Case XIV, homage & conflict
An event in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna during the aftermath of the first world war caught my attention. The Italians claimed several dozen works from the famous collection of the KHM. In response to the confiscated works of art hung in it initially empty frames in the museum. The image of a museum exhibiting empty frames is paradoxical and intriguing. The image of a museum with empty frames symbolizes the precarious times we live in. In the lee of uncertain political and crisis times, art and culture are targeted and threatened. In a power vacuum, principles melt like snow in the sun and they haggle with works of art without scruple. I would dare to take it even further: the images themselves are threatened and the image maker is forced, powerless, to stand on the sidelines.
The disregard or disdain of images or the subordination of images by geo-political games can be interpreted as a contemporary iconoclasm. In this sub-theme of Le-donner-à-voir, namely Homage & Conflict, iconoclasm becomes related to the image maker herself.
Homage does not exist without conflict. References to 'Painting' with a capital P and an accompanying pictorial tradition does not merely imply acceptance of that tradition. It also immediately imposes limitations to that same image maker. The image maker is therefore in a permanent conflict situation. Therefore, paradoxically, iconophilia becomes compulsive and necessary linked to iconoclasm. It makes the image maker ipso facto an iconoclast.
