Damage Control

“Damage Control: Art and Destruction Since 1950”, on view at Mudam Luxembourg, highlights the roles destruction has played in contemporary art.

Jeff Wall, The destroyed room, 1978, detail

Destruction has played a wide range of roles in contemporary art – as rebellion or protest, as spectacle and release, or as an essential component of re-creation and restoration.

“Damage Control: Art and Destruction Since 1950”, on view at Mudam Luxembourg offers an overview, if by no means an exhaustive study, of this central element in contemporary culture. Featuring approximately 90 works by nearly 40 international artists, and including painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, photography, film, video, installation and performance, the exhibition presents many of the myriad ways in which artists have considered and invoked destruction in their process.

While destruction as a theme can be traced throughout art history, from the early atomic age it has become a pervasive cultural element. In the immediate post-World War II years, to invoke destruction in art was to evoke the war itself: the awful devastation of battle, the firebombing of entire cities, the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan, and, of course, the Holocaust. Art seemed powerless in the face of that terrible history. But by the early 1950s, with the escalation of the arms race and the prospect of nuclear annihilation, the theme of destruction in art took on a new energy and meaning.

In the decades since, destruction has persisted as an essential component of artistic expression. “Damage Control: Art and Destruction Since 1950” offers an overview of this prevalent motif. Many of the earlier works in the exhibition directly record nuclear bombs or their aftermath, or use such documentation as a starting point for broader commentary. The use of found film, television, and photography as a source expanded more widely in the 1960s as the importance of media coverage of disasters on a cataclysmic or everyday scale increased.

Damage controlo — Ed Ruscha, *The Los Angeles County Museum on Fire*, 1965–68. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC . Oil paint on canvas, 136 x 339 cm. Collection Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC. Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1972 © The artist

Other artists adopted more conceptual or symbolic approaches to address the potential for destruction in the world or as a reaction to social conventions. Destruction has also been employed as a means of questioning art institutions or challenging the very meaning of art itself. In many of the artworks on view, regardless of time period, medium, or intent, the desire to control destruction or to emphasize the integral relationship between construction and destruction is central.

But whether as rebellion or protest, as spectacle and release, or as an important facet of re-creation and restoration, it is apparent that for generations of artists internationally, destruction has served as an essential means of considering and commenting upon a host of the most pressing artistic, cultural, and social issues of our time.

Christian Marclay, Guitar Drag, 2000, Video transferred to digital media. Color, sound, 14 min. Collection Mudam Luxembourg, acquisition 2001. © The artist

Jake and Dinos Chapman, Injury to Insult to Injury, 2004. Francisco de Goya “Disasters of War” portfolio of eighty etchings reworked and “improved”, 37 x 47 cm each. The Duerckheim Collection. © The artists

Laurel Nakadate, Greater New York, 2005. Video Color, sound, 5 min 10 sec. Courtesy Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects, New York. © Video still: the artist

Left: Ori Gersht, Big Bang I, 2006. Moving image for LCD flat screen, color, sound, 4 min 23 sec, 72 x 60 x 14 cm each. Framed monitor. Collection Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, Joseph H. Hirshhorn Purchase Fund, 2008 (08.07). © The artist. Right: Yoshitomo Nara, No Fun! (in the floating world), 1999. Acrylic paint and colored pencil on Ukiyo-e print, 42 x 33 cm. Collection Eileen Harris Norton, Los Angeles. Photos: Josh White, Courtesy Blum & Poe. © The artist

until October 12, 2014
Damage Control
Art and Destruction Since 1950
curated by Kerry Brougher and Russell Ferguson
Mudam Luxembourg
3, Park Dräi Eechelen
Luxembourg

Damage Control

“Damage Control: Art and Destruction Since 1950”, on view at Mudam Luxembourg, highlights the roles destruction has played in contemporary art.

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