Art Under Attack:
A History of British Iconoclasm

LONDON. “Art Under Attack: A History of British Iconoclasm” - the first exhibition dedicated to the history of physical attacks on works of art in the UK, covering the period from the 16th century to the present day, will be held in the Tate Britain exhibition hall in London.

Iconoclasm, in this case, means intentional damage to works of art. The exhibition explores 500 years of attacks on art and includes paintings, sculptures and archival materials. The purpose of the exhibition is to study how and why art objects were attacked for religious, political or aesthetic reasons.

Many of the best examples of medieval sculptures in the UK can be seen here. All these wonderful works were able to survive the era of the Reformation, when the country lost more than 90 percent of the works of medieval masters. For example, the statue of “Dead Christ,” dating from 1500-1520, was discovered in 1954 under the chapel in Mercers’ Hall. The sculpture was severely damaged during the religious iconoclasm of the 16th and 17th centuries. The exposition also includes a large number of ancient sacred books provided by the British Library, which were also mutilated by fanatical iconoclasts.

Shards of medieval stained glass windows from Christ Church, Oxford and Canterbury Cathedral, knocked out of windows and assembled in parts, are exhibited for the first time with a 1657 painting by Thomas Johnson showing the decoration before desecration.

There is also one of the portraits at the exhibition, which was bought by artists Jake and Dinos Chapman (Jake and Dinos Chapman’s) to mutilate go beyond recognition. Conceptual artists added bloody signs to the hero’s face, made their mouths ugly and their eyes crazy. They probably thought it was fun.

Fragments of a statue of William III and Admiral Nelson, destroyed by the bombings in Dublin in 1928 and 1966, as an act of struggle against the British authorities; as well as fragments of the statue of George III, blown up during the American War of Independence, will be presented for the first time at an exhibition in the UK.

The exhibition presents many works of art that fell victim to the attack of suffragists in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Extensive archival documentation of the attacks accompanying the work, police records and photographs of the attackers is also exhibited.