Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS)
- LAST MODIFIED: 12 January 2023
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199920105-0171
- LAST MODIFIED: 12 January 2023
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199920105-0171
Introduction
The phrase “destruction in art” did not exist as a category in the arts before the publication of Gustav Metzger’s manifestos on the topic, beginning with “Auto-Destructive Art,” dated 4 November 1959, and published eight days later in the London Daily Express, on 12 November. Thereafter “destruction in art” entered the general lexicon of the fine arts and became an art-historical idiom following the international Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS) that Metzger organized in London in 1966 with the assistance of the Irish poet and writer John Sharkey. Together they issued invitations to artists, poets, composers, psychologists, scientists, and intellectuals worldwide, and selected an international group of artists and intellectuals to serve on the “DIAS Honorary Committee.” That committee helped to identify and contact participants and forge guidelines for the symposium. DIAS events, exhibitions, and performances were staged in outdoor sites and theater venues in London throughout September, with the three-day symposium staged in the middle of that month. Symposium participants included artists, poets, composers, a dancer, an architect, a scientist, and two psychoanalysts, all of whom made presentations. Two Austrian participants, Otto Muehl and Günter Brus, presented actions in defiance of the directive not to perform during the symposium. Some fifty individuals from fifteen countries either came to London or sent photographs, sound recordings, poems, manifestos, texts, and ephemera to be displayed and discussed. Among those who sent work was the Argentine artist Kenneth Kemble, who, with a group of seven artists in Buenos Aires, had launched the exhibition Arte Destructivo five years earlier in 1961. Such discoveries were met with an enthusiastic, international response. DIAS became the pivotal event verifying destruction in art as a transnational, transformative phenomenon that confirmed the quality and conceptual complexity of the artistic research and production undertaken by very diverse individual participants. No comprehensive publication exists on DIAS, and while several exhibitions have sought to present both DIAS and destruction in art, none have captured its fundamental interdisciplinary composition, breadth, or depth. This annotated bibliography represents the intellectual bones of destruction in art with DIAS as its cornerstone. I would like to acknowledge Dr. Mitali Routh for assistance in researching this essay.
General Overviews
Scholarship on DIAS is limited. This annotated bibliography aims to provide the basis for much more research and writing on the subject, and provides extensive bibliography on selected DIAS participants central to this expansive event.
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Article
- Activist and Socially Engaged Art
- Adornment, Dress, and African Arts of the Body
- Alessandro Algardi
- Ancient Egyptian Art
- Ancient Pueblo (Anasazi) Art
- Angkor and Environs
- Art and Archaeology of the Bronze Age in China
- Art and Architecture in the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary
- Art and Propaganda
- Art of Medieval Iberia
- Art of the Crusader Period in the Levant
- Art of the Dogon
- Art of the Mamluks
- Art of the Plains Peoples
- Art Restitution
- Artemisia Gentileschi
- Arts of Senegambia
- Arts of the Pacific Islands
- Assyrian Art and Architecture
- Australian Aboriginal Art
- Aztec Empire, Art of the
- Babylonian Art and Architecture
- Bamana Arts and Mande Traditions
- Barbizon Painting
- Bartolomeo Ammannati
- Bernini, Gian Lorenzo
- Bodegones
- Bohemia and Moravia, Renaissance and Rudolphine Art of
- Bonampak
- Borromini, Francesco
- Brazilian Art and Architecture, Post-independence
- Burkina Art and Performance
- Byzantine Art and Architecture
- Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi da
- Carracci, Annibale
- Chaco Canyon and Other Early Art in the North American Sou...
- Chicana/o Art
- Chimú Art and Architecture
- Colonial Art of New Granada (Colombia)
- Conceptual Art and Conceptualism
- Contemporary Art
- Courbet, Gustave
- Czech Modern and Contemporary Art
- Daumier, Honoré
- David, Jacques-Louis
- Delacroix, Eugène
- Design, Garden and Landscape
- Destruction in Art
- Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS)
- Dürer, Albrecht
- Early Christian Art
- Early Medieval Architecture in Western Europe
- Eighteenth-Century Europe
- Ephemeral Art and Performance in Africa
- Ethiopia, Art History of
- European Art, Historiography of
- European Medieval Art, Otherness in
- Expressionism
- Eyck, Jan van
- Festivals in West Africa
- French Impressionism
- Gender and Art in the Middle Ages
- Gender and Art in the Renaissance
- Gender and Art in the 17th Century
- Giorgione
- Giotto di Bondone
- Gothic Architecture
- Gothic Art in Italy
- Goya y Lucientes, Francisco José
- Graffiti
- Great Zimbabwe and its Legacy
- Greek Art and Architecture
- Greenberg, Clement
- Géricault, Théodore
- Iconography in the Western World
- Installation Art
- Islamic Art and Architecture in North Africa and the Iberi...
- Japanese Architecture
- Japanese Buddhist Sculpture
- Japanese Ceramics
- Japanese Literati Painting and Calligraphy
- Jewish Art, Ancient
- Jewish Art, Medieval to Early Modern
- Jewish Art, Modern and Contemporary
- Jones, Inigo
- Josefa de Óbidos
- Kahlo, Frida
- Katsushika Hokusai
- Lastman, Pieter
- Leonardo da Vinci
- Luca della Robbia (or the Della Robbia Family)
- Luisa Roldán
- Markets and Auctions, Art
- Marxism and Art
- Maya Art
- Medieval Art and Liturgy (recent approaches)
- Medieval Art and the Cult of Saints
- Medieval Art in Scandinavia, 400-800
- Medieval Textiles
- Meiji Painting
- Merovingian Period Art
- Mingei
- Moche Art
- Modern Sculpture
- Monet, Claude
- Māori Art and Architecture
- Museums in Australia
- Museums of Art in the West
- Nasca Art
- Native North American Art, Pre-Contact
- Nazi Looting of Art
- New Media Art
- New Spain, Art and Architecture
- Olmec Art
- Pacific Art, Contemporary
- Palladio, Andrea
- Parthenon, The
- Paul Gauguin
- Performance Art
- Perspective from the Renaissance to Post-Modernism, Histor...
- Peter Paul Rubens
- Philip II and El Escorial
- Photography, History of
- Pollock, Jackson
- Polychrome Sculpture in Early Modern Spain
- Postmodern Architecture
- Pre-Hispanic Art of Columbia
- Psychoanalysis, Art and
- Qing Dynasty Painting
- Rembrandt van Rijn
- Renaissance and Renascences
- Renaissance Art and Architecture in Spain
- Rivera, Diego
- Rodin, Auguste
- Roman Art
- Romanesque
- Romanticism
- Science and Conteporary Art
- Sculpture: Method, Practice, Theory
- South Asia and Allied Textile Traditions, Wall Painting of
- South Asia, Modern and Contemporary Art of
- South Asia, Photography in
- South Asian Architecture and Sculpture, 13th to 18th Centu...
- South Asian Art, Historiography of
- The Art of Medieval Sicily and Southern Italy through the ...
- The Art of Southern Italy and Sicily under Angevin and Cat...
- Theory in Europe to 1800, Art
- Timurid Art and Architecture
- Turner, Joseph Mallord William
- Turquerie
- van Gogh, Vincent
- Viking Art
- Visigoths
- Warburg, Aby
- Warhol, Andy
- Wari (Huari) Art and Architecture
- Wittelsbach Patronage from the late Middle Ages to the Thi...
- Women, Art, and Art History: Gender and Feminist Analyses
- Yuan Dynasty Art