Thursday, March 1, 2018

The Life-Changing Magic of Iconoclasm

In the December 2017 issue of The Art Bulletin, Jenifer Van Horn argues for iconoclasm, not vandalism, as the motivation for destruction of planters' abandoned material culture and built environment in the aftermath of the American Civil War.  "'The Dark Iconoclast':  African Americans' Artistic Resistance in the Civil War South" follows a single portrait, an oil painting, from the wall of a wealthy Charleston family home, to a repurposed use as a freedman's fire screen, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it was cleaned and restored to its original condition.  I am fascinated by the argument that destructively repurposing material culture constitutes iconoclasm.  Certainly, the man who conceived of the portrait as a utilitarian object had a creative mind!  Can kunstwollen be a destructive impulse, as well as a creative one? 

Religion and war are the two usual motivations for iconoclasm.  What makes an ostensibly secular county strip the built environment of monuments in the absence of war?  Why would a secular artist, depicting a secular subject, in a secular setting, in peacetime, be called upon to destroy a work of art?  If the answers are simply some version of "politics" or "power," then why is it material culture-- and not some a more direct manifestation of political power-- that comes under fire?  What power does the graven image yet have to hold us in its thrall?

What is the purpose of icons in a 21st century secular society?  And what is the purpose for their destruction? 

Go Ahead, Millennials, Destroy Us