TY  - UNPB
M1  - Doctoral
TI  - Signs of power:
iconoclasm in Paris, 1789-1795
N1  - Thesis digitised by British Library EThOS. 3rd party copyright images have been removed
ID  - discovery1317978
AV  - public
PB  - University of London
N2  - This thesis is about iconoclasm in Paris, 1789-1795. Previous full-length studies on the
subject have condemned revolutionary iconoclasm as 'vandalism' because, they claim, it
showed barbaric disrespect for art's sacred, aesthetic and historical values. This thesis
argues that such condemnations are anachronistic because they fail to recognise the variety
of ways in which late eighteenth-century Parisians used art, assessed its value and
established appropriate ways of treating it. For many eighteenth-century Parisians,
religious and political art had a vital role to play in mediating struggles for meaning in the
wider world. Many Parisians did not privilege the aesthetic and historical values of art,
nor did they believe that such values offered necessary and sufficient grounds for
automatically respecting art's physical integrity. This thesis explores the various ways in
which different interest groups sought to preserve or destroy art for political and/or
religious reasons, and the resulting tension between groups who did, or did not, believe
that all art ought to be divorced from such struggles.
The thesis draws on a wider range of manuscript and printed sources than have been used
in previous studies, even the more recent articles that have avoided condemning
iconoclasm. In order to explain the scale of official iconoclasm in Year II, this thesis also
covers a longer period than most of the available literature on the subject. The
methodology employed in this study focuses on fewer spaces than is usual in this field of
research, establishing connections between specific iconoclastic events and local, as well
as national, discourses. Close analysis of iconoclastic actions, and representations of
them, are used to argue from the specific to the general, explaining iconoclasm and the
development of iconoclastic and preservationist government policies. It is shown that
iconoclasm occurred because art symbolically mediated contested power relations during
the revolution.
EP  - 301
UR  - https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1317978/
Y1  - 1999///
A1  - Clay, R.S.
ER  -