Art Under Attack: Histories of Iconoclasm in Britain - Preview at Tate Britain

Demonstrating how religious, political, moral and aesthetic controversy can become arenas for assaults on art, it will look at the state-sanctioned iconoclastic zeal of religious reformers, who aimed to purge both churches and minds of the sin of idolatry; the symbolic statue-breaking that accompanies political change; and attacks on art by individuals stimulated by a moral or aesthetic outrage. Over the centuries, the urge to break has been accompanied by a desire to make or regenerate. The exhibition will reveal how for some modern and contemporary artists destruction can be utilised as a creative force.