in-depth analysis. I also think the catalogue is certainly a useful publication and for triggering debate about the nature of art and its detractors. It also well illustrated and robust.

Art Under Attack: Histories of British Iconoclasm, edited by Tabitha Barber and Stacy Boldrick, is published by Tate Publishing. 192 pp., £24.99 (pbk). ISBN: 978 1 84976 030 0