Iconoclasm and counter-iconoclasm as a critical frame for sculpture

Masters Research - Master of Philosophy (MPhil)This research sought to explain how sculptural forms, artistic and curatorial practices might have developed in response to iconoclasm and counter-iconoclasm. It is my contention that sculpture has historically been shaped by the ideas of Iconoclasm and, what I have somewhat awkwardly termed, Counter-Iconoclasm as much as by any technique or material. A series of 'creative' works were made and tested through exhibition in the Fine Art mode throughout my candidature. An agnostic approach and the terminology counter-iconoclasm was adopted in order to bypass the highly polarised theological discourse on idolatry. Iconoclasm was thus treated as any other mode of cultural behaviour. The agnostic approach enabled issues of theology and ecclesiology to be treated as examples of political ideology. The agnostic approach also opened up consideration of the ways in which sculpture and iconoclasm and countericonoclasm are learned and promulgated. Hence the role of Happy Toys, Barbies and Bratz are able to be recognised. The exhibition Busted presents the historical process by which a new genre of sculpture has emerged despite recent outbreaks of iconoclasm and the resurgence of iconoclastic ideologies. The new genre presented is the styling head. A genre of polychrome plastic sculpture busts with nylon hair sold as educational and entertaining toys for girls. Although the genre is ostensibly secular, its forms defer to or comply with a series of theological rules and often reference historic sculpture which had a religious function. The new genre raises the possibility that girls who grow up to experience secular polychrome figurative sculpture as normal will be able to emerge as a generation of sculptors and consumers of sculpture able to make and support figurative sculpture freed from theocratic rules