Education
Learn all about the economy
Anna retable, Utrecht. Defacement 7 March 1580
Artist Gert Jan Kocken (1971)
Title Anna retable, Utrecht. Defacement 7 March 1580
Year 2004
Material Colour photo
About the work This photo is one of seven from the series titled Defacement. The work shows a relief with several people in the Utrecht Cathedral. Their faces were chopped off during the wave of iconoclasm in 1566. Protestants invaded Roman Catholic churches to destroy statues of saints, with the aim of imposing a new worldview on the people that was devoid of idolatry. Kocken printed the images in this series in razor-sharp detail and full-size to express how deliberately, precisely and well-organised the iconoclasts set to work destroying images across Europe. Through this work, he also raises questions about the power of images, including photographs, today.
About the artist Kocken explores the tension between image and memory in his photographs and photo installations, conducting extensive research beforehand. His research focuses on past events such as World War II and iconoclasm. He graduated from the Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten in The Hague in 2017. From 2011 to 2012, he was an artist-in-residence at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam.
In the collection Acquired in 2008. Four years earlier, five other works by Kocken were acquired from a series in which he photographed sites of major disasters. The central theme in these works is the difference between seeing and knowing. How can something that is no longer there still make an impression?taling nodig, maar misschien staat Defacement in het Engels juist wel sterk op zichzelf - dus zonder 'in the sense of mutilation'
