French artist Eugene Henri Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) reproached the Impressionists for searching 'around the eye and not at the mysterious centre of thought.' In his own work, therefore, Gauguin was pursuing a 'mysterious centre' - but what does this enigmatic phrase mean? In Paul Gauguin, Dario Gamb[...]
In January 2006, a man tried to break Marcel Duchamp's Fountain sculpture with a small hammer. The sculpted foot of Michelangelo's "David" was damaged in 1991 by a purportedly mentally-ill artist. With each incident, artists and intellectuals must confront the unsettling dynamic between destruction [...]