Art destruction

Art destruction involves the damaging or destruction of works of art. This can happen through a natural process, an accident, or deliberate human involvement.

Accidental destruction

Many works of art have been damaged or destroyed by accident.

On September 2, 1998, Swissair Flight 111 crashed near Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, killing 229 people. Pablo Picasso's 1963 work Le Peintre (The Painter) had been loaded on the flight as cargo and was also destroyed.
In May 2004 a fire destroyed the Momart warehouse in east London. More than 50 works by abstract painter Patrick Heron and works by other artists were lost.^[1]

Willful destruction

Temporary artwork

Many works of visual art are intended by the artist to be temporary. They may be created in media which the artist knows to be temporary, such as sand, or they may be designed specifically to be destroyed. Often the destruction takes place during a ceremony or special event highlighting the destruction. Examples of this type of art include:

Additionally, some artists destroy their own work out of lack of self confidence or to gain a fresh start. Claude Monet destroyed many of his own paintings, including 30 paintings in the water lilies series. In 1970, John Baldessari and five other artists destroyed all the paintings Baldessari had created between 1953 and 1966 in a bonfire. An artist also may limit the number and quality variation of his work to make it more scarce. Radoslav Rochallyi in an interview for the literary magazine Tiny Spoon claims that his creative process is a ritual of creation and destruction. He claims that for him, the new replaces the old as passionately and carelessly as the old is destroyed. ^[2]

Festivals where artwork is destroyed:

The week-long Burning Man festival in the desert of Nevada, which began in 1986 with tens of thousands of participants who must pay a fee to attend, an entire city of art and self-expression is created. The focal point of the festival is a temple designed and built by artists. On the last day of the festival there is a ceremony known as a Temple Burn where the temple goes up in flames.^[3]
The Semana Santa (Easter week) festival in Antigua, Guatemala, where designs made out of flowers and colored sawdust are created in the street prior to being trampled by a religious parade.
The burning of Zozobra during Fiestas de Santa Fe in Santa Fe, New Mexico, usually during the second week of September.
The burning of falles in Valencia, Spain.

Iconoclasy

Other works of art may be destroyed without the consent of the original artist or of the local community. In other instances, works of art may destroyed by a local authority against the wishes of the outside community. Examples of this include the removal of Diego Rivera's 1934 Man at the Crossroads mural from the Rockefeller Center and the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamyan statues by the Taliban government.

Artworks destroyed in the September 11 attacks in the United States included a painted wood relief by Louise Nevelson, a painting from Roy Lichtenstein's Entablature series and a Joan Miró tapestry. The total value of artwork lost in the September 11 attacks is said to have been in excess of $100 million^[4]
In 2017, a terror suspect attacked guards of the Louvre with machetes and was found carrying "bombs of aerosol paint" intended to "disfigure the masterpieces of the [Louvre] museum.^[5]"

References

^ "Art world reels as losses mount". The Sydney Morning Herald. 28 March 2014. Retrieved 2 January 2018.
^ "Tiny talks with Radoslav Rochallyi". Tiny Spoon-Literary Magazine. Archived from the original on 2023-03-26. Retrieved 2023-04-06.
^ "Building the Temple". Burning Man. Retrieved 2018-11-02.
^ "'Up to' $100m art lost in attacks". BBC News. 5 October 2001. Retrieved 2 January 2018.
^ Emilie Blachère (13 February 2017). "Attack at the Louvre: the tourist was a terrorist". Paris Match (in French). Retrieved 2 January 2018. Investigators found bombs of aerosol paint in his bag. No doubt to blot out the masterpieces of the museum.

Bibliography

Gunnar Schmidt: Klavierzerstörungen in Kunst und Popkultur. Reimer Verlag, Berlin 2012. ISBN 978-3-496-01475-1.
Anne-Marie O'Connor: The Lady in Gold, the Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer ISBN 0-307-26564-1

[1] "Art world reels as losses mount". The Sydney Morning Herald. 28 March 2014. Retrieved 2 January 2018.

[2] "Tiny talks with Radoslav Rochallyi". Tiny Spoon-Literary Magazine. Archived from the original on 2023-03-26. Retrieved 2023-04-06.

[3] "Building the Temple". Burning Man. Retrieved 2018-11-02.

[4] "'Up to' $100m art lost in attacks". BBC News. 5 October 2001. Retrieved 2 January 2018.

[5] Emilie Blachère (13 February 2017). "Attack at the Louvre: the tourist was a terrorist". Paris Match (in French). Retrieved 2 January 2018. Investigators found bombs of aerosol paint in his bag. No doubt to blot out the masterpieces of the museum.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]