We always protest against the destruction of art. Like life , art is also an act of creation. It tends to proceed towards destruction with time. But generally, we human beings try to preserve art in our own small way. Many instances of destruction of art can be found in history. But there are also a few instances where many famous artists themselves destroyed their own art.
1. Dionysis Karipydis
In 1997, Karipydis had carved a statue of mermaid into the rocks of a Portokali beach in Greece. The artist was issued a fine. To protest against this fine Karipydis took a sledge hammer in his hand and smashed the face of the mermaid.
2. Gerhard Richter
Richter is a famous German artist , who has produced works in paint, photography and also in glass. In the 1960s Richter used a box cutter to destroy his works. He had also burned down many of his paintings. The simple reason behind this destruction was that he was not happy with his work.
3. Blu
The famous artist Blu used to paint walls in Bologna. The city was going to take his works to the gallery. Blu protested and said
“This exhibition will embellish and legitimize the hoarding of art taken off the street, which is only going to please unscrupled collectors and merchants.”
He took a chisel and grey paint and systematically destroyed 20 years of art work
4. Benning
The life like dollhouse created by Canadian artist Heather Benning was recently burned down by the artist.
5. Charles Camoin
Charles Camoin had managed to destroy his art twice. After a succesful exhibition of his painting in1913, Camoin was going through a depression. He slashed 80 of his paintings and kept away the destroyed remains. Writer Francis Cairo revived and restored the paintings. He was sued by Camoin for putting up the paintings for auction. Caimon won the case in court and his paintings were destroyed for a second time.
6. Robert Rauschenberg
Rauschenberg had travelled through North Africa and Europe during the 1950s. He had made collages out of trash and had used cheap objects to create artworks. Several of the art pieces were exhibited in Italy. The artist tossed away the left-overs of his art work into the Arno river.
7. Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns is someone whose works we do not find at all. In 1954 he had an epiphany and-
“decided to stop becoming and to be an artist.”
He destroyed all his art work that he had created till that moment and destroyed all of it.
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8. John Baldessari
California’s conceptual artist Baldessari is famous for plastering the faces of his creation with colourful dots. This action arose out of annoyance.
“I just got so tired of looking at these faces [of people at civic events],” Baldessari told NPR.
In 1970 the artist was going through a creative block. He took everything that he had painted from 1953 to 1966 to a morgue and burned everything.
“And so I said, ‘Well, I’m just going to stop. I have them in my head. I don’t really need them. So I decided I’ll just destroy them,” he explained.
The pyre was viewed by him as an artistic rebirth. Then he turned to photography
9. Jean Tinguely
In 1960 Swiss artist Jean , with the help of other artists and engineers created a 27 ft high machine, which destroyed itself.
10. Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon’s paintings are the most expensive in the world. In 1942 Bacon destroyed most of his early works. But this was not a one time thing for Bacon. He used to regularly destroy his paintings which he thought were not good enough.
“I think I tend to destroy the better paintings,” he said. “I try and take them further, and they lose all their qualities.”
11. Monet
Monet’s water lily paintings are very famous now. But during his time they did not get much appreciation. Maybe the criticism affected him. Just before an exhibition of his water lily paintings, Monet destroyed 15 canvases of his art work.
12. Karlis Rekevics
Rekevics had made his artworks from tons of plaster,wood and foam. At the end of the exhibition he just put his work apart with the help of a hammer and dumped it into a dustbin.
13. Michelangelo
Michelangelo is one of the most renowned names in the world of art.Michelangelo’s Pieta of the Virgin Mary cradling the dead Christ is one of the masterpiece of the Vatican collection. Michelangelo also created another Pieta called The Deposition.
He worked on the sculpture for eight years. And then one day he got enraged with it and broke it. He passed the damaged work to a friend. On being asked that why had he damaged his work-
“He answered it was because of his servant Urbino’s importunity, who was always urging him to finish it, and besides that, among other things, he had broken a piece off the Virgin’s arm, and before that he had taken a dislike to it, having many misfortunes because of a crack there was in it; so at last, losing patience, he had broken it, and would have destroyed it altogether if his servant Antonio had not begged him to give it him as it was.”
Now from this we should learn that we should never hurry a genius when he is working. It can have really negative effects
These amazing and mysterious stories about these famous artists enhances the beauty and aura of their art further.
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