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LONDON’S Tate Britain museum is currently a site of destruction. A thought-provoking exhibition, ‘Art Under Attack’, brings together works of art from the museum’s collection that have been vandalised in the past 500 years.
A stroll through the galleries yields glimpses of decapitated angel statues and defaced murals — wood and stone scoured in an effort to stamp out intangible things such as faith, ideas, values. Though removed from Pakistan in space and time, the exhibition offers insight into our evolving political landscape.
Much of the exhibition comprises ruins of iconic — in the sense of relating to an icon — Catholic art: fragments from stained glass church windows; crumbling figurines of saints; brusquely whitewashed paintings of the Virgin Mary.
These ruins date from the time of Henry VIII. On breaking from the Catholic Church, he ordered the dissolution of all churches and monasteries in England. To eradicate what he considered to be the spiritual and moral corruption of the ‘old religion’, Henry VIII ordered churches to be ransacked and iconic images to be destroyed.
The crackdown was thorough: one heartbreaking exhibit explains how the manuscripts in Roche Abbey were burnt to fuel the fires needed to melt the magnificent stained glass windows celebrating Christ’s life. New injunctions also prohibited creating more images and shrines.
The attack against iconic religious art continued under Edward VI and Elizabeth I. Their fundamentalism led to the eradication of centuries worth of mediaeval art and religious cultural tradition. This part of the exhibition highlights the savagery of religious intolerance, and also its futility — the Catholic faith endures, and much work is being done to recover and preserve the remains of Catholic iconic art.
It is easy to draw parallels between Henry VIII and attempts by violent extremist groups in present-day Pakistan (and Afghanistan, Mali and elsewhere) to stamp out local religious and cultural heritage as a form of control, intimidation or enrichment (attacks against churches were a strategy by Henry VIII to transfer the wealth of the church to the crown). I left this part of the exhibition feeling enraged at the brutality and ignorance of religious intolerance and extremism.
But my rage was chastened in another part of the exhibition, which showcased artworks that had been attacked by suffragettes — women who campaigned for the female right to vote in England. In 1913 and 1914, the British suffragette movement became more militant, and women began attacking art in public museums and galleries.
Rallying under the cry ‘deeds not words’, the suffragettes were increasingly outraged by the fact that objects (including works of art depicting women) were idealised by society while real women continued to be marginalised.
Their attempts to attack famous art works put the staff of British museums and galleries on high alert — the institutions even considered proposals to ban women from entering museums. But the vandalism quickly provoked public anger, and suffragettes were portrayed by the media as assaulting the essence of the nation.
There is an irony in realising that religious fanatics and women’s activists eventually resorted to the same type of violence in order to meet their goals. While religious intolerance is abhorrent, women’s mobilisation for political participation is a worthy cause. But it is clear that the means employed by the two groups were equally crude and counterproductive.
Art history may have a lesson for Pakistani liberals whose increasingly strident rhetoric is in danger of being branded a form of extremism. In their defence of human rights and demand for universal security, liberals are increasingly ready to label opponents with the same black and white constructs their opponents slot them in.
Imran Khan is Taliban Khan, and there is increasingly little appetite to consider the complexity of his political position (consider the befuddled responses to his welcome comments about polio vaccination). Similarly, frustration with the government’s wishy-washy counterterrorism strategy, which is still focused on talks, is provoking calls for stern military action with no regard for human rights, due process, or the possibility of militant rehabilitation.
The same applies to the drone debate that occurs behind closed doors: many liberals support strikes because they believe terrorists deserve no better.
Liberal ire is a very far cry from the mass murder and terrorism that characterises the most extreme groups, and by no means can the two be compared. But beware slippery slopes: extreme rhetoric can, for example, lead to widespread support for discriminatory laws such as anti-terrorism legislation that deprives people of justice and rights, or backing for ill-thought-out military action.
Moreover, it counterproductively perpetuates cycles of hate: think of the suffragettes whose actions caused them to be widely despised despite the validity of their campaign. This should not be the fate of liberals as they coalesce in an effort to consolidate democracy and security in Pakistan.
The writer is a freelance journalist.
Twitter: @humayusuf
