In January 2006, a man tried to break Marcel Duchamp's Fountain sculpture
with a small hammer. The sculpted foot of Michelangelo's David was damaged
in 1991 by a purportedly mentally ill artist. Each such incident confronts
us with the unsettling dynamic between destruction and art. In this book,
renowned art historian Dario Gamboni is the first to tackle this weighty
issue in depth. Starting with the sweeping obliteration of architecture and
art under the Communist regimes of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc,
Gamboni investigates other instances of destruction around the globe,
uncovering a surprisingly widespread phenomenon. As he demonstrates through
analyses of nineteenth- and twentieth-century incidents in the United
States and Europe, a complex relationship exists between the evolution of
modern art and a long history of iconoclasm. Gamboni probes the concept of
artists' rights, the power of political protest, and the ways in which
iconoclasm offers a unique interpretation of society's relationship to art
and material culture. Compelling, thought-provoking, and featuring more
than one hundred and fifty illustrations, The Destruction of Art forces us
to rethink the ways in which we interact with art and its power to shock or
subdue.