Iconoclasm, Identity Politics and the Erasure of History by Adams Alexander;

Author:Adams, Alexander;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Art, vandalism, public culture, Colston, BLM, black lives matter, defacement, politics, religion, islamism, control, censorship, freedom of expression, anarchism, communism, Nazism, artwork, graffiti, riots, disrespect, identity politics, safetyism, Trump, Confederacy
ISBN: 6474390
Publisher: Imprint Academic
Published: 2020-12-22T00:00:00+00:00

Psychopathology of Art Vandalism

Beauty offends inferior beings who are conscious of their inferiority.[39]

Art vandals often have problems containing anger, suffer from mental disorders and have unsatisfactory personal lives. Frustration at their circumstances and lack of attention of others drives them to breaking point—literally breaking art and breaking the law. The vandal is often preoccupied by the social status and high prices of art on public display. They feel alienated by certain types of renowned art. They can treat the aura of famous art works as a threat and feel compelled to act to break the “illusion of greatness” as the anti-religious iconoclast is moved to break the “magic spell” of a holy image; this act reduces the status of the art work and commensurately lifts the status of the art vandal, enacting a mixed complex of inadequacy-grandiosity.

We see certain characteristics recur in the profiles of art vandals: a sense of moral outrage combined with lack of restraint; a failure to recognise boundaries; a feeling of being disempowered; an inflated sense of importance or self-absorption; a sense of being simultaneously excluded from public discourses and norms whilst acting on behalf of others who are too timid to express their feelings. There is a belief that one has been unjustly overlooked and (in the case of failed artists) a grudge against the world at large. There is the pervasive air of superiority—that one’s emotions should be expressed through violence against another’s property. The common criticism of abstract art—“a child could do that!”—leads vandals to believe that an abstract painting is simple to restore and that anyone deluded enough to claim to notice differences between restored and unrestored states of a painting are simply “admiring the emperor’s new clothes”. Such evasion of responsibility is also found in the claim “Paint can be scrubbed off”, which is evidence of ignorance about the delicate material nature of some art media and disdain for aesthetic considerations.

Professional psychiatrists have diagnosed individual art vandals (before and after attacks) with autism, manic depression (now termed bipolar disorder), affective psychosis, paranoia, schizophrenia, personality disorders and neurological dysfunction due to traumatic brain injury.[40] One individual, who became a notorious serial vandal, was psychologically impelled to destroy art. Gravely mentally ill and subjected to every treatment available, repeated arrest and institutional confinement could not deter him. He sprayed sulphuric acid on paintings; he set fire to paintings; he defaced gravestones. He severely damaged 50 works of art in Germany and was only prevented from doing more by reason of being imprisoned or kept in mental hospitals for many years.

Vandals have cited external reasons for attacks, including political, social and economic conditions. The political vandal believes art vandalism is a means of drawing attention to an unrelated cause of greater ethical importance than the attention paid to the frivolous anodyne of fine art. This is often related to a utilitarian view of art. Namely, the person believes that art is a means for demonstrating wealth and influence and that this is immoral; art

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