Auto-destructive art
also: ADA
Auto-destructive art (ADA) is art designed to destroy itself - corroded by acid, burned, or mechanically worked until it collapses. Invented and launched in England by Gustav Metzger in 1959, and named in his 1962 essay 'Machine, Auto-Creative and Auto-Destructive Art', it answered the destruction of the Second World War and the arms race with processes of decay, stress, and heat. Metzger staged public acid attacks on nylon sheets and later reversed the idea into 'auto-creative' art; John Latham burned book-towers in his Skoob Tower Ceremonies, and Jean Tinguely built machines meant to destroy themselves. The Destruction in Art Symposium of 1966 made the tendency international, and Metzger revisited it in works like Flailing Trees (2009).
Defining characteristics
- Self-destruction built into the work's materials and process
- Corrosion, fire, stress, and heat used as artistic media
- Time-based works that visibly decay, burn, or collapse
- Industrial methods and collaboration with engineers and machines
- Anti-commercial stance: works that cannot survive to be collected
Key figures
- Gustav Metzger (1926-2017) — Inventor of auto-destructive art and author of its manifestos
- Jean Tinguely (1924-1991) — Kinetic sculptor whose self-destroying machines realized the idea
- John Latham (1921-2006) — Conceptual artist whose Skoob Tower burnings tied destruction to knowledge
Example works
- Homage to New York — Jean Tinguely (1960)
- Flailing Trees — Gustav Metzger (2009)
Sources
- Auto-destructive art - Wikipedia encyclopedia