Nick Flynn really ought to have tied his shoelaces. His visit to the Fitzwilliam museum would have been markedly different if he had, allowing him to leave with a few postcards instead of causing half a million pounds worth of damage. Then again, some of us learn lessons the hard way.
Flynn fell down the museum's stairs over a decade ago, and his exploits are still something of a sore spot. Falling down the stairs is painful at the best of times, but when doing so results in the destruction of three Qing dynasty vases, it is particularly so. Flynn claims a loose shoelace and a lack of handrails led to his literal downfall. The museum’s public statement at the time begrudgingly agrees.
Flynn’s particular flavour of disaster came about from a swift U-turn, as he realised, he had gone up the wrong staircase. Tripping on his shoelace, he grasped for a handrail that was not there and fell into not one, not two, but three 17th century vases. Against his six-foot, 13 stone frame, the porcelain in question had little chance of surviving unscathed, which, by some strange twist of fate, Flynn managed to do.
In a public statement, he said: "I can say with my hand on my heart that it was not deliberate ... it was just my Norman Wisdom moment, just one of those unbelievably unlucky things that can sometimes happen.
“I went into a marble windowsill and collided with a vase which shattered into thousands of razor-sharp shards and I was unhurt. I think it must have been a miracle."
A miracle is perhaps not quite the terminology the museum would opt to use. In a statement from the time, a spokesperson said: "Not everything is shut away in glass cases. An accident of this nature does, of course, bring the issue into sharper relief." The sharper relief to which they are referring may have been the revaluing of the vases – when Flynn fell, they were worth an estimated £100,000 at most. Upon closer inspection, the figure was revalued to be closer to half a million pounds.
Flynn’s story does not end with the vases. Indeed, 2006 could be referred to as his own personal annus horribilis. Having smashed the vases in January, his accident was all over Channel 4 news days after, shortly followed by an appeal in a newspaper to locate him. He was subsequently arrested in April by authorities, who were less than convinced by his shoelace saga, and spent a night in the cells.
He recalls: “Twenty-five police officers came to my house at 7am, some wearing stab-proof vests, others ready to kick the door in. They had a search warrant, and they handcuffed me, and I spent the night in the cells. It wasn't too heavy: the police kept offering me tea and beans and potato wedges. I felt like Caravaggio!”
Yet surprisingly, Flynn shows no remorse for his actions, instead, rather audaciously suggesting: “I actually think I did the museum a favour. So many people have gone there to see the windowsill where it all happened that I must have increased visitor numbers.” Flynn continues to visit the museum to this day, though it is unclear quite how the establishment feels about his presence.
As for the vases, rather more the victim in this particular tale, hours of painstaking conservation work have seen them returned to their former glory. The vases, which had been on display on the same windowsill for years were decades were sent on to the conservator at the museum who was tasked with their reassembly. Thanks to the tireless work and expertise of the Fitzwillliam team, the vases were reassembled, and the joins are, for the most part, entirely invisible. After seven months of restoration work, the vases were ready to be placed back in the museum, and, following the construction of a more appropriate case, were placed in the Flower Paintings gallery in November 2007.
For a relatively small museum, the media attention which followed Flynn’s exploits was immense. A statement on the museum website reads: “The Museum has amassed several enormous files of press cuttings. The event became so well known that, by the time the restoration began, it continued to be lampooned in satirical political cartoons. References were even made to it in insurance adverts.”
Not only was the incident a feature in adverts and other such cultural reference points, it even inspired a further work of art – Thomas Demand’s almost exact replication of the incident for a photography project “L'Esprit d'Escalier”, which featured in the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin in 2007. Art breaking, is, after all, a well-known source of inspiration.
Flynn is by no means alone in his museum mishap. Indeed, even the most professional curators have seen such monumental cockups on their watch, or perhaps due to the lack of it.
In late August of 2014, workers at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo were tasked with adjusting lighting inside an exhibition case in one of the galleries. One of Egypt’s most recognisable artefacts – the burial mask of King Tutankhamun – received a rather impromptu haircut as a result, his beard sheered off after mishandling. The efforts of curators to mitigate the damage were arguably as damaging – selecting the more standard epoxy glue to fix face to facial hair. For even the most novice conservator, superglue belongs in your garage, not on the guise of a 3,300-year-old mask.
The curators claim time was of the essence – their higher ups had, allegedly, ordered an immediate repair so that the mask might go back on display with immediate effect. A curator who, for obvious reasons, elected to remain anonymous, said: “Unfortunately, he used a very irreversible material—epoxy has a very high property for attaching and is used on metal or stone, but I think it wasn’t suitable for an outstanding object like Tutankhamen’s golden mask.”
He continued: “The mask should have been taken to the conservation lab, but they were in a rush to get it displayed quickly again and used this quick drying, irreversible material.”
Not only was the glue of precisely the wrong variety, it had been squirted a little too liberally over the mask leaving a clear residue around it. The associated scratches were a further cause for concern for conservators. Christian Eckmann, a renowned conservator, was tasked with repairing the repair job. He said: “The use of epoxy is not the best, but it is a solution,” continuing, “However, this measure was unfortunately done not really properly, so you can see now some remains of glue at the beard.”
Thanks to the work of Eckmann and his team, the mask has been returned to its former glory following a nine-week restoration process, this time relying on beeswax not Bostik. A silver lining to the situation ensured that more information could be garnered surrounding the construction of the piece. Eckmann and his team noted that: “The study of the mask showed that its beard was detached and was not fixed back till 1946”.
There is a further element of irony to the tale. Following damages to a figure of Serket in 1980 during a tour of relics from Tutankhamun’s tomb, the Egyptian government banned artefacts from travelling out with the country. Now the damage has been done, at home, not away.
For some, art is meant to be broken. Gustav Metzger is widely known as the father of auto-destructive art, a genre established in the 1960s as a response to the political unrest from The Cold War. Metzger’s concept of auto-destructive art was first mentioned in his article Machine, Auto-creative and Auto-destructive Art in the 1962 edition of Ark, however, he had been practicing the form since 1959. His works were created by spraying acid onto nylon, creating changing shapes as the fabric dissolved.
According to Metzger: "The important thing about burning a hole in that sheet was that it opened up a new view across the Thames of St Paul's cathedral. Auto-destructive art was never merely destructive. Destroy a canvas and you create shapes."
The position of auto-destructive art as inherently political should come as no surprise given the intentions of its creator. According to the Tate Modern, Metzger’s work: “addressed society’s unhealthy fascination with destruction, as well as the negative impact of machinery on our existence.”
Metzger’s 1966 symposium on the Destruction in Art proved he was not alone in his beliefs, and the destruction of art to ensure its creation has translated through to works today. Perhaps the most notable example in recent history is Banksy’s Sotheby’s exploit.
On 5 October 2018, a framed copy of Banksy’s most famous work, Girl with Balloon, was sold for a record £1,042,000. Moments after the final gavel fell, the artwork began to self-destruct, shocking the audience and the art world alike. In a formal statement, Sotheby’s said that: “We have not experienced this situation in the past where a painting spontaneously shredded”, while Banksy posted a more tongue in cheek response, captioning the semi-destroyed piece with the words: "Going, going gone..".
Conservators were criticised for not realising that the piece was unusually heavy as a result of the inbuilt shredder. Alex Branczik, the head of contemporary art in Europe for the house, stated that: "Pest Control [Banksy's authentication board] said very clearly: the frame is integral to the artwork.
"Which it was, just not in the sort of way that we thought.
The work, now retitled Love Is in the Bin, is the “first artwork in history to have been created live during an auction.” The woman who bid, and won the piece, made the decision to keep it, and in doing so, owns a rather remarkable piece of art history. Indeed, the work is believed to have increased in value as a result of its destruction – destroying art, as it transpires, is a rather lucrative endeavour indeed.
There is, quite unsurprisingly, a whole academic corpus surrounding the destruction of art. Professor Laura Peers is one figurehead within the cohort, citing the role of destruction in the formation of work. Peers, whose focus is particularly on that on the Haida Gwaii community from northern Canada, believes that the fear of destruction leads to pieces being denied a life.
Heavily involved in community engagement with the Haida Gwaii community, Peers contrasted with her peers in her former role as curator for the Americas at the Pitt Rivers Museum. The community project Peers had planned would allow for members of the Haida Gwaii community to remove pieces from cases, and instead demand their active use in projects.
Peers’ contemporaries were anxious – what if a piece were to be broken, they asked, what then? Peers argued that instead of denying people access to their heritage for fear of damage, we ought to consider the breakages to pieces part of their life histories. Relying heavily on a pre-existing academic corpus, Peers eventually won over her peers. In her own words: “People have both a right and a need to access their material heritage.”
Indeed, the community project was a tremendous success. Members of the group were able to visit the museum and were encouraged to actively engage with works which had been taken from their community years prior. Only one piece was lightly damaged by the interaction.
Whether by accident, or by design, the destruction of works is part of their history. From Flynn’s fall, to Tutankhamun’s tumble, accidents happen in the art world much in the same way they do out with it, only the stakes and the insurance costs are far higher.
The school of thought in line with Metzger and Banksy, dictates that at times, the destruction of art can in fact be fundamental to its creation. For the duo and their followers, damage can create something new, at the cost of something old. With the future of the artworld unclear, it is possible that there may be a place for art breakers after all.
