More self-destructing artworks (see below) : Suburo Murakami, 1956, 'Peeling Off Painting.' Murakami was a member of the Gutai group, Japanese postwar action artists. After their first exhibition, the Gutai group apparently burned all of the works in the show in a collective bonfire. 'Peeling Off Painting,' a work completed after that show, is still around, if dessicated: the point of the painting is for the paint to peel off. In an essay titled "Intentionality and Performance-Based Art," Paul Schimmel notes that the curator of Murakami's estate loans the painting out for exhibitions in order for it to be further ravaged by the stress of transit, following Murakami's intentions.
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