Carla Zaccagnini's 'Elements of Beauty' Examines Suffragette Art Attacks

Carla Zaccagnini's artist's book 'Elements of Beauty' (2012) compiles archival materials documenting militant suffragette attacks on artworks in English and Scottish museums from 1913 to 1914. The book reproduces newspaper clippings, police surveillance photos, and writings from suffragette newspapers 'Votes for Women' and 'The Suffragette'. It organizes attacks chronologically, from the first at Manchester Art Gallery in April 1913 to the last at the National Portrait Gallery, London in July 1914. Zaccagnini imprints her own location and date—'São Paulo, 21 August 2012'—on the colophon, aligning her project with the actions. The book does not fully address class, race, and nationalism within the movement. Notable attacks include Mary Richardson slashing Velázquez's 'The Rokeby Venus' at the National Gallery in March 1914, and Lillian Forrester, Annie Briggs, and Evelyn Manesta smashing glass at Manchester Art Gallery on 3 April 1913. The suffragettes targeted artworks by male artists like Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, John Everett Millais, and John Singer Sargent. The book is an edition of 150, using blank spaces for undocumented or copyright-restricted materials. It explores the destruction of idealized notions of womanhood and the construction of gender, reflecting on how the suffragettes' actions were mediated in the press.