Martina Borghi talks to Dr Stacy Boldrick from the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester about iconoclasm - the destruction of art! She tells us how museums approach this subject and discusses how to present the history of objects that have undergone various forms of damage.
Stacy's bio:
https://le.ac.uk/people/stacy-boldrick
Artworks and artists’ projects mentioned:
Diego Velázquez,
The Toilet of Venus (The Rokeby Venus), oil on canvas, 1647-51 -
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/diego-velazquez-the-toilet-of-venus-the-rokeby-venus
John Cassidy and others,
Edward Colston statue,1895/2020. Bronze, mixed media M shed (Bristol Museums) display, 2021 -
https://exhibitions.bristolmuseums.org.uk/the-colston-statue/
Kate Davis,
Reversibility (Militant Methods), 2011. Framed pencil drawing and silkscreen print on paper, 135 x 80cm -
https://katedavisartist.co.uk/peace-at-last-2/
Sonia Boyce,
Black artists and Modernism (2015-2018) -
https://www.arts.ac.uk/ual-decolonising-arts-institute/ual-related-activities/black-artists-and-modernism
Hew Locke,
Patriots series (2018) -
http://www.hewlocke.net/patriots.html
Titus Kaphar,
Impressions of Liberty, Wood (American sycamore and plywood), etched glass, sculpting foam, graphite and LED lights, 2017 -
https://artmuseum.princeton.edu/collections/objects/132361?lat=40.349209&lon=-74.660278
Francisco Goya,
Disasters of War (Los Desastres de la Guerra), series of prints, 1810, Etching, drypoint, burin, burnisher -
https://www.parkwestgallery.com/francisco-goya-disasters-of-war/
Steve McQueen,
Bass, 2024 (Dia Beacon) -
https://www.diaart.org/exhibition/exhibitions-projects/steve-mcqueen-exhibition
Raqs Media Collective, Coronation Park (2015) -
https://works.raqsmediacollective.net/index.php/2015/12/05/coronation-park/
- David Freedberg,
The Power of Images (Yale University Press, 1989)
- David Freedberg,
Iconoclasm (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021)
- Dario Gamboni,
The Destruction of Art: Iconoclasm and Vandalism since the French Revolution, 2nd edn (London: Reaktion, 2018)
- Stacy Boldrick and Richard Clay (eds.),
Iconoclasm: Contested Objects, Contested Terms (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007)
- Stacy Boldrick,
Iconoclasm and the museum (Oxon: Routledge, 2020)
- Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (eds),
Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion, and Art, ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 2002)
- Margaret Aston,
Broken Idols of the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016)
- James Simpson,
Under the Hammer: Iconoclasm in the Anglo-American Tradition (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010)
- Ramon Sarró,
The Politics of Religious Change on the Upper Guinea Coast Iconoclasm Done and Undone (London: Edinburgh University Press for the International African Institute, 2009)
- James Noyes,
The Politics of Iconoclasm: Religion, Violence and the Culture of Image-Breaking in Christianity and Islam (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2013)
- Robert Bevan,
The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at war (London: Reaktion, 2007)
- Henry Chapman,
Iconoclasm and Later Prehistory (London: Routledge, 2018)
- Fabio Rambelli, Eric Reinders,
Buddhism and Iconoclasm in East Asia (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012)
- Christoph Brumann and David Berliner (eds),
World Heritage on the Ground. Etnographic prospective (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2016)
- José Antonio Gonzalez Zarandona, ‘Heritage destruction in Myanmar’s Rakhine state: legal and illegal iconoclasm’ in
International Journal of Heritage Studies, 5 (2020), pp. 519-538