Against Heritage

Tomato soup against a Van Gogh; hands glued to the frames of a Goya: blind vandalism or the most lucid act of protest of our time? In this essay as dazzling as it is provocative, art historian Manu Martín argues with overwhelming forcefulness that the desecration of symbols is not a sacrilege, but an unparalleled historical tool of protest and criticism. An "enlightened heresy" that proves that, in order to rescue art, it is sometimes necessary to "attack" it.

With the precision of a scalpel, Martín dissects the concept of "Heritage" to reveal it for what it often is: a powerful "civil religion". A faith that teaches us to venerate a culture of elites while sterilising works in temple-museums. In the face of this liturgy, he vindicates a living, and therefore political, heritage that, far from being a pamphlet, is shown as a rigorous historical journey that goes from the "bonfires of the vanities" of the Florentine Savonarola, to the suffragettes who slashed the "Venus in the Mirror" to defend the real bodies of women, to the activists who today use the Prado and other museums as global loudspeakers. Martín demonstrates that these actions do not attack art, but use it - without actually damaging it - to give it back the life that the institution has taken from it.

"Against Heritage" is a manifesto that invites us to commit the most liberating act: to stop praying to culture and start using it. A brave, polemical work destined to become an inescapable reference for understanding the cultural battles of our present.

• Paperback
• Pages: 224
• Language: Spanish
• Author: Manu Martín
• Year: 2026
• MODEL: 9791387687137

Publisher: Barlin Libros