Destruction as a Mode of Creation

Author(s): John Fisher

Source: Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Apr., 1974), pp. 57-64
Published by: University of Illinois Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3332132
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Destructionas a Mode of Creation

JOHN FISHER

It is not surprising that man, that awesomely destructive creature, has

turned his violent talents toward art and insisted that in the extirpative
act he can be a creator, an artist.
Destruction is commonplace, everywhere, everyday, and works of
art are not immune to this kind of violence. A careful look at what
can and does happen to works of art will help to avoid later confusions.
1. Accident. A fire sweeps a gallery in the dead of night. A valuable
Monet is ruined by flame, smoke, and water. The Turks store explo-
sives in Athens' Parthenon and a Venetian cannon shell blows the
marvelous temple apart. A child drops his grandmother's precious
Ming bowl. Art objects are thus destroyed, and we note it sadly. It
should not happen that way, but accidents, we say, do happen.
2. Wearing out. A visitor to Milan of a different century saw a dif-
ferent Leonardo fresco from the one we see. The Last Supper has suf-
fered irreparable disintegration. Now hardly recognizable, in spite of
the Pelliccioli restorations, it has been the victim of accelerating deteri-
oration of materials. In Venice sulfurous industrial gases mix with rain
water and air to become an acid deadly to many of the statues and
stone buildings. The whole city is a victim of a cruel dissolution, not
natural, but not unrelated to certain natural processes of wind, rain,
and weather. This tragic destruction causes concern in every center
of antiquities, and also in moder cities which are sometimes even less
resistant to pollution damage. Ancient manuscripts must be kept
hermetically sealed and protected from light, even in the best environ-
JOHN FISHERis professor of philosophy at Temple University, editor of The
Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, and an associate editor of the Journal
of the History of Ideas.
58 JOHN FISHER

ment. All art objects share the characteristic destiny of material ob-
jects: they do not last forever.
3. Demolition. An exquisite example of architecture stands in the
path of a major highway. An old mansion is ignored in an urban
rebuilding project. Both fall before the wrecking crew and the bull-
dozer, perhaps in the name of progress but not in the name of art.
Architecture is particularly susceptible to this type of destruction. If
paintings were as fixed in space as buildings and occupied as much
space, old masters would fall just as readily.
4. Specific type destruction. In some media a pattern, a type of
which one or more objects exist as particulars, is deliberately destroyed
after the appropriate number of objects has been made. Smashing the
stone after the determined number of prints has been produced is
sometimes a dramatic act, but that established part of printmaking,
that destructive act, is not the sort of thing which concerns me in
this paper.
5. Instrumental destruction. In an era of widespread consciousness
of the theatrical possibilities of creation, one cannot escape noting the
antics of faddist and comic performers who destroy or disassemble
musical instruments in various ways during or after performances.
Perhaps the nonsense of pouring alcohol on one's guitar after a rock
performance and setting it ablaze is now just a part of the absurd
history of the 1960s. A variant of the destructive approach to instru-
mentation is the partial destruction of the instrument in order to
demonstrate the superior artistry of the performer when limited by
a partially inoperative device. Anecdotes (more often than not highly
imaginative), like the following abound: Paganini breaks three strings
on his violin, and pronounces with great solemnity, "One string--
and Paganini" before playing a concerto with incredible virtuosity.
These aberrationsare obviously not my concern.
6. Vandalism and acts of madness. When a man leaped to the little
altar in St. Peter's and smashed at Pieta with a hammer recently,
spectators in fascinated horror sensed that they were experiencing
what few persons ever do: the deliberate destruction of an irreplace-
able and priceless statue. One of the tragedies of human history is
that these irrational acts occur, but they are never construed as crea-
tive acts.
None of these instances involves the artist as destroyer. Nor do I in-
tend here to consider that sometimes apt characterization of the artist
as the spoiler of certain values or beliefs. Nihilistic art is spoken of
 DESTRUCTIONAS A MODE OF CREATION 59

as destructive of reality, Dada as destructive of nature, and various

-isms as destructive of religious, moral, or social norms, or even, as in
the case of painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa, of art itself. These
works which may do violence to values are themselves not destroyed
and therefore are only peripherally related to the concerns of this
paper. Even Nietzsche's epigrammatic suggestions that creation and
destruction are two sides of one coin, and that every creator then must
be a destroyer, are beside the point here, as are all contemporary uses
of instruments of destruction to create lasting aesthetic objects. Niki
de Saint Phalle fires a rifle at bags of paint, splattering a wall with
pigment, but no work is destroyed by the act. Lucio Fontana uses a
knife on canvas, but the canvas is not destroyed. As a matter of fact,
the slashes make a three-dimensional object out of a two-dimensional
object, dialectically suggesting characteristics of space by abolishing
the picture plane. What remains after the violent act is an object
presented to perception as a work of art. To call Fontana's assault on
surface destructive is somewhat like saying Michelangelo destroyed
that block of Carrara marble when he chipped away the unimportant
parts to let the David which he saw in it stand free. Destruction as a
mode of creation must signify something quite different: the deliberate
annihilation of a recognizable object so that nothing identifiable re-
mains, and further, that whatever does remain is surely not the object
of aesthetic perception. Obviously there are marginal instances which
must be passed over, such as Gustav Metzger's using acid on nylon,
Cesar's compressed automobiles, and a fascinating Rauschenberg
erasure of a De Kooning drawing. The resultant object in each case
is in some sense an object for perception and aesthetic consideration.
Perhaps the most straightforward and self-conscious destructive ef-
forts in all of art were the suicidal sculptures of the Swiss artist, Jean-
Charles Tinguely. Built in a brief period in the 1960s from old washing
machines, pianos, bathtubs, bicycle wheels, and various identifiable and
unidentifiable bits of scrap, these restless collections, often animated by
electrical motors, intentionally self-destructed, always in a bizarre
manner, for Tinguely is no expert in demolition techniques. Homage
to New York, assembled in part from materials collected from various
New Jersey dumps, destroyed itself, mainly from fire and collapse, in
the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art in New York on
March 17, 1960, leaving a meaningless collage of debris. Study Number
One for an End of the World was exploded in Copenhagen's Louisiana
Museum in September, 1961, before 2,000 art lovers (only two of
60 JOHN FISHER

whom were injured when the ignition proved premature), leaving

nothing but ashes and fragments. Malfunction is a crucial ingredient
in this art, for function characterizes the very art which he rejects.
Indeed, anti-functioning is perhaps a more apt description of these
works than malfunctioning. Study Number Two for an End of the
World, with its elemental wheels, motors, dolls, and toilet seats, self-
destructed on March 21, 1962 in the Nevada desert. Fortunately the
locale was desolate and no one was injured by a failure in the electrical
circuits which added suspense and indeed almost total unpredictability
to the explosion of over one hundred sticks of dynamite, which left
little to observe. "A lunatic end to everything monstrous in the world,"
the sculptor remarkedapprovingly.
This admitted absurdity of auto-destructive art settles nothing, nor
do simplistic explanations such as Metzger's assertions that this art is
committed to a leftist revolutionary position in politics, or that it
performs a useful mass-therapeutic role. The question is, what kind of
a creative act could destruction perform?
The art of the theater or cinema often includes among its ingredients
violent destruction. One is not surprisedto find an ancient city in flames
in the background of various historical film spectacles, and the stage,
while severely limited in the degree of direct violence possible, must on
occasion portray instances of destructive forces. One should therefore
consider the possibility that Tinguely's sculptures were designed as
materials for imaginative cinematography and that the record on film
represents the creative art work. Consider Homage to New York. To
the best of my knowledge there are only two films extant which record
its self-destruction, one by Robert Breer and one by D. A. Penne-
baker. The former is an attempt at serious contemporary film-making,
using techniques of animation, multiple exposures, single frame shots,
and other elements of creative cinematography, but it is not a record
of the event. In fact the title, "Homage to Homage to New York,"
reveals its intent. The Pennebaker film, entitled "Breaking It Up at
the Museum," is more of a documentary, with shots of the sculpture
in action sandwiched between what might pass for an interview with
Tinguely and a post mortem with some spectators. In spite of the insis-
tence of some people that the film is all important in destructive sculp-
ture, I find no evidence that the permanent record in the motion
picture is at all construed as the determinate creative act in this case.
As far as I know, in spite of the numerous serious references to Tin-
guely's work in recent literature, no one bothers to look at the films.
 AS A MODEOF CREATION 61
DESTRUCTION

Surely if the film were the creation, this would not be the case. The
putative creative act must lie in the destruction itself, but what kind
of a creative act could this be?
If I could magically snap my fingers and produce an instant aesthetic
object, no one would dispute that this was a creative act. Indeed, it
might be a classic example of creation, i.e., ex nihilo. Suppose I possess
the power of instant devastation; by snapping my fingers an object is
simply annihilated- no debris, no lingering wisp of smoke, just total
destruction. No one would call that creative; indeed, it would be the
very opposite. On the other hand, if I destroy an object in x minutes,
or x hours, where x is some finite number, one might call that action
creative. Temporality is basic to the consideration of creativity in a
destructive act.
The traditional separation of the arts into temporal and nontem-
poral, from Aristotle through Lessing to Gilson, will not permit the con-
sideration of painting and sculpture as temporal arts. Some objections
to the traditional view, such as the efforts of Yves Klein, Ortiz, and
Arman, are bizarre. Some, such as the arguments of Klee and Tinguely,
and especially Duchamp, who put an aesthetic limit of twenty to thirty
years' duration on any painting, are more sophisticated. One recalls
Duchamp's insistence that his own celebrated Nude Descending a
Staircase is dead art, and anyone who thinks he is moved by it is really
moved by what he has read about it. In any case, with respect to
destructive acts, it is clear that the creative element demands that the
art be temporal.
But temporality in art takes us back again to performance, and
auto-destructive art is unlike the performing arts in several significant
ways. First, repetition is impossible. If a repeat performance is
attempted with a similar object, it will destruct differently. There is no
functional aspect which will make another performance meaningful.
The consistent malfunction of the destructive apparatus is, as we shall
see, a necessary element of the affair. There cannot be, in any destruc-
tive act, any better or worse performance of the same work. There is
no same work.
Second, an object is destroyed. There is a nonaesthetic residue after
the event, but this cannot be identified with the art object. There is an
objective before and after. It would be preposterous to say "Casals
performed Bach's Suite in D at nine o'clock on Saturday night, and
this is what is left of the Suite when he finished." Yet one can surely
62 JOHN FISHER

say, "Homage to New York self-destructed at seven o'clock in the eve-

ning of March 17, and this is what is left."
Third, in the performance itself the human presence is lacking.
Unlike the theater, the performer has completed his role before the
curtain rises. Lighting a fuse or activating a circuit is hardly a per-
formance. Electrical and chemical forces, gravity, and fire perform.
Even in painting with acid the performance begins after the brush-
work is completed.
Fourth, the purpose of the performance is inescapably social com-
mentary. This is a curious characteristic, for it seems that art, after
a serious flirtation with politics in the earlier part of this century, has
been evidencing obvious signs of disengagement. Action painting, which
is conceptually related to auto-destructive art, repudiates politics in
art. The reasons for the degagement need not concern us, although art
has always been a rather feeble and futile weapon in anyone's political
arsenal, and we marvel at the seriousness with which governments
sometimes take the fancied menace to the state of a solitary painter
or novelist. If rhetoric is an art, I cheerfully admit its power to persuade
people politically, but painting and sculpture are very poor persuaders.
It is doubtful that even Picasso's Guernica, probably the most forth-
right political painting of our times, ever changed anyone's political
views. The oddity of a message-oriented sculpture is further under-
scored by the open repugnancy of "message" to many of the artists
who otherwise share the basics of Tinguely's attitude. Nevertheless,
this art is continually rubbing the spectator's nose in certain sordid
aspects of life- making fools of machines in a machine-oriented
society, for instance. Once again, malfunction or anti-function is a
necessary ingredient in the performance, for function characterizes the
life in the art which is being rejected. Technological society worships
functioning; these works make this worship the ultimate blasphemy.
True, people sometimes laugh at these efforts, but auto-destructive
art, even in its most absurd instances, is never comic. Nor can one
ever say, as he might at the theater or concert hall, "Wasn't that a
lovely performance, no message, no ideas, just a fine performance."
Take away the message and Tinguely's spectacles are vastly inferior to a
fire in a junk yard or even a small fireworksdisplay.
These are conditions of auto-destructive art, but how are they related
to conditions of creativity? First, repeatability, while in many respects
desirable, is surely not a defining feature of a creative act. In the
theater, a role can be deliberately created for one actor who plays
 AS A MODEOF CREATION 63
DESTRUCTION

it once and dies. It is not unreasonable to assert that that work, as

well as that performance, can never be repeated. In the strict sense
creation entails the making of something new or original. That hardly
suggests the necessity of the capability of performance repetition. In-
deed, it hints at the opposite.
Is the human presence required? All art, we insist, is directly or
indirectly the work of some intelligence; only a theist, for instance,
can speak of nature as a work of art. Creative acts demand a creator,
yet in performance his presence is not always demanded. We are quite
content to speak about computer art during the performance of which
the designer or programmer need not be present or even alive.
Third, while we may get bored with art with a message, for instance
with the social realism of much of the current art of Eastern European
artists, or with the McLuhan fads in the West, it would seem pre-
posterous to deny the artist any creative instinct simply because he
"has something to say." On the pages of his score Bach repeatedly
wrote "Soli Deo Gloria," but one would be crassly philistine to deny
his works any aspect of creativity because he had a message. The trends
in the West, particularly among the youth, are in the opposite direction.
Why is Arlo Guthrie considered creative by his youthful American
disciples? Because, they argue, he has something to say. And that is
not limited to pop performers such as Guthrie. Why is a good organist
like Virgil Fox playing Bach adored as a creative soul by many students
in America while a better organist like the late Maurice Durufle
playing Bach is ignored? Because, they tell me, Fox really has some-
thing to say when he plays.
To return to Tinguely's Homage to New York once more: in spite
of the sophisticated, indeed blase attitudes of the American art world,
this was an incredibly atypical event. For half an hour the apparatus
operated. Everything ran, but nothing worked. Its performance was
intentionally and necessarilyfrustratingto expectations. But then slowly
and inexorably it began to destruct, and even that was a failure, for
it never completely burned, never completely collapsed. It had to be
finally demolished by hand. The message to an industrial society is
too obvious to incorporate in a brief paper.
Fourth, so the real objection to ascribing creativity to a destructive
act centers about the annihilation of an object. Traditionally creativity
and nihilism have been construed as opposite poles. Destruction has
always meant the change of an organized object into a relatively dis-
organized one, or the annihilation of the features which made it what
64 JOHN FISHER

it once was. Artistic creation has always meant a new order, the bring-
ing into being of something new, or the translation of knowledge or
idea into a new form, with form always indicating a spatial object.
If one makes such demands of the man who experiments with self-
destructing objects, he necessarily will be denied the tribute of being
called creative. But is a resultant permanent physical object required
of a creative act? A painter can create a style as well as a painting.
And styles are not hung on museum walls. Indeed, it is not an exag-
geration to suggest that the most creative minds are not so designated
because of their spatial products. Physical objects sometimes play pre-
liminary roles in the creative working out of speculative theories.
Kekule, they say, dreamed of a snake with its tail in its mouth and from
this idea of a physical object he developed the idea of the ring config-
uration of the benzene molecule. But physical objects cannot be the
inescapable end products of human creativity. A creative chef makes
soufflerecipes; a cook makes souffles.
I conclude then that the traditional bifurcation of creation and
destruction cannot effectively be applied to auto-destructive art. That
is not to say that all or any of the continuing experiments in destructive
art are creative in either a descriptive or an evaluative sense. Indeed,
the counterexamples in each instance are statistically impressive. I con-
clude rather that the same standards of creativity used in other per-
forming arts may be applied to works of auto-destructive art. If no
works of auto-destructive art can be called creative, it will be because
none of them passed the test, not because we have by some a priori
objection not allowed them to be examined.