Comments on: Destroying works of art as a creative process?

Question: Destroying works of art as a creative process?

CreativeJuices — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 10:24:20 -0800

Art Filter: MeFites, can you help me compile a list of outstanding artists, any medium, that destroy their work as part of the process? In particular I am looking for an artist that I saw a clip of on the Anthony Bordane show, "No Reservations". Stats: she is an older woman from Argentina, has worked with Andy Warhol, works with food, tries to demystify art and destroys her work.
Any other artists that destroy their work would be great!

By: headnsouth

headnsouth — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 10:27:53 -0800

I consider the tibetan monks who create sand mandalas to be artists of the highest order.

By: scruss

scruss — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 10:29:04 -0800

well, there's the whole sandpainting thing ...

By: doctor_negative

doctor_negative — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 10:32:55 -0800

The Who were known for wrecking their gear at the end of every show in their early part of their career.

By: kittens for breakfast

kittens for breakfast — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 10:34:53 -0800

Any other artists that destroy their work would be great!

You're telling me. Well, I dunno whether this counts, but what about the long and storied tradition of rock stars senselessly destroying perfectly good guitars at the end of a show?

By: mumkin

mumkin — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 10:35:29 -0800

Christo and Jeanne Claude's environmental installations aren't violently destroyed, but they're ephemeral, and are destroyed in the sense that they are disassembled after a set period of time and never recreated.

By: ourobouros

ourobouros — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 10:39:57 -0800

Jean Tinguely and Michael Landy are probably relevant. The Believer had a great article about artistic destruction last year.

By: cocoagirl

cocoagirl — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 10:53:23 -0800

Andy Goldsworthy, and land artists in general, often counts on natural decay as part of his artmaking. Here's the wikipedia article and a quote from an interview: "Process and decay are implicit."

By: slimepuppy

slimepuppy — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 10:55:40 -0800

Well, this might strike people as a bit weird, but I believe tattooists do this on a daily basis. Flesh is an extremely temporary canvas that, invariably, is destroyed. Not directly by the artist, but the notion of impermanence is there from the start. Which is why I have an aforementioned mandala variant tattooed on me

By: mygothlaundry

mygothlaundry — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 10:56:43 -0800

Robert Rauschenburg erased a Willem de Kooning drawing. A lot of environmental artists work is temporary or ephemeral; Andy Goldsworthy springs to mind. Here's a lengthy essay examining destruction and erasure. And here's a blog entry with a lot of links to artists destroying their own work, but most of it, with this exception, seems to be more because they didn't like it or couldn't afford to store it or stuff like that as opposed to destruction being part of the creative process. Huh. I could have sworn I'd come up with more than this when I started looking; I'll be interested to see new answers come in.

By: CreativeJuices

CreativeJuices — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 11:00:38 -0800

You guys are so fast!
Many thanks and please keep them coming!

By: elendil71

elendil71 — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 11:00:38 -0800

Burning Man artists often do that. I've heard it called "ephemeral art" - designed to be created, appreciated, and destroyed, part of the temporay nature of the whole festival.

By: adamrice

adamrice — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 11:02:20 -0800

Japanese flower-arranging (well, all flower-arranging) is an ephemeral art. This is not the same as actively destroying one's art, but it is creating art that is known to have a fairly short duration.

So much for ars longa, vita brevis.

By: adamrice

adamrice — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 11:03:33 -0800

Oh yeah, duh, Burning Man. Pretty much all burner events revolve around the creation of an effigy that is burned, as well as other burnable art.

By: roombythelake

roombythelake — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 11:05:15 -0800

http://www.marcellosendos.ch/comics/ch/1994/12/199412.html

The comic strip Calvin & Hobbes has a brief sequence touching on the idea of decay being implicit in creation when Calvin makes "snow art." Scroll down to the 5th-, 4th-, and 3rd-from-the-end strips on this page. I thought it would give you a laugh while you're thinking about this.

By: Iridic

Iridic — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 11:08:27 -0800

Kevin Kilroy's "The Silence of Malachi Ritscher" was a play about a musician who committed self-immolation as a protest against the Iraq War. After the tenth and final performance, the script was burned on stage. The play will never be performed again.

By: JaredSeth

JaredSeth — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 11:21:06 -0800

As part of Las Fallas de Valencia, over 350 amazing cardboard and wood statues are burned every year.

By: Rumple

Rumple — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 11:22:52 -0800

There is a wdespread feeling among Northwest Coast aboriginal groups that it is right and proper, and perhaps, essential, that their art (including the famous, monumental "totem poles") should decay and return to the ground. This sets up interesting conflicts between museum conservators and indigenous people. Essay.

By: anthom

anthom — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 11:27:29 -0800

Not quite the same idea, but ambient/avant garde composer William Basinski has released four discs of what he calls The Disintegration Loops. From his Wikipedia entry:

"The recordings are based on old tapeloops which had degraded in quality. While attempting to salvage the recordings in a digital format, the tapes slowly crumbled and left a timestamp history of their demise."

By: yarrow

yarrow — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 11:28:25 -0800

Raphael Montañez Ortiz destroys sofas and pianos as part of his work. I guess he's not so much destroying the art, since the art is the destroyed object, but still. Destruction.

By: smitt

smitt — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 11:33:50 -0800

The K Foundation was an art institution set up by the members of the band KLF.

They burned a million pounds in cash they earned from their music.

By: rush

rush — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 11:54:08 -0800

Does Gibson's Agrippa count?

By: Jaltcoh

Jaltcoh — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:05:28 -0800

My friend Dominick Fernow, a.k.a. Prurient, took about 50 of his own paintings and destroyed them with a sledgehammer as performance art. Non-rule-breaking self-link: I took photos of this, which you can see beginning with the 5th photo in this set.

By: hapticactionnetwork

hapticactionnetwork — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:06:43 -0800

Felix Gonzalez-Torres had pieces that (I think) fit your description. Piles of candy that viewers were supposed to take pieces from, stacks of paper, etc.

By: hobbes

hobbes — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 13:34:07 -0800

Janine Antoni licks and lathers chocolate and soap busts of herself.

By: chan.caro

chan.caro — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 13:47:58 -0800

Though he didn't do it as a matter of course, Brahms had destroyed many of his own works.

By: chan.caro

chan.caro — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 13:49:08 -0800

Hmm. I should have read more carefully. Apologies! >.<

By: fearfulsymmetry

fearfulsymmetry — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 14:24:27 -0800

Gustav Metzger - Autodestructive art.
'We thought it was rubbish so we threw it out...'

By: yohko

yohko — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 14:34:53 -0800

Fire art, while known for being associated with the Burning Man festival, is by no means limited to that venue.

By: strangeleftydoublethink

strangeleftydoublethink — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 15:08:15 -0800

in 1985, Craig Stecyk cast six bronze female torsos and dropped them into the ocean (Deep Six).

By: andoatnp

andoatnp — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 15:21:57 -0800

Times Online article: "Nabokov's last novel lies in a Swiss vault, hailed by the few who have read it as his finest work but before he died he ordered that the manuscript be destroyed. What should his son Dmitri do? Our correspondent reports, and reveals the plotline of the secret masterpiece"

By: CreativeJuices

CreativeJuices — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 15:27:59 -0800

Ah, MeFites are awesome!

OK, I remembered a little more info, the woman I am looking for:
Older lady from Argentina
Short white hair w/ big glasses.
Has worked with Andy Warhol.
Seeks to "Demystify" art.
Made a giant tower of some type of Spanish desert and the crowd dismantled and ate it.
Works with food a lot but not as a rule.

No matter what, all of you answers are a great help. I have discovered some really great work thru your postings! I really REALLY appreciate it!

*This is my first question to Meta* =)

By: suedehead

suedehead — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 15:58:56 -0800

Lucio Fontana slices slits and pokes holes in his canvas; this isn't a destruction of his art per se, but art created through destruction....

By: yarrow

yarrow — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:13:59 -0800

Marta Menuine

By: CreativeJuices

CreativeJuices — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 19:13:14 -0800

YES!! Thank you Yarrow!!