Why artists destroyed their own art

ARTSY.NET
By Jon Mann

Photo by Zlatko Unger, via Flickr.

The Belgian painter Luc Tuymans never spends more than one day on an artwork. After completing it, he once told the BBC, he leaves his studio, returns the following day, and decides whether it’s good enough to keep. Yet the history of art provides numerous instances of artists willfully discarding finished works of art, including as an expression of traditional beliefs and practices, from Buddhist sand mandalas—sacred diagrams representing the cosmos, which are labor-intensively and meticulously constructed, only to be destroyed—to the bisj or “spirit poles” of the eastern Indonesian Asmat culture, which are created to honor the dead before being left to decay. Here are six stories of artists who chose to destroy their own art: Michelangelo, The Deposition (1547–55); Claude Monet, Water Lilies (1905–08); Gerhard Richter, early photo-based work (1960s); John Baldessari, Cremation Project (1970) ; Georgia O’Keeffe, assorted work (1980s); and Michael Landy, Break Down (2001) [More]