ABSTRACT
Destruction unites ceramics and sculpture, with artists from both disciplines using ceramics in combination with destructive action as a method to critique the construction of cultural value and institutional power. Despite the negative and philistine associations of destroying art, a significant number of sculptors and ceramicists are using destruction as part of their creative practice. Contemporary usage has broadened wider than the destruction of sacred objects, and it has become a flexible term able to refer to both damage to material and damage to meaning. Contemporary ceramicists have been quick to grasp the impact iconoclasm can have on the viewer, and have heightened this impact by uniting acts of destruction with traditional pottery forms. The conflicted status of contemporary ceramics is central to understanding the destruction of works in clay as cultural critique. In the public space of the museum, the vitrine protects the object from the public.
