FLASH ART November/December 1999

 

 

Let’s Destroy Art To Make Art

Dear Giancarlo,

In December of this year, in a collaboration with the Detroit Institute of Art (Detroit) is going to mount a show based on the destruction of art in this century: “kaBOOM!” will be interactive with the audience, who will be invited to destroy such works as Man Ray’s Object to be Destroyed with a hammer, to spray-paint a dollar sign on a Malevich painting (à la Brener), to sew up a sliced Fontana, to piss in Duchamp’s urinal, to erase a De Kooning drawing, etc.

Since the MONA and you have had a running dialogue on this topic in the Letters section of Flash Art, we wanted to invite you to write a short essay on the topic for the exhibition. 

Awaiting your reply,

Jef Bourgeau

Project Director

 

 

True, Much Art Should Be Destroyed

Dear Jef,

Thank you for the invitation and your consideration. 

I have, despite myself, acquired something of an abiding reputation in the art world as a vandal and a perpetrator of sacrilege.  Result: vandals and iconoclasts the world over use me as a reference point, even though what I am promoting is no more than a suggestive, theoretical, and abstract hypothesis.

I do, however, believe that much art should be destroyed, if only to make room for new art (otherwise where are we to put it all?)  If I had my way, every ten years we would clean out and trash the art of the previous decade in a sort of exercise of mental and physical hygiene.  If we fail to do so, we will be submerged by artistic hyper-production that is as dangerous as environmental and atomic pollution.

As for the essay you asked for, alas I really do not have the time, however, I would like to write something on the pleasure, excitement, and necessity to destroy certain products of art that have outstayed their welcome (not necessarily the ones you mention).  When I retired I will make sure that I write something on the subject, a sort of continuation of Guy Debord’s “Spectacle Society”, though Debord had an inexplicable inferiority complex toward art and culture.  Yet, and let this be clear, when I do write, it will be for the sake of art and by someone who genuinely loves art.

Sincerely,

Giancarlo Politi