Art Bin- The Art of Destruction.

Is destruction necessary?

Destruction in art is an oxymoron, since art is creation. But is exactly the complex cohabitation of these two concepts that create an extreme act that stuns, upsets, provoking a reaction.

'The need to destroy is also an artistic need' declared Picasso.
Also Nietzsche argued that destruction is necessary to creativity:
'The man who breaks… tables of values, the breaker, the lawbreaker; …he is the creator'
(Nietzsche, Also Spracht Zarathustra, p.23).

Dadaism has already dealt with this issue: according to the movement, everything had to be overkill in order to create something new. In the case of Dadaism, it was a figurative and conceptual argument, that shoots for create a renewed conception of art that is not only a bourgeois whim.

In other cases, destruction has not just a figurative sense.

As we already saw with Baldessari, there are some artists that deliberately decided to destroy their works. Not only, there are artists that make destruction their own form of doing art. It’s a fact that really interests me a lot. In fact, in our society, the consumer society, destruction has only a negative value, whereas production and accumulation (capital accumulation) are the successful mechanisms.

I’ve seen Gustav Metzger’s personal exhibition at Serpentine Gallery in November. He is an artist and political activist and he developed the concept of Auto-Destructive Art. From the manifesto: “Auto-Destructive Art wants to recreate the obsession for destruction (…), it demonstrates the man’s power in accelerate the disintegration of natural processes” From 1959, he started making works by spraying acid on canvas as a protest against nuclear weapons. The results were changing really fast, until the canvas was all consumed. In 1960 he organized a public demonstration of Auto-Destructive Art that was one of the first happening in the art scene.

Also Jean Tinguely, the Swiss artist known for his sculptural machines, created in the same years (1960) a machine called Homage to New York, which was constructed to be self-destroyed. It was a 27 minutes long performance, and at the end of it, the public was allowed to take the remnants of the machine for souvenirs.

The English artist Michael Landy realized an installation that is a direct consequence of the previous listed artistic acts. In 2001, he destroyed all his possessions (all of them!!!) in the installation with the title Break Down. This year he decided to hurl from a staircase all the paintings collected in his life, and some of them are by notorious artists such as Damien Hirst or Tracy Amin. He also open the installation to everybody wanted to bring his artwork and throw it from the staircase on the ground with all the else artworks lied. The exhibition called Art Bin was in South London Gallery until the 14^th of March, there were displayed all photographs and video of the performance and also the big glass bin with lifeless artwork comprehended.

I read in an article on the web that Kane Cunningham, a painter from Yorkshire, bought a house in Knipe Point, near to Scarborough. This house is located near to a precipice and it is highly possible that it will slide down. The artist decided to document the fall of the estate and transform it in a big artistic project. He wants to create a symbol for lost dreams and financial disasters, inviting also poets and musician and also visitors to leave their messages or artworks, in order to transform this precarious building in something creative and positive.

So, it is destruction necessary?

I think it is. Destruction is like death, people have to face with it, and start to see the good in it. Everybody should be ready to destroy a part of his property, as Michael Landy did. Things are not important to determine who we are, and artworks neither. What we do is basic, not what we own.. And destroying, we are the creator of a brave and proud act of rebellion.

Pete Townshend of The Who.