thedrifter
11-13-07, 09:02 AM
The Problem with Modern Memorials
By Duncan Maxwell Anderson
What do these modern memorials to heroism and sacrifice have in common?
The Vietnam Veterans' Memorial. Designed by college student Maya Lin, it was unveiled in Washington, D.C., on Veterans' Day 25 years ago. It's a black granite thingy - a long, plain wall that lines a big hole dug 10 feet into the ground. It lists the names of the war's 58,000 fallen Americans and . . . nothing else.
In her first proposal to build the memorial, Lin explained its purpose: "We, the living, are brought to a concrete realization of these deaths." That's it. Not to honor what they did. Just a reminder that they're dead. Thanks.
The Flight 93 National Memorial. The National Park Service will erect the "Bowl of Embrace" in Somerset County, Pa., where United Flight 93 crashed to earth on 9/11. For their heroism in overpowering four Islamic hijackers and foiling their attempt to destroy the White House or the Capitol, the passengers will be honored with . . . an empty field.
Like the Vietnam memorial, the monument itself has no inscription honoring anyone's actions - just 1970s-style wind chimes and the names of dead people inscribed on glass cubes.
The National 9/11 Memorial. On the spot where the World Trade Center stood, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.'s anointed designer, Michael Arad, decrees that there be . . . an American eagle? A statue of the three firemen raising the American flag over the rubble? Heck, no. Just two huge, square, "reflecting" pools. Maybe you can gaze at your navel through them.
In a complex slated to cost $1 billion, this urban swamp is called "Reflecting Absence."
Absence, indeed. What these modern war memorials have in common with each other is nothing: They portray nothingness.
They have no people in them, never mind men carrying guns or swords, statues of Winged Victory or even doves of peace. Just death and names - grief without glory.
Oddly enough, for structures that are purposely barren, the promotional literature about all of them says their purpose involves "healing." By "healing," I infer they must mean "sitting in the corner, licking your wounds and whining pitifully."
It may not be surprising that both 9/11 memorials have failed to attract more than a fraction of the private contributions they need in order to be built.
Where did such parking-lot-style art come from? On one level, you might say it results from a misunderstanding between the memorial-creating classes and the war-fighting classes.
In the early 1980s, when veterans proposed adding an American flag to Maya Lin's design, the artist complained that installing a flagpole would be "like putting a mustache on the Mona Lisa." I don't think she meant to compare herself to Leonardo, but that a flag would get in the way of her Nothing.
That was more than a quarter-century ago, but the vocabulary of barrenness among today's memorial artistes sounds no different.
In a gushing update on the National 9/11 Memorial in New York magazine, Joseph Giovannini described the design as "an environment that scopes down in ever-sharper focus on the inescapable fact of absence, monumentalized by the square, gigantically empty crater."
Much as the academics love this kind of talk and this kind of architecture, something in the public spirit recoils before it. We all die - so to offer voids to the memory of our heroes, and to list their deaths without comment about what they did in life, is to assert meaninglessness, pointlessness. It says, "You sacrificed for others - but that's not worthy of mention, because now you're just as dead as anyone else."
The contrast of our modern fare with Daniel Chester French's "The Minuteman," in Concord, Mass. (erected in 1875 for the centennial of the battles of Lexington and Concord), couldn't be more devastating.
"The Minuteman" is best seen in person: He is slightly larger than life-size, and set on a pedestal about 6 feet above the landscape. He's holding a gun, and obviously prepared to use it.
Not only that, he still has his other hand on the plow: He's an ordinary man who must make a living, not a professional soldier or a robot. He steps up when it's time to risk his life violently for his country.
He's determined. He seems to be in motion. He's dangerous. My wife describes the statue as having "sex appeal."
The scandal is that this generation, which has produced some of the best soldiers and can-do-patriots in our history, has been stuck with the peace-love-and-drugs generation's leaders and also their monuments.
I say to the millennial generation: How about it, dudes? Some blowtorches and backhoes could clear the decks nicely. Then let's put some real sculptors to work.
Ellie
By Duncan Maxwell Anderson
What do these modern memorials to heroism and sacrifice have in common?
The Vietnam Veterans' Memorial. Designed by college student Maya Lin, it was unveiled in Washington, D.C., on Veterans' Day 25 years ago. It's a black granite thingy - a long, plain wall that lines a big hole dug 10 feet into the ground. It lists the names of the war's 58,000 fallen Americans and . . . nothing else.
In her first proposal to build the memorial, Lin explained its purpose: "We, the living, are brought to a concrete realization of these deaths." That's it. Not to honor what they did. Just a reminder that they're dead. Thanks.
The Flight 93 National Memorial. The National Park Service will erect the "Bowl of Embrace" in Somerset County, Pa., where United Flight 93 crashed to earth on 9/11. For their heroism in overpowering four Islamic hijackers and foiling their attempt to destroy the White House or the Capitol, the passengers will be honored with . . . an empty field.
Like the Vietnam memorial, the monument itself has no inscription honoring anyone's actions - just 1970s-style wind chimes and the names of dead people inscribed on glass cubes.
The National 9/11 Memorial. On the spot where the World Trade Center stood, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.'s anointed designer, Michael Arad, decrees that there be . . . an American eagle? A statue of the three firemen raising the American flag over the rubble? Heck, no. Just two huge, square, "reflecting" pools. Maybe you can gaze at your navel through them.
In a complex slated to cost $1 billion, this urban swamp is called "Reflecting Absence."
Absence, indeed. What these modern war memorials have in common with each other is nothing: They portray nothingness.
They have no people in them, never mind men carrying guns or swords, statues of Winged Victory or even doves of peace. Just death and names - grief without glory.
Oddly enough, for structures that are purposely barren, the promotional literature about all of them says their purpose involves "healing." By "healing," I infer they must mean "sitting in the corner, licking your wounds and whining pitifully."
It may not be surprising that both 9/11 memorials have failed to attract more than a fraction of the private contributions they need in order to be built.
Where did such parking-lot-style art come from? On one level, you might say it results from a misunderstanding between the memorial-creating classes and the war-fighting classes.
In the early 1980s, when veterans proposed adding an American flag to Maya Lin's design, the artist complained that installing a flagpole would be "like putting a mustache on the Mona Lisa." I don't think she meant to compare herself to Leonardo, but that a flag would get in the way of her Nothing.
That was more than a quarter-century ago, but the vocabulary of barrenness among today's memorial artistes sounds no different.
In a gushing update on the National 9/11 Memorial in New York magazine, Joseph Giovannini described the design as "an environment that scopes down in ever-sharper focus on the inescapable fact of absence, monumentalized by the square, gigantically empty crater."
Much as the academics love this kind of talk and this kind of architecture, something in the public spirit recoils before it. We all die - so to offer voids to the memory of our heroes, and to list their deaths without comment about what they did in life, is to assert meaninglessness, pointlessness. It says, "You sacrificed for others - but that's not worthy of mention, because now you're just as dead as anyone else."
The contrast of our modern fare with Daniel Chester French's "The Minuteman," in Concord, Mass. (erected in 1875 for the centennial of the battles of Lexington and Concord), couldn't be more devastating.
"The Minuteman" is best seen in person: He is slightly larger than life-size, and set on a pedestal about 6 feet above the landscape. He's holding a gun, and obviously prepared to use it.
Not only that, he still has his other hand on the plow: He's an ordinary man who must make a living, not a professional soldier or a robot. He steps up when it's time to risk his life violently for his country.
He's determined. He seems to be in motion. He's dangerous. My wife describes the statue as having "sex appeal."
The scandal is that this generation, which has produced some of the best soldiers and can-do-patriots in our history, has been stuck with the peace-love-and-drugs generation's leaders and also their monuments.
I say to the millennial generation: How about it, dudes? Some blowtorches and backhoes could clear the decks nicely. Then let's put some real sculptors to work.
Ellie