Art Under Attack

What compels people to carry out attacks on art? And have these motives changed over the last 500 years? Published to accompany an exhibition at Tate Britain, this book explores the hisandshy;tory of attacks on art in the UK, from the Reformation of the 16th century to the present day, showing how religious, political, moral, and aesthetic controversy can become arenas for assaults on art. From the state-sanctioned zeal of religious reformers and the symbolic statue-breaking that often accompanies political change to attacks on art by individuals stimulated by moral or aesthetic outrage, this study aims to present the rationale of iconoclasm and how it has become a productive and transformational practice for some contemporary artists. Termed andldquo;a fascinating explorationandrdquo; by the Observer, this book offers an eye-opening look at protest.

Vividly illustrated, Conflict, Time, Photography zeroes in on war and its aftermath, highlighting the fact that time itself is a fundamental aspect of the photographic medium. The images presented here articulate a range of photographic perspectives, and include photographs made a few moments or a few days after an event as well as those made several years, decades, or even a century later. Spanning the globe, this eye-opening book reveals conflicts of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries in new and thought-provoking ways. Over days, months, and years, the war-torn landscapes, urban ruination, peacetime reconstruction, and human cost of war explored here expose new dimensions of conflict.

Tabitha Barber is curator of British Art (1550andndash;1750) at Tate. Stacy Boldrick is curator of Research and Interpretation at The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh.