I found really intriguing the work of Dario Gamboni. This guy is a professor of Art History at the University of Amsterdam and he is working on the destruction of pieces of art. For instance, here is a description of one the project he was curator:

Picturing the destruction of pictures: Quite a few images represent people attacking images. They may be based on actual events witnessed by their authors but they always go beyond mere documentation. They include a reflection on what it means to damage or destroy a picture, a monument, a work of art, and they suggest reasons why this is done. Normally, they take sides for the objects under attack and condemn their assailants. This is not surprising, because the artists who created them were themselves involved in the production of images. But this condemnation can also express the point of view of the public at large, who has come to regard the intentional degradation of cultural property as a barbaric and irrational form of behaviour.

I may have to find Gamboni, D. (1997). The destruction of art: Iconoclasm and vandalism since the French Revolution. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 416 pages. ISBN 0-300-07170-1.

Why do I blog this?That's something very relevant lately, especially in Geneva where artists put cows in the stress and some folks threw them in the lake or hung them to a tree (whereas in Lyon, lions on the streets are put in hardly reachable places or behind a protection).