The destruction of art works often conjures images of oppressive regimes: of Nazi bans on “degenerate art”, of Chairman Mao burning books, of the Taleban blowing up the Bamyan buddhas. Such outrages are deplored. We treasure our cultural legacy: mourn that so much of the Parthenon was destroyed in the 17th century; feel relieved that the Bayeux tapestry was saved.
But deep down we take a Darwinian delight in destruction. This might be uncomfortable to admit. Damien Hirst was vilified for suggesting that the attack on the World Trade Centre had been “visually stunning” and “a kind of art work in its own right”. He had to retract his opinions. But when encountered on a less terrible level such feelings are indulged. Parties are staged to watch buildings being blown up, people queue to shatter crockery and guitar-smashing is a high point of the rock repertoire.
Acts of destruction can be a creative force. For the artist, they may represent a paring away of all distractions to reach what is perceived as some essential truth.
For Piet Mondrian, for instance, theosophical ideas that promoted the eradication of the old to make room for the new were crucial. The painter who saw himself as the creator of a modern culture abandoned everything he had done — all his pastoral landscapes and impressionistic views — for the pure surfaces of his abstracts. He wiped his whole world out to make way for his future.
Obliteration has been a driving force for anyone from the Dadaists who, appalled by the catastrophe of the First World War, sought to reject the reason and logic that had failed them so dreadfully and create in its place a nullifying anti-art to their postwar offspring, the Punks, who howling at the walls of capitalist complacency, wanted to install complete anarchy instead. Of course, it all leads to an intractable tangle of contradictions, but at root such art movements can offer an arena — a sort of cultural equivalent to the child’s playpen — in which annihilating urges can be safely channeled and explored.
Individual artists have built sky-scraping careers on the rubble foundations of previous work. Francis Bacon bought up his early canvases specifically so that he could destroy them, thus eradicating signs of any links between his first career as an interior designer and his second as an artist of existential angst. His vision, he believed, was more powerful when seen not as some pedantic progression of ideas but as an impetuous overflow of passionate feelings. Cleansing left things clearer, revitalised, stronger.
The tightly packed marketplaces of our contemporary art world could certainly do with a sweep. There are so many competing voices that often it feels as if none can be clearly heard.
But there are so many imitators that it can be hard to hone in on the real thing. And there is so much belief in the brand that even Hirst’s dreadful paintings are sold for millions. But, when art is always in some way about telling the truth, wouldn’t it be more truthful (and so creative) to consign these canvases to Michael Landy’s rubbish bin?
Matter is neither created nor destroyed: it is endlessly recycled like rubbish. Landy is offering us the latest take on an age-old idea. “Maybe I will even use this project to recreate myself,” he said. Fresh green shoots will sprout from his Landyfill site.
Michael Landy’s Art Bin will be at the South London Gallery, Peckham, www.southlondongallery.org, from January 29 to March 14. To apply to put your work in the skip, log on to www.art-bin.co.uk
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