THE obsessive fear of the creation, display or preservation of the
image to the breaking or destruction of the image. A last lecture
by CM for the academic year. One resolution to the problems of the
Sequential is to remove or otherwise obliterate the image or images.
Anne Braun, Historical Targets , Roydon Publishing
London 1983 - paintings used as shooting targets
Richard Misrach, Violent Legacies , three cantos,
Aperture NY 1992 - shooting at photographs.
Arturo Schwarz, The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp
, Thames & Hudson L 1969
Ernest Gilman, Iconoclasm and the Poetry in the English
Reformation , Downwent Dagon, Univ.of Chicago Press Chicago,
1986 - a standard work of regerence
John Phillips, The reformation of Images; Destruction of
Art in England 1535 - 1660, Univ.of Calif Press, Berkeley
Frances Yates, "Broken Images" in Ideas and Ideals in
the North European Renaissance , Collected Essay Vol
III, Routledge Kegan Paul London 1984 (review of Phillips)
Willy Verkauf, DADA Monograph of a Movement , Academy
London 1975 - visitors asked to destroy the exhibits
work of Jean Tinguely
Kubrick, The Killers
Stanley Kubrick, Lolita - shooting up the Gainsborough
Savonarola and the Burning of the Vanities
George III and Titian's Venus.
Peter Cornelius' Cartoon
Max Ernst and the First International Dada Fair Berlin 1920
Hitler's Kristalnachte and the Burning of the Books
Epstein and the Tomb of Oscar Wilde castrated.
Duchamp, Unhappy Readymade , 1919 Buenos Aires, the wind destroyed
Ceaucescu the deposed
The Death of Stalinism and the toppling of monuments
invasion of Iraq and the Sacking of Museums -archaelogy in sandbags
"For every man is forbidden to make unto himself, any forme or
shape or resemblance, of things in the heavens earth or waters; of
any similitude, shew, or likeness; any frame, figure ,edifice, or
structure, of man or beast, fowl or fish or any creeping thing , any
image, type, or shadowed representation; any imagined picture, fabrick
or shape..... So that it is not possible for the wit or hand of man
to make any image or representation whatsoever, which cometh not withincompasse
of the words and things forewarned of God." Henry Ainsworth,
Summa Theologica, 1.84
"Two Playboy magazines used for target practice by persons unknown
were found at the northwest corner of the Nuclear Test Site in Nevada.
Although the women on the covers were the intended targets, all aspects
of American culture, as reflected inside the magazines , were riddled
with violence." in Misrach op.cit.