Art and destruction
By: edited by Jennifer Walden
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Published: 2013
Place of publication: Newcastle upon Tyne
Language: eng
Number of pages: 144
ISBN-13: 9781443849005
Subjects: Iconoclasm; Art and society; Art; Political aspects; Art and religion; Bildersturm; Kunst; Zerstörung
Description: Most talk of and writing on art is about its relationship to creation and creativity. This of course takes various forms, but ultimately, the creative act in the making of art works is a key issue. What happens when we put together art and destruction? This has been referenced in some major areas, such as that of art and iconoclasm and auto-destructive art movements. Less evident are accounts of more intimate, smaller scale 'destructive' interventions into the world of the made or exhibited art object, or more singular and particularised approaches to the representation of mass destruction. This volume addresses these lacunae by bringing together some distinct and very different areas for enquiry which, nevertheless, share a theme of destruction and share an emphasis upon the history of twentieth and twenty-first century art making. Scholars and makers have come together to produce accounts of artists whose making is driven by the breaking of, or breaking down of, matter and medium as part of the creative materialisation of the idea, such as Richard Wentworth, Bourke de Vries, Cornelia Parker, to name some of those artists represented here, and, indeed in one case, how our very attempts to write 'about' such practices are challenged by this making process. Other perspectives have engaged in critical study of various destructive interventions in galleries. Some of these, whether as actual staged actions in real time, or filmic representations of precarious objects, are understood as artistic acts in and of themselves. At the same time, an account included in this volume of certain contemporary iconoclasts, defacing or otherwise effecting destructive attempts upon canonised exhibited art works, reflects upon these destructive interventionists as self-styled artists claiming to add to the significance of 'works' via acts of destruction.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: No Construction without Destruction: Ceramics, Sculpture and Iconoclasm  -- Laura Gray; title: Art and Destruction: The Artist as Anti-Curator in the Museum  -- Miranda Stearn; title: Cornelia Parker's Thirty Pieces of Silver  -- Imogen Racz; title: Breaking as Making: A Methodology for Visual Work Reflected in Writing  -- Joanna Sperryn-Jones; title: Iconoclasm as Art: Creative Gestures and Criminal Acts Inside Museums and Galleries  -- Helen E. Scott; title: Unstable Matter Destruction, Destructuring, De-Obstruction in Camera-Lee Film  -- Olga Moskatova; title: A Surreal Landscape of Devastation: An Analysis of Lee Miller's Grim Glory Photographs of the London Blitz  -- Lynn Hilditch; title: Hiroshima Mon Amour, Remembering Destruction: Inscription on the Body and the Promise of Justice -- Jennifer Walden.