Adama Sombie

ARTT 150
Assignment: Research Paper
Spring 2014

Art and Destruction
While destruction as a theme can be traced throughout art history, from the early atomic
age it has become a pervasive cultural element. In the immediate post-World War II
years, to invoke destruction in art was to evoke the war itself; the awful devastation of
battle, the firebombing of entire cities, the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan, and,
of course, the Holocaust. Art seemed powerless in the face of that terrible history. But by
the early 1950s, with the escalation of the arms race and the prospect of nuclear
annihilation, the theme of destruction has persisted as an essential component of artistic
expression. Damage Control: Art and Destruction Since 1950 offer an overview of this
prevalent motif.
According to Kathryn Kramer (2014, Jan), the tricky process of cranking
operations back up just a week after the federal government reopened resulted in a mash
up of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Gardens press preview and opening
reception of Damage Control: Art and Destruction Since 1950; While the press was
pleased to be part of the festivities, especially to winess Raphael Montanez Ortizs Piano
Destruction Concert performed live in the museums outdoor plaza; others may have
been aggravated by the openings shattered exclusivityl Whether perceiving the schedule
annihilation as positive or negative, all those who grappled with the exhibitions
thematics of destruction had to note a correlation between the government shutdowns
destructive dimensions and what is currently on exhibit in Damage Control. Even if one
is unwilling to concede congressional antics of self-destruction as art. It is nevertheless
hard to deny that strange pleasure often felt upon confronting spectacular wreckage,
whether inside or outside museum walls. Kathryn Kramer contemplated this uncanny
linkage of congressional and museal display while watching Ortiz wield an ax forcefully
enough to make bits of whit piano keys fly around the Hirshhorn courtyard like so many
tooth fragments. The Ortiz piano keys fly around the Hirshhorn courtyard like so many
tooth fragments. The Ortiz piano destruction concert was at times riveting as the pianos
hacked strings sprang up and screeched in the brisk, late October night. The wind chill
compelled Ortiz to wear a knit cap and insulated jacket that worked in tandem with his ax
to project serial killer, adding to the drama. At other times, the performance was
tedious as he chopped away unsuccessfully or even rather gingerly. Yet instead of
enjoying an ennui interlude as one often does with performance art, Kramer was startled
by my sudden wish: Just finish it off: kill that baby grand! Just moments before, I had
been equally surprised by my abhorrence of the pianos destruction, given that I am
rarely awestruck by icons of high culture. Throughout the performance, the writer was
bemused by this simultaneous repellence and anaesthetization in the face of violence. The
film of Ortizs original 1966 piano destruction concert running on the Hirshhorns second
level did not affect me thus; she long had thought of it in the context of Fluxus, as an
expression of Neo-Dada exuberance, of anti-art, of noise art. Ortizs filmic destruction of
that old upright piano with such athletic lan was compelling enough. Or so it once
seemed.
What Damage Control: Art and Destruction Since 1950 does so very well is to
recontextualize post-World War II contemporary art up to the present in post-nuclear
terms. This would appear an obvious consideration to impose, but it has not been done in
the art world as consistently as in the literary and social science worlds, and certainly not
on this scale: it is truly eye-opening to grasp in such graphic terms how nearly
simultaneous fear, fascination, allure, disdain, embrace, and rejection of total annihilation
habitually inflects visual culture. When activated, this irradiation of the aesthetics of
destruction enhances appreciation of both the hyperactive demolition of Gustav Metzger
in a gas mask, painting auto-destructively ( Auto-Destructive Art, the Activites of
G.Metzger, directed by Harold liversidge, 1963, 7 min. 33 sec), and the gentle erasure of
Robert Rauschenbergs Erased de Kooning Dravoing (1953), alike. No matter how
subtle, in a nuclear era, all attempts to purge have added resonance.
Curators Kerry Brougher and Russell Ferguson have positioned a variety of work
in all media under an atomic cloud, some of which is not unforeseeable, yet is freshly
edifying in this contest: Yves Kleins Letter from Yves Klein to the President of the
International Conference (Blue Explosions) (1958); D.A. Pennebakers footage of Jean
Tinguelys Homage to New York (1960, 6 min. 5 sec), to name but a few of the works
that embody destructive finality. Other works are much less initially foreseeable as
conceivable parts of the exhibition, yet bear up well under the nuclear load. These include
those involving the purposeful destruction of art by Ai Weiwei (Dropping a Han Dynasty
Urn, 1995), Asger Jorns Modifications series of painted-over flea market landscapes
from 1959, and the Chapman brothers defiled complete set of Goyas Disasters of War
etchings. Insult to Injury (1999). Ori Gersht plays with this idea of malicious art
vandalism by presenting what appears to be a Henry Fantin-Latour still life, which on
closer inspection is a moving image on a framed LCD flat screen that violently explodes
to the sounds of alarm serens in the viewers face about every four minutes. The vase and
flowers, frozen by liquid nitrogen so that their fragments shatter like glass, are so
atomized by the explosion that one cannot help but think of nuclear force, and the title.
Big Bang 1 (2006) helps that notion along in addition to suggesting the idea of creative
destruction, associated with the birth of the universe. Either way, Gersht takes the still
life genres inherent memento mori message to its ultimate apocalyptic conclusion/
beginning.
Damage Control participates in the current trend of contemporary art exhibitions
(most notably the recently finished 2013 Venice Biennale) to insure that a large
proportion of included works derive from the visual cultures of journalism, anthropology,
sociology, and the sciences, as well as from the realms of popular, amateur, and outsider
art. In many cases this trend is mere curatorial fashion but Brougher and Ferguson use it
to good effect in their effort to document the ongoing visualization of nuclear power and
destruction from its harnessing, unleashing, documentation, representation,
dissemination, and aestheticization in literature, mass media, and the visual arts. The
exhibition opens with the spellbinding footage of nuclear bomb detonation recorded in
the 1950s by MIT engineer Harold Edgerton for the US Atomic Energy Commission.
Even then, it is clear that aesthetics as well as logistics were taken into consideration
when making such films. Awall text informs viewers that this was a deliberate move to
make nuclear testing somewhat more palatable to a skeptical public with growing health
and safety concerns. Sublime comes to mind. Aesthetics is also undeniable in the
stunning motor vehicle accident scene photographs that Swiss police photographer
Arnold Odematt meticulously took, beginning when he first joined the force in 1948 until
his retirement in 1990. They are given pride of place in both the exhibition and catalog. I
think this may be due, besides to their beauty, to their relationship to another major
milestone in arts entanglement with modern destruction, FT. Marinettis paean, in his
1909 Futurist Manifesto, to creative release after crashing his car into a ditch, with which
Ferguson opens his catalog essay.
Aesthetics permeates lightly, however, more experientially than theoretically,
primarily while one traverses the exhibition. This is due in very large part to the fine
curatorial selection based on a fortunate coalition of Broughers keen interest in the
atomic contemporary and Fergusons broad view of destructive modernism. It should
not be surprising that an exhibition dealing with art and destruction since 1950 would
necessarily comprise the moving image substantially.













Work Cited
Kramer, K. (2014, Jan). Damage Control: Art and Destruction since 1950. Afterimage.
Jan/Feb2014, Vol. 41 Issue 4, p29-30. 2p. Retrieved March 10, 2014
http://Web.b.ebscohost.com.proxy-um.researchport.umd/ehost


















Adama Sombie
ARTT 150
Assignment: Response to courage to create
Spring 2014

Courage is the capacity to meet the anxiety, which arises as one achieves
freedom. It took me courage to create the six one-stroke paintings on paper. Before
starting my first stroke, I held on the paint and took a look at the blank sheet of paper for
a while. At this moment, one of my class standing next to me said to me, Go ahead you
just need one stroke. No need to think about it. At that point I realized that there no
wrong doing linked with the outcome of my strokes. I then started creating my strokes.
Through out this assignment I realized how much courage it takes one to do the right
thing.