SMALL PRINT:IN 1972, Lazlo Toth swung a hammer at Michelangelo's Pietashouting, "I am Jesus Christ!" As protests go, it was extremely high profile and explained away as the ravings of a madman – especially when Toth's flatmate revealed that he was "always reading the bible".
Last week, another group of art attackers, with very different motivations attempted a three-prong attack on Andres Serrano's Piss Christ(pictured). The controversial work – a photograph of a wooden crucifix submerged in a glass tank of the artist's urine – was targeted in Avalon, France by a trio of protestors. Serrano's 1987 work has been causing controversy for over two decades and it's not difficult to see why. To many, it's an inspired take on the cheapening of revered religious iconography. To others, well. . . it's Jesus disrespectfully suspended in a glass of pee.
Art is meant to inspire and provoke, but most artists prefer this to be without screwdrivers or hammers.
In 1996, Jubal Brown deliberately vomited over Mondrian's Composition in Red, White and Blue. After ingesting blue icing sugar and gelatine, Jubal claimed he was trying to "liven it up . . . I found its lifelessness threatening".
Collectively, the paying public can be a more fearsome critic than any pen and ink merchant, as J M Synge discovered during the Playboyriots at the Abbey, but there is more at stake now, in these commercial times. When Sinéad O'Connor tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II on US TV, she couldn't have foreseen the frenzied scenes of her album being bull-dozed. It certainly hurt her sales, but did wonders for her profile.
The KLF took the amalgamation of commerce and art to an extreme aesthetic level. In 1995, they orchestrated the burning of £1 million on a Scottish island. It was an inexplicable act, not least because the band had passed their peak and torched their retirement fund. They were unrepentant – until 2004 when founder Bill Drummond told the BBC he regretted it (especially as the KLF’s back catalogue remains deleted).
