Timothy Noel Harris

Iconoclysms Timothy Noel Harris

A damaged Renaissance canvas in Venice. A church in Rome turned inside out. A multicolored mosaic park bench in Barcelona made of broken crockery. A dragon fountain made of old farm implements. Images destroyed. Space rearranged. Objects repurposed. Meanwhile, relatives lost; things blown up.

Iconoclysms is both a memoir and a story with landings and takeoffs, a reverie of history, twisting the Byzantine notion of shattering images for religious reasons, or iconoclasm, into a lens for viewing the history of art and architecture, real-world tragedies both personal (bereavement) and public (terrorist attacks), and a trio of southern European cities for the ages.