Smashing objects precious to others has a long and illustrious history.
Samson, Judge of the Israelites, imprisoned by his enemies, once his hair had regrown and his strength returned, demolished the temple of the Philistines, killing around three thousand people in the process, himself included. Many years later, Jesus vandalized the market stalls at the temple in Jerusalem, overturning tables and damaging the business assets of livestock traders and financial service providers, foreshadowing the comprehensive destruction of the temple forty years later by the Roman army. In the 1490s, in Florence, Savonarola organised the burning of artworks, clothes and other luxury goods from private households. Thirty years later, the followers of Zwingli stripped the churches of Zurich of their paintings, altar pieces, and statues, which were incinerated in a riot of righteous anger.
In each of these examples, the agents of destruction claimed divine support and sanction: blessed are the iconoclasts, for they shall delight in their acts of spoliation. For this reason, in these and similar instances, the transformation of material objects of value into piles of rubble, or ash, is primarily of symbolic significance. Sometimes, as in Samson’s case, lives are lost as well as a building. None the less, it is the insult that matters most, the contempt shown for what others hold dear, the clear and direct challenge to a people or tribe that what has immense value for them has no value at all for me. Samson’s destruction of the temple is remembered far more vividly that his earlier killing of a thousand Philistines with a donkey’s jawbone.
Nowadays buildings and property can be insured. If someone smashes up all my stuff, then I can claim some money in compensation and use it to buy some new stuff. I can rebuild, refurnish, or restore. While material goods can be replaced, I cannot repair my lost pride, my feeling of personal violation and humiliation. The evisceration of symbolic meaning that the act of vandalism provokes is not insurable; that loss is permanent. For this reason, acts of symbolic destruction are powerful, for good or for ill.
By contrast, consider the mere theft of cultural artefacts. If I steal an idol, a statue, a painting, or some other treasure, from one nation or tribe, and bring it back to my home and put it on display, I demonstrate my power by showing off the wealth and riches of those I have conquered. But my act of appropriation is at the same time an admission of respect and admiration. My glory is boosted by the glory of those whose goods I have requisitioned. The tribe or nation who have lost their precious objects might be angered by my theft, but they can rest assured that I recognize its value; and, in principle at least, they might aspire to reclaim it. Whereas, if I destroy it – smash, burn, or toss it into the sea – I show contempt for them and for what they hold dear. I belittle, trivialize, and humiliate them.
In the early years of the nineteenth century, Thomas Bruce, the British Ambassador to the Court of the Turkish Emperor, stripped the Parthenon in Athens of its marble frieze sculptures and shipped them back to Britain. They ended up in the British Museum, where they remain to this day. They are spectacularly beautiful works of art. The British have subsequently defended their continued residency in London on various wholly spurious grounds: the Turkish government, which at the time controlled Greece as part of the Ottoman Empire, gave permission for Bruce to remove the sculptures; the Greeks themselves could not and still cannot afford to look after them properly; more people visit London than Athens, so they are accessible to a wider audience when on display in London; et cetera.
On the one hand, the retention of the Parthenon sculptures by the British Museum is clearly an affront to the Greek people, to the standards of international law regarding looted artworks, and to the principle of open and honest dealing between democratic nations in Europe. On the other hand, the theft is an act of homage, a recognition by the British that the achievements of classical Greek sculpture far surpass anything that was produced in Britain two and a half millennia ago; or at any time since, for that matter. While the theft of “the marbles” might be thought by some to be a sign of British ingenuity and derring-do, the truth is that the British can only look upon the sculptures with envy and embarrassment. While the Greeks are entitled to be cross, they can also be proud of their heritage; the British are condemned to the conclusion that the principal art in which we have excelled is robbery.
Last week – early June 2020 – some demonstrators in Bristol pulled down a statue and pitched it into the harbour. This was not the destructive act of an enemy force, nor an occupying power, but an outburst of anger by citizens of Britain, furious that their local public space was dominated by the statue of a man who made a fortune by dealing in slaves. He – Edward Colston – deserves to be remembered, but only in the sense noted by Albert Camus, that a country should be accountable for its traitors as well as its heroes. He is worthy of our opprobrium, but not of a memorial in a public space; on reflection, he is not worthy of a memorial at all. There are plans to rescue his statue and preserve it in a local museum. The better option would be to smash it into pieces and scatter them. His name and his many crimes should doubtless be documented in museums across the land, but keeping the statue intact seems far too respectful. The symbolism of destruction seems completely justified in his case.
In Britain, as in other countries, we are entering a period of reflection as to what sort of art objects and monuments we choose to display in our public spaces. This is a good discussion to have and needs to be repeated in each generation. Many of those who were once considered heroes will, upon reflection on the evidence, now be considered traitors to our values. I would be delighted if their monuments were turned to dust, but I expect they will end up in our museums: in Britain, the reverence for preserving the past will most likely get the better of the impulse for symbolic destruction. Nonetheless, in future, I hope and expect to see many empty plinths. They do not need to be filled. Empty plinths are themselves a symbolic reminder of our past crimes and delusions.
If, as I fear, we do decide to preserve our statues and memorials, to remind us of the villains of our history, then there is a large room at the British Museum that could, I suggest, be made ready for their display. However, to make adequate space for this new chamber of the horrors of British imperialism, we will first need to package up the Parthenon sculptures and send them back to Greece, with many thanks for the loan. To steal them was a crime; to admire them was a sign of respect; to return them to their rightful owners would be a signal of our civility and maturity.
Having settled our debts with the Athenians, we should turn our attention to settling our debts to the Africans, Asians, Aboriginal Australians, and First Nation Americans (and others, no doubt) whose lives, cultures and values we once smashed, symbolically and materially, first by our disgracefully expensive pursuit of Empire; and then by our dogged refusal to pay the bill for the damage we have done.
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