Art under attack

Fascinating exhibition at Tate Britain looking at occasions in English history where art has been destroyed whether for religious, political or aesthetic reasons.

The religious section was probably the most detailed and looked three distinct periods, the Dissolution of the monasteries, the reformation under Edward VI and the Civil War. We think of the Dissolution as a destructive phase by actually Henry tended to just remove things that would make him money. It wasn’t until later that we see the wholesale destruction of images because of religious ideology.

These displays showed just how much Britain had lost at this time. I think most countries had an artistic golden age, or maybe more than one, and I suspect the late medieval period was one of Britain’s yet we largely ignore it because so little is left. I loved the fragments form the screen at Winchester which were so crisp because they’d been buried rather than weathering, it gave a wonderful view of what the world must have looked like when all this work was new.

The second session on politics was fascinating as I went into it thinking that destroying art for political reasons was not something we had done but then you hit the gallery on the Suffragettes! I was also fascinated by the previous gallery which looked at public statues which had been destroyed, mainly it has to be said in Ireland.

The last section looked more at art which has been created by destruction with items like the Chapman Brothers re working of 18th portraits to show states of decomposition. I must admit found this last section less interesting and got lost in the gallery on the 1966 Destruction in Art Symposium!

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