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Iconoclasm as an Artistic Device contemplative attitude itself. The meditative, theoretical gaze, intent on observing the world as a whole and thereby reflecting itself as a purely spiritual, disembodied entity, is referred back to its material, physiological state. This transforms the very act of seeing into an altogether material and, if one so wishes, blind activity, a process that Merleau-Ponty, for instance, later formulated as palpating the world with the eye. 7 This could be described as a meta-iconoclastic gesture, one that renders it sheerly impossible to pursue visual adoration from a religious or aesthetic distance. The film shows the eye as pure matter—and hence vulnerable to being touched, if not destroyed. As a demonstration of how physical, material force has the power to eradicate contemplation, this image of movement acts as an epiphany of the world’s pure materiality. This blind, purely material, destructive force is embodied—if somewhat more naively—by the figure of Samson in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1949 movie Samson and Delilah. In the film’s central scene, Samson destroys a heathen temple along with all the idols assembled there—thus bringing on the symbolic collapse of the entire old order. But Samson is not depicted as the bearer of a new religion, or of enlightenment; he is simply a blind titan, a body wielding the same blind destruction as an earthquake. Acting with a convulsiveness on a par with this is the revolutionary, iconoclastic crowd we encounter in Sergei Eisenstein’s films. In the realm of social and political action, these human masses represent the blind, material forces that covertly govern consciously perceived human history—exactly as the Marxist philosophy of history describes them. Historically, these masses move to destroy those monuments designed to immortalize the individual (in Eisenstein’s October it is the monument to the tsar). But the widespread exhilaration with which this anonymous work of destruction is greeted as a revelation of the material “madeness” of culture is also accompanied by the sadistic, voyeuristic pleasure felt by Eisenstein on watching such iconoclastic acts, as he readily admits in his memoirs. 8 This erotic, sadistic component of iconoclasm can be sensed even more forcefully in the famous scene in which the “False Maria” is burnt in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1926). But the blind anger of the masses that erupts here is not revolutionary but counterrevolutionary: although the revolutionary agitator is burnt like a witch, she is clearly modeled on the symbolic female figures that since the French Revolution have embodied the ideals of freedom, 74 75
Iconoclasm as an Artistic Device the republic, and revolution. However, as she is burning, this beautiful, enchanting female figure capable of “luring” the masses is exposed as a robot. The flames destroy the female idol of the revolution, unmasking her as a mechanical, nonhuman construct. The whole scene has a thoroughly barbaric ring about it, particularly at the beginning when we are still unaware that “False Maria” is a machine insensitive to pain and not a living human being. The demise of this revolutionary idol also paves the way for the true Maria whose arrival restores social harmony by reconciling father and son, the upper and lower classes. So, rather than serving the new religion of social revolution, iconoclasm here acts in the interests of the restoration of traditional Christian values. Yet the cinematic means Lang draws upon to depict the iconoclastic masses are not dissimilar from those employed by Eisenstein: In both cases the crowd operates as an elementary material force. There is a direct link between these early films and countless, more recent movies in which the Earth itself, currently acting as the icon of the latest religion of globalization, is destroyed by forces from outer space. In Armageddon (1998, dir. Michael Bay) these come in the form of purely material, cosmic forces that act according to the laws of nature and remain utterly indifferent to the significance of our planet, along with all the civilizations it quarters. The destruction of icons of civilization such as Paris primarily illustrates the transience of all human civilizations and their iconographies. The aliens featured in Independence Day (1996, dir. Roland Emmerich) might be portrayed as intelligent and civilized beings, but their actions are driven by an inner compulsion to annihilate all creatures of different origin. In the movie’s key scene where New York is wiped out, the viewer can easily spot Emmerich’s indirect polemic against the famous scenes in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind depicting the arrival of the aliens. Whereas Spielberg automatically associates the aliens’ high intelligence with a peaceloving nature, the superior intelligence of the aliens in Independence Day is allied to an unbounded appetite for total evil. Here, the Other is portrayed not as a partner but as a lethal threat. This inversion is pursued with even greater clarity and consistency by Tim Burton. In Mars Attacks! (1996) the chief Martian unleashes his campaign of destruction with the thoroughly iconoclastic gesture of shooting the peace dove that was released as a token of welcome by the gullible and humanistically indoctrinated Earthlings. To humankind this iconoclastic gesture
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Art Power
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© 2008 Boris Groys All rights rese
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Introduction The first thing one le
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Introduction zero as its sum, could
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Introduction propaganda. The amount
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Introduction that all avant-garde a
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Introduction international biennial
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The Logic of Equal Aesthetic Rights
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Equal Aesthetic Rights of equal aes
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Equal Aesthetic Rights that these i
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Equal Aesthetic Rights have undergo
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Equal Aesthetic Rights afford him o
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On the New In recent decades, the d
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Page 42 and 43: On the New other, for the different
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Page 46 and 47: On the New dissolved, deconstructed
Page 48 and 49: On the New that deconstructs all id
Page 50 and 51: On the Curatorship The work of the
Page 52 and 53: On the Curatorship convince the spe
Page 54 and 55: On the Curatorship should be aimed
Page 56 and 57: On the Curatorship are regarding no
Page 58 and 59: On the Curatorship objects included
Page 60 and 61: Art in the Age of Biopolitics: From
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Page 90 and 91: From Image to Image File—and Back
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Page 101 and 102: Multiple Authorship Duchamp the aut
Page 103 and 104: Multiple Authorship of contemporary
Page 105 and 106: Multiple Authorship participated bu
Page 107 and 108: Multiple Authorship is constantly o
Page 109 and 110: The Age of Touristic Reproduction b
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Page 119 and 120: Critical Reflections public. At tha
Page 121 and 122: Critical Reflections But this “ot
Page 123 and 124: Critical Reflections pluralism. And
Page 125 and 126: Critical Reflections The next artis
Page 128 and 129: Art at War The relationship between
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Art at War But it seems to me that
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Art at War investigation. Their fun
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Art at War war and terrorism that o
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Hitler’s Art Theory passion that
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Hitler’s Art Theory This is why H
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Hitler’s Art Theory hence the que
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Hitler’s Art Theory indeed only a
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Hitler’s Art Theory the level of
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Educating the Masses in the Soviet
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Educating the Masses Did the Centra
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Educating the Masses Alexander Dein
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Educating the Masses and, at the sa
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Beyond Diversity This is the origin
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Beyond Diversity Listening to postm
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Beyond Diversity communication. Rat
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Beyond Diversity pressures dictated
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Beyond Diversity in the Russian cap
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Beyond Diversity by all subsequent
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Beyond Diversity which is what cons
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Privatizations, or Artificial Parad
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Privatizations formed from the remn
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Privatizations has already seen in
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Privatizations political protest, b
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Europe and Its Others In recent yea
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Europe and Its Others however, are
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Europe and Its Others things have b
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Europe and Its Others which can nev
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Europe and Its Others Even the art
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Notes The Logic of Equal Aesthetic
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Notes to pages 70-133 Iconoclasm as
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Notes to pages 153-154 Beyond Diver
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Sources “Educating the Masses: So
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