{"id":14040,"date":"2018-10-23T01:57:52","date_gmt":"2018-10-23T01:57:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=14040"},"modified":"2019-10-31T08:29:11","modified_gmt":"2019-10-31T08:29:11","slug":"banksy-and-the-tradition-of-destroying-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/banksy-and-the-tradition-of-destroying-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Banksy and the tradition of destroying art"},"content":{"rendered":"

Preminda Jacob<\/a>, University of Maryland, Baltimore County<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

When the British street artist Banksy shredded his \u201cGirl With Balloon\u201d after it was purchased for US$1.4 million at Sotheby\u2019s<\/a>, did he know how the art world would react?<\/p>\n

Did he anticipate that the critics would claim<\/a> that the work, in its partially shredded state, would climb in value to at least $2 million? That the purchaser would not object<\/a> and would instead rejoice?<\/p>\n

We have no way of really knowing, though the famously anonymous artist did suggest that the shredder malfunctioned<\/a>: The painting was supposed to be fully shredded, not partially destroyed.<\/p>\n

As an art historian, I view his act in a larger context \u2013 as the latest example of artists deploying guerrilla tactics to expose their disdain for the critics, dealers, gallery owners and museum curators whom they depend on for their livelihood.<\/p>\n

In shredding \u201cGirl With Balloon,\u201d Banksy seems to be pointing to a central absurdity of his graffiti art being treated as fine art. When it appears on city streets, anyone can vandalize it; now that the same images are in galleries and auction houses, they must be handled with white gloves.<\/p>\n

But, as he may well know, the art market is far too wealthy and adaptable to be undone by a shredder.<\/p>\n

In fact, we\u2019ve seen the same pattern play out, time and again: An artist will launch a withering critique and instead of taking offense, the market simply tightens its embrace.<\/p>\n

The many versions of subversion<\/h2>\n

Some of the most well-known of Banksy\u2019s subversive artistic predecessors were part of the early-20th century Dada movement<\/a>. One of their principal strategies involved denying the market of objects that could be commodified.<\/p>\n

French-American artist Marcel Duchamp is perhaps the most well-known Dadaist. In 1917, his \u201cFountain<\/a>,\u201d a urinal laid on its back and remounted on a pedestal, was his first volley against the art market\u2019s intellectual pretenses about art.<\/p>\n

Duchamp wanted to force the art world to acknowledge that its judgments about quality were based on media hype and money rather than artistic innovation.<\/p>\n

However, years later Duchamp admitted<\/a> to the futility of his gesture.<\/p>\n

\u201cI threw \u2026 the urinal into their faces as a challenge,\u201d he lamented, \u201cand now they admire [it] for [its] aesthetic beauty.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1920, Francis Picabia, a Cuban-French Dadaist would follow Duchamp\u2019s lead and participate in a performance purposefully designed to provoke the French art world.<\/p>\n

Before a Parisian audience gathered at the Palais des F\u00eates, Picabia unveiled a chalk drawing entitled \u201cRiz au Nez\u201d (\u201cRice on the Nose\u201d). The artist\u2019s friend, Andr\u00e9 Breton<\/a>, one of the hosts of the event, then erased the drawing. The artwork lasted for just a of couple hours and is now lost to history. The work\u2019s title, it\u2019s been noted<\/a>, sounds too similar to \u201crire au nez\u201d (\u201cto laugh in one\u2019s face\u201d) to be coincidental.<\/p>\n

In 1953, Robert Rauschenberg, who was then an up-and-coming American artist, plucked up the courage to ask Willem de Kooning, an established abstract expressionist, for one of his drawings. Rauschenberg didn\u2019t tell de Kooning much \u2013 just that he intended to use it for an unusual project. Athough de Kooning was disapproving, he acquiesced.<\/p>\n

After securing his gift, Rauschenberg proceeded, over the period of a month, to carefully erase all traces of the expressive pencil, charcoal and crayon drawing that de Kooning had put to paper.<\/p>\n

Rauschenberg then re-titled the work, now preserved in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Art, \u201cErased de Kooning Drawing<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jean Tinguely\u2019s auto-destructing work, \u201cHomage to New York<\/a>\u201d (1960), is probably the closest parallel to Banksy\u2019s stunt. Made of scrap found in New Jersey junkyards, the massive work \u2013 27 feet high and 23 feet in length \u2013 was supposed to be a mechanical display, sort of like a Rube Goldberg device<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The piece was set up the sculpture garden of New York\u2019s Museum of Modern Art, and those attending the show included collectors Walter Arensberg and John D. Rockefeller III, and artists John Cage, Mark Rothko and Robert Rauschenberg.<\/p>\n

Tinguely briefly set the piece in motion \u2013 and then it burst into flames.<\/p>\n

The Museum of Modern Art described the scene<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 a meteorological trial balloon inflated and burst, colored smoke was discharged, paintings were made and destroyed, and bottles crashed to the ground. A player piano, metal drums, a radio broadcast, a recording of the artist explaining his work, and a competing shrill voice correcting him provided the cacophonic sound track to the machine\u2019s self-destruction \u2013 until it was stopped short by the fire department.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Apart from a fragment from Tinguely\u2019s \u201cHomage\u201d preserved in the MoMA collection<\/a>, all that remains of the work is some choppy film footage.<\/p>\n