"often elaborately staged destruc-tions ... of works of art must be considered as means of communication in their own right, even if the 'material' they make use of is-or was-itself a tool of expression or com-munication."1
This is similar to Banksy's Girl with Balloon, the actual act of iconoclasm becomes so much more powerful when it is used to send a message, it amplifies the iconoclast. The taliban cement themselves on a global stage as serious in their Wahhabism.
pre-Islamic doors reused in the Great Mosque of Bukhara, which bore the images of "idols" with their faces erased, but were otherwise intact.n
It's quite interesting that they reused previously defaced doors, you would think that they wouldn't dare place something that worshipped icons in such a religious place. It seems they were able to justify their reuse by the quality of the doors. Even with the icons faces erased surely you can still make out some features, this really reinforces the power that the visage had in Islamic iconoclasm as referenced above.
Second, I intend to highlight some complementary political aspects of what has largely been conceived of as a theological impulse.
If this is hinting at political or social motivations for iconoclasm it's important to remember that in some groups such as the Taliban religious ideals heavily influence these motivations. In other words the overlap can obscure the root causes of acts such as iconoclasm.
colonnaded
lined with columns along a path, freestanding or connected to a building
friable,
easily crumbled
"the dialogue between head and heart," and "the person who had a dialogue with his or her own heart was known as a toltecatl, today called an 'artist
expressing the passion of the heart through the creative abilities of the head / brain
However, unlike Inca figurines, this rock and others like it were not recognized as art until recently.
because it had a functional purpose, this might be presumptuous but it's like if we started revering a door, yes we can think of it as art and it might be very beautiful but it's primarily functional. Might be a bad example but you know what I mean.
can be seen as an attempt to reconstruct other visual cultures in the image of the colonizing West,
essentially a lossy conversion, strips the object from its context, we impose our values in relation to intrinsic properties of the object while ignoring the intent of the creators.
ecognizing their (to us) uncanny objects as akin to a notion
privileging their culture only in relation to ours, its merits fall away and are "supplant[ed]" by our own.
we also supplant indigenous terms and values, suggesting, perhaps, that our value system matters more than whatever system gave rise to the creation of the object in the first place.
Quote this!
His choice of words is effective, for calling something art tends to elevate the estimation held_for that something. However, calling something art reveals nothing inherent in the object to which the term is applied; rather, it reveals how much the viewer values it. Thus the archaeologist in this instance reveals and foregrounds his own aesthetic sensibilities.
The issue is that you layer over your own cultural and historical background and even if unintentionally supersede the original intent of the piece.
einforced what are in fact colonialist perspectives, judgments, and rationales.
called it!
re-creating societies in the image of the modern West, or rather, in the image of the modern West but just different enough to render them lesser or insufficient,
add in a touch of colonialism
capriciousness
impulsive
multifarious
many and of various types. "multifarious activities" having many varied parts or aspects. "a vast multifarious organization"
autochthonous
native to the land.
promul-gated.
promote or make widely known (an idea or cause).
penecontemporaneous
Penecontemporaneous definition, formed during or shortly after the formation of the containing rock stratum: