Art on the Barricades; or, the End of Art, but This Time Actually Conceived as the Possibility of Its Death

Abstract

Starting from the anecdote according to which Bakunin, during the siege of Dresden in 1849, proposed hoisting Raphael’s Sistine Madonna and other masterpieces on the barricades to dissuade an attack of the insurgents’ position, this article explores the philosophical meaning of the ‘end of art’ – not in the strictly traditional and Hegelian sense of transformation toward a new modern art but as the possibility, in times of crisis, of art’s material destruction, art’s ‘death’. The episode from 19th-century Dresden has inspired several contemporary artists (e.g., Ahmet Öğüt or the Arsenale Institute for Politics of Representation) and invites parallels with present-day forms of protest and activism, such as certain climate activist interventions. Through an analysis of these cases, this article identifies a specific function of the examples discussed: They reveal the political significance of art, not as a vehicle for content or message, but as a representation of a social or human community in which all participants can recognize themselves and as a premonitory warning in the face of impending disaster.