Iconoclasm

I chose the image on the home page because it represents two important aspects of culture and the conflict which can arise around them. Religious practice and the part which pictures and sculpture can play within it, and the symbolic significance of art works themselves.

A few years back, the publication of a cartoon image of Mohammed led to homicidal rage in France and Denmark. A couple of years later In Yorkshire, England, a teacher of religious studies who showed it to his class as a topic for reasoned discussion, was mercifully not murdered but was nevertheless pursued into hiding in fear of his life.

Only the other day, in London, two young women threw tins of red soup over Van Gogh’s famous painting ‘Sunflowers’. They were protesting about the harmful effects of petroleum use in the world. Clearly, it was the fame of the painting and its place in public affection which ensured that their action would attract attention. Had they thrown soup all over an advertisement for motor cars no journalists or social media activists would have taken any notice.