The Colossal Buddha statue in Bamiyan, Afghanistan was destroyed in 2001 by the Taliban when they took control of the government. It had originally stood withing a doorway-like carving in the side of a mountain, and was, at 180 ft. tall, the tallest Buddha statue in the world. The Quran (and actually the Bible/Torah as well with the 10 Commandments) forbids the worshiping of idols as deities, and so the Taliban destroyed this figure, considering it to be an idol and that to be their religious duty to do so. Interestingly though, they did not do any damage to the huge niche that the Buddha had stood in, but only destroyed the Buddha statue itself.

Now, this gigantic niche stands as a monumental reminder of this occasion and Islamic/Abrahamic law forbidding idol worship. In my opinion, it now constitutes a controversial piece of art in its new form. In a way it seems to assert that the statue was powerless and that the empty niche may allude to the emptiness of any reverence for it.

What makes it debatable whether it is a piece of art or just a ruin is that the Taliban probably did not destroy it with the intention of creating art. So can a piece of art be considered art if the artist did not intend it to be? This raises the question of whether art is defined as art by the artist or by the viewer.

The event memorialized by this work is the Taliban’s control of Afghanistan’s government. Here the “artist” treats the artwork is a direct and forceful manner, violently transforming the statue as they intended to do to the country. This might even be considered “Art formal” by Colilingwood’s definition (more on that in a future post) in that it was created purely to express a feeling and an inner ideal, and not as a craft, representation, or for “magic” or entertainment. This purely expressive nature of the creative process constitutes a true art.

My personal opinion is that this is a piece of artwork that represents the dark and backwards religious fanaticism of the Taliban, better than any painting or poem could, and therefore would fall under the category of “Art proper.” For a group of people who do not really express themselves through any art form, this is a form of emotional release that constitutes a style of (albeit violent, destructive, and insensitive) art.