The Colossal Head of Bavaria

 in the Nave of the Crystal Palace

Photo by Philip Henry Delamotte, 1854

The Spirit Of Our Times, 1921

Raoul Hausmann

”The most memorable of all Dada sculptures…It illustrates Hausmann’s own remark that the ordinary German ‘has no more capabilities than those which chance has glued on the outside of his skull; his brains remain empty.’ And so this…simpering coiffeur’s dummy carries an array of knobs and numbers and even a tape-measure for making judgements. It is a vapid statistic, ‘an O without a figure,’ offering as mordant a commentary on bureaucracy as Charlie Chaplin’s sliding dance through the cogs of the Machine in Modern Times did on industrial capitalism.”

- from The Shock Of The New, Robert Hughes

Via secretcinema1

Eternal Pain 

 by Paul Dardé

1913

Monte Albán I, Zapotec Urn

Portrait bust of King Akhenaten, from studio of Thutmose, Amarna, Egypt, stone, h: NA,
(Dynasty XVIII, New Kingdom), 1,348-1,335 B.C. (Museum of Art, Egyptian Museum, Berlin)

-noted for abandoning traditional Egyptian polytheism and introducing worship centered on the Aten, which is sometimes described as monotheistic or henotheistic.

-Akhenaten tried to bring about a departure from traditional religion, yet in the end it would not be accepted. After his death, traditional religious practice was gradually restored, and when some dozen years later rulers without clear rights of succession from the Eighteenth Dynasty founded a new dynasty, they discredited Akhenaten and his immediate successors, referring to Akhenaten himself as "the enemy" in archival records.

-Much of the art and building infrastructure created during Akhenaten's reign was defaced or destroyed in the period following his death, particularly during the reigns of Horemheb and the early Nineteenth Dynasty kings. Stone building blocks from Akhenaten's construction projects were later used as foundation stones for subsequent rulers' temples and tombs.

The Madonna of Nagasaki
In 1929, a wooden alter piece with a madonna was crafted for the Urakami Cathedral. The wooden madonna was inspired by Murillo's painting of the Immaculate Conception.
On Aug 9th, 1945, the US atomic bomb, nicknamed "Fat Boy" was dropped on Nagasaki.
The Cathedral was destroyed. The head of the Madonna was pulled from the rubble by Kaemon Noguchi, a discharged soldier and Catholic priest.
He kept it for 30 years before giving it to Yakichi Kataoka, who kept it at the Jushin Women's College for 15 years. In 1990 Kataoka gave it back to the rebuilt cathedral which then placed it in the Atomic Bomb Museum. 10 years later it was again placed back in the cathedral.

Target of image Smashers

                                            Battered but IndestructibleSan Lorenzo head, 1947

Photo Matthew W. Stirling

On October 23, 1956, around two hundred thousand Hungarians gathered in Budapest to demonstrate in sympathy for the Poles who had just gained political reform during the Polish October. The Hungarians broadcast sixteen demands over the radio, one of them being the dismantling of Stalin's statue. A hundred thousand Hungarian revolutionaries demolished the Stalin statue, leaving only his boots, in which they planted a Hungarian flag. The bronze inscribed name of the Hungarians' leader, teacher and "best friend" was ripped off from the pedestal. Before the toppling of the statue, someone had placed a sign over Stalin's mouth that read "RUSSIANS, WHEN YOU RUN AWAY DON'T LEAVE ME BEHIND!" The revolutionaries chanted "Russia go home!" while pulling down the statue. “W.C.” and other insulting remarks were scrawled over the fragmented parts of the statue.
The account of the incident by Sandor Kopacsi, head of Budapest’s police: "[The demonstrators] placed [...] a thick steel rope around the neck of the 25-metre tall Stalin’s statue while other people, arriving in trucks with oxygen cylinders and metal cutting blowpipes, were setting to work on the statue’s bronze shoes. [...] An hour later the statue fell down from its pedestal."
On the 4th of November, a large Soviet force invaded Budapest and other regions of the country. Hungarian resistance continued until 10 November. Over 2,500 Hungarians and 700 Soviet troops were killed in the conflict, and 200,000 Hungarians fled as refugees. Mass arrests and denunciations continued for months thereafter. By January 1957, the new Soviet-installed government had suppressed all public opposition.