DEFn: An iconoclast is someone who performs iconoclasm — destruction of religious symbols, or, by extension, established dogma or conventions.

ORIGINS (in religions): Iconoclasm, Greek for "image-breaking", is the deliberate destruction within a culture of the culture's own religious icons and other symbols or monuments, usually for religious or political motives. It is a frequent component of major domestic political or religious changes. It is thus generally distinguished from the destruction by one culture of the images of another, for example by the Spanish in their American conquests. The term does not generally encompass the specific destruction of images of a ruler after his death or overthrow (damnatio memoriae), for example Akhenaten in Ancient Egypt.

People who engage in or support iconoclasm are called iconoclasts, a term that has come to be applied figuratively to any person who breaks or disdains established dogmata or conventions. Conversely, people who revere or venerate religious images are called iconolaters. In a Byzantine context they are known as iconodules, or iconophiles.

Iconoclasm may be carried out by people of a different religion, but is often the result of sectarian disputes between factions of the same religion. The two Byzantine outbreaks during the 8th and 9th centuries were unusual in that the use of images was the main issue in the dispute, rather than a by-product of wider concerns. In Christianity, iconoclasm has generally been motivated by a literal interpretation of the Ten Commandments, which forbid the making and worshipping of "graven images" per se.

HISTORICAL ICONOCLASM:
* In Judaism, King Hezekiah purged Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem and the Land of Israel of figures, including the Nehushtan as recorded in the Second Book of Kings. His reforms were reversed in the reign of his son Manasseh.
* A Midrash included in Genesis Rabba attributes a major act of iconoclasm already to Abraham. This is not attested in the Biblical account of the Partriarch's life, but is an important aspect of Abraham's image in later Jewish tradition.
* The Roman Empire's polytheist state religion's images were destroyed during the process of Christianisation.
* In the world of Islam, there have been various periods of iconoclasm against images of other religions (eg Christianity[2], Buddhism [3], etc.) and those produced within Islam itself.
* In the Eastern Orthodox Church in the Byzantine period, of its own religious imagery.
* In Europe during the Protestant Reformation and the religious conflicts following there were several outbreaks, with Protestants destroying Catholic or sometimes Protestant imagery.

* Most of the moai of Easter Island were toppled during the 18th century in civil wars.
* During the French Revolution, there was destruction of religious and secular imagery.
* During and after the Russian Revolution, there was widespread destruction of religious and secular imagery.
* During and after the Communist takeover of China, especially in the Cultural Revolution there was widespread destruction of religious and secular imagery in both Han and Tibetan areas of China.
* There have been many other episodes, some as part of peasant revolts or similar uprisings, others encouraged by central government.

POLITICAL AND REVOLUTIONARY ICONOCLASM:
The Sons of Liberty pulling down the statue of King George III on Bowling Green (New York City), 1776.

Revolutions and changes of regime, whether through uprising of the local population, foreign invasion or a combination of both, are often accompanied by the public destruction of statues and monuments identified with the previous regime. This may also be known as damnatio memoriae, the Ancient Roman term for the official obliteration of the memory of a specific individual. Stricter definitions of "iconoclasm" exclude both types of action, reserving the term for religious or more widely cultural destruction. However in many cases, whether in Revolutionary Russia or Ancient Egypt, this distinction can be hard to make. Examples of political destruction of images include:

* All public references to the "heretical" Pharoah Akhenaten were destroyed soon after his death in about 1334BCE; a very laborious process with stone carved reliefs and inscriptions.
* Several Roman emperors and other political figures were subject to decrees of damnatio memoriae, including Sejanus, Publius Septimius Geta, and Domitian.
* During the American Revolution, the Sons of Liberty pulled down and destroyed the statue of King George III on Bowling Green (New York City).
* During the French Revolution, the statue of King Louis XV in the square which until then bore his name was pulled down and destroyed. This was a prelude to his descendant Louis XVI being guillotined in the same location, renamed "Place de la Révolution" (at present Place de la Concorde).
* The statue of Napoleon on the column at Place Vendome, Paris was the target of iconoclasm several times: destroyed after the Bourbon Restoration, restored by Louis-Philippe, destroyed again during the Paris Commune and restored again by Adolphe Thiers.
* The October Revolution in 1917 was accompanied by destruction of monuments of past Tsars, as well as Russian Imperial Eagles, at various locations throughout Russia. "In front of a Moscow cathedral, crowds cheered as the enormous statue of Tsar Alexander III was bound with ropes and gradually beaten to the ground. After a considerable amount of time, the statue was decapitated and its remaining parts were broken into rubble." [23]
* The fall of Communism in 1989 was followed by destruction or removal of statues of Lenin and other Communist leaders. Particularly well-known was the case of "Iron Felix," the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky outside the KGB headquarters.

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This is background for a piece I have been working on about modern cultural iconoclasm, with emphasis on 'cultural.' It is not an article with religion or political themes but one centered on cultural and social images and iconography.

The period of iconoclasm during the Byzantine Empire (The first iconoclastic period: 730-787) was particularly interesting! Iconoclasm condemned the making of any lifeless image (e.g. painting or statue) that was intended to represent Jesus or one of the saints. The Epitome of the Definition of the Iconoclastic Conciliabulum (Synod of Hiereia) held in 754 declared:

"Supported by the Holy Scriptures and the Fathers, we declare unanimously, in the name of the Holy Trinity, that there shall be rejected and removed and cursed one of the Christian Church every likeness which is made out of any material and colour whatever by the evil art of painters.... If anyone ventures to represent the divine image (χαρακτήρ, charaktēr) of the Word after the Incarnation with material colours, let him be anathema! .... If anyone shall endeavour to represent the forms of the Saints in lifeless pictures with material colours which are of no value (for this notion is vain and introduced by the devil), and does not rather represent their virtues as living images in himself, let him be anathema!"

(I point to the description: "...the evil art of painters...")

LOL