This is the question debated in the latest RA magazine.

Mary Beard argues yes…

”To suggest that images are inviolable, to be protected from harm in the safe space of a gallery, denies them power. Part of the job of art is to challenge certainties, and make us see the world differently, in uncomfortable ways… But if we surround all art with a glow of pious reverence, if we put it on a pedestal with a ‘Do Not Touch’ label, protected by its very definition as ‘art’, we will have deprived it of one of its necessary functions: to make us angry. Ocassional destruction is the price we pay for art doing its job.”

Tomiwa Owolade argues no…

”Anyone who defends the right of art to be free of censorship needs to acknowledge a basic truth: not all works of art are great. Many are bad. Some are even morally offensive… No art should be destroyed. Because to destroy it it or call for its destruction, is to legitimise something even more pernicious than the existence of morally repellent art: the furies of the mob… The defence of art against destruction is not simply a defence of the soaring works that universally enchant and enrapture us. It is more importantly a defence against the baser instinct to destroy that, once unleashed against art, is likely to spill into cruelty against people. As the German poet Heinriche Heine said: ‘Where they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings too’.”

What do I think? I wholeheartedly agree with Mary Beard that the job of art is to challenge and at times anger but anger is an emotion and is purely subjective. Just because one person is offended by something does not make it offensive. Others may not be, and her proposition that those who are offended should be able to destroy art and that the only power that piece of art has is in its destruction is not something I can hop on board with. It also doesn’t address the issue as to whether it is the art itself or the maker which is considered to be offensive. Would it be acceptable to destroy great art because it has been made by bad people?