Week 05: Power of the Image - Public Art and Monuments - PDF

Power of the Image: Representation and Truth Public Art and Monuments Week 05 FA 171 - INTRODUCTION TO ART, DESIGN AND CULTURE I P. Kalb, Art since 1980, “Memory and History”...

Power of the Image: Representation and Truth Public Art and Monuments Week 05 FA 171 - INTRODUCTION TO ART, DESIGN AND CULTURE I P. Kalb, Art since 1980, “Memory and History” pp. 140-143; 147-149 and 160-161 Christo and Jeanne-Claude, “The Gates” https://www.khanacademy.org Audio Visual Material American Icons: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Memory and History The Social Purpose of Art Monument: Victory Stele of Naram-Sin Statue, building, or other structure erected to commemorate a famous or notable person or event Style: Stone victory stele to mausoleums Funerary complexes to entire cities like Louis XIV’s Versailles. Palace of Versailles The Social Purpose of Art Memorials are objects of public commemoration A memorial may be a day or space, but it need NOT be a monument. Lincoln Memorial A memorial is often erected to honor those who have died, created in the immediate aftermath of tragedy. A monument is always a type of memorial. Washington Monument The Social Purpose of Art Memorials as unifying forces, re- inforcing the idea of Lincoln Memorial - A shared national identity -Healing rifts in the communal experience of nationhood. Style: The Egyptian or Greco-Roman traditions of monument design Washington Monument  Traditional Monuments vs. Counter-monuments Lincoln Memorial Vietnam Veterans Memorial  Counter-monuments / Anti-monuments. 20th century monuments are often criticized for failing to hold people’s attention or for representing values that had become obsolete or morally wrong.. The motivations for creating monuments have diversified, which has also broadened the scope of subjects that monuments address and the design strategies that are used. Black Lives Matters protesters toss the statue of slave trader Edward Colston into the harbor in Bristol. Counter monument (anti-monument): commemorative practices that reject features of traditional monuments. “not to console but to provoke; not to remain fixed but to change; not to be everlasting but to disappear; not to be ignored by its passersby but to demand interaction; not to remain pristine but to invite its own violation; not to accept graciously the burden of memory but to throw it back at the town’s feet.” The Empty Library (1995), public memorial by Micha Ullman dedicated to the remembrance of the Nazi book burnings that took place in Berlin, Germany on 1933. Counter Monuments The artists have rejected the traditional aim of historical monuments: Asserting essential identities for the victors or victims Focused on the historical event as a confluence of different individuals, communities, and histories Vietnam Veterans Memorial Counter-monuments: Four features that distinguish them from traditional built monuments (as told in “Counter-monuments: the antimonumental and the dialogic” by Stevens et.al.) 1. Express a position opposing a particular belief or event rather than affirming it; 2. Eschew monumental forms (indeed, in their inversion of form, both became nearly invisible); 3. Invite close, multisensory visitor engagement; and, rather than being didactic, 4. Encourage visitors to work out the meanings for themselves. Subject: Traditional monuments are typically affirmative: glorifying an event or a person, or celebrating an ideology. In contrast, anti- monumental works generally recognize darker events, such as the Holocaust, or the more troubling side of an event that in other times might have been glorified, such as a war. They may warn against dominant ideologies, such as fascism or racism. Whereas traditional monuments recognize famous figures or the heroism of war, a growing number of anti-monumental works recognize the suffering victims of conflict. Jochen Gerz, Esther Shalev-Gerz, Monument against Fascism (1986/1996), Hamburg, Germany Subject: Memorializing War Vietnam War (1955-1975) Between the communist government of North Vietnam and its allies in South Vietnam (Viet Cong) and the government of South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. Soldiers were confronted with anti-war sentiment: An experience very different from the heroes’ return that had greeted veterans of previous U.S. wars. The Polarizing Nature of the War The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund held a design competition. They were aware of the divisive nature of responses to the war. Specificed that submissions should be: contemplative, harmonious, reflective Maya Lin’s submission and make no political statements. Lin’s “Vietnam Veterans Memorial” Soldiers returned from Vietnam to a harsh reality with none of the adoration or postwar prosperity that had awaited those returning from World War II. Lin designed an experience oriented toward the emotional needs of the survivors. Formal and conceptual forms: Contemporary Art Previously perceived to be comprehensible only to a small community To others emotionally and intellectually affective Youtube Link  Form: anti-monumentality: opposition to conventional monumental form and the use of alternative, contrasting design techniques, materials and duration: Abstract vs. figuration Voids vs. solids, Absence vs. presence Dark vs. light tones, Horizontal vs. the vertical. Sunken vs. elevated (as in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial), Shifted off-axis; dispersed; fragmented vs. unified in a single, orderly composition Maya Lin Multiple locations vs. singular Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1982) Materials that are fragile, flimsy, reflective or Washington, DC transparent vs solid. Form: Minimalistic Approach An abstract idea Not an imitation of some other thing (no direct reference to observable world) Composed of simple geometric shapes "Frank Stella, Die Fahne Hoch!", Frank Stella. 1959. Form: Maya Lin: Landscape architect and sculptor Influenced by Minimalism and Conceptual Art 1960s and 1970s: The legacy of modern history using the means of contemporary art. Conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. Minimalism, no reference an outside reality/observable world Rejection of the tradition No idealized heroic statues: Abraham Lincoln Memorial Triumphal Abstractions: Washington Monument Visitor Experience: Counter monuments demand time and attention from a viewer engaged in private introspection. Most traditional monuments engage primarily the sense of sight, and many are designed to be viewed from a distance. Anti- monumental strategies typically unsettle these conventions of reception by inviting close, bodily encounter by visitors. Provide quiet, sheltered spaces that visitors enter for personal contemplation. Visitor Experience: Public interest + Intimacy Black polished granite reflects viewers’ bodies their forms flicker over the names of the dead. Active reading is to come close and see your reflection ,,It would be an interface between our world and the quieter, darker, more peaceful world beyond. I chose black granite in order to make the surface reflective and peaceful ,,  Meaning: Traditional monuments are didactic, giving clear, unified messages through figural representation, explicit textual or graphic reference to people, places or events, allegorical figures, and archetypal symbolic forms. Anti-monumental approaches, by contrast, offer no easy answers. They remain ambiguous and resist any unified interpretation; their meanings are often dependent on visitors’ historical knowledge, or supplementary information made available through signs, brochures, guides or interpretive centers. Holocaust Memorial, Berlin Positives: Negatives: Abstract/Minimalist memorials Illegible refers to non-visual items, like an emotion or an experience. Impossible to determine the point of view. Not about the political controversy but about the individuals (Soldiers + Backlash: An insinuation The U.S Visitors) soldiers killed in Vietnam were “not worthy of being honored in The memorial dematerializes as a the traditional fashion”. form and allows the names to become the object. The backlash was resolved by a much more naturalistic sculpture adjacent to the main memorial, Three Soldiers (1982–84) by Frederick Hart. Shows the soldiers in a naturalistic way, three-dimensionally. Feels much more public, far less intimate Three Soldiers As in Maya Lin’s Vietnam Memorial, rather than representing a single, unified message or an obvious message about war the memorial allows multiple, competing publics to share the site. Where visitors are explicitly invited to participate actively in ongoing interpretations of a commemorative site. Rachel Whiteread Many artists embraced abstraction as the most effective means to reckon with historical trauma. Typically casts found objects, the resulting sculpture takes the shape of the negative space in and around the object. House (1993) Giving form to absence and loss Created by spraying concrete onto the interior walls of a condemned building When the house itself was subsequently removed, what remained where it had once stood was Whiteread’s monumental rendering of the space formerly inhabited by a typical London family. Gentrification: A process where wealthy individuals begin to move into poor or working-class communities Result: An increase in property values and the displacement of earlier, usually poorer residents The house itself had been in a working-class neighborhood of London that was being demolished and reshaped by real-estate developers. Metaphor: An idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness The metaphor of transforming the domestic spaces: Concrete blocks standing in the way of capitalist investors resonated with activists seeking to change the current trends in urban development. Holocaust Memorial (2000) Whiteread’s sculpture approaches the very edge of the walls and ceilings, leaving gaps where the structural supports should be. The room itself has been transformed from a warm domestic environment into an impenetrable mass. -Dedicated to the 65,000 Austrian Jews killed in the Holocaust. -The use of casting to capture the profound strangeness of domestic objects and spaces. - Monolithic (cast as a single piece) In the form of a private library: “People of the Book” refers to; - The Jewish people -The members of some Christian denomination, the European communities they had called their own turned against them. The book-filled shelves have been turned inside out, the books’ spines face the walls The Gates Christo and Jeanne-Claude -Use of architectural masses and public spaces -They do not seek to contain nature -“The Gates” respond to spaces designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux within the dense urban grid of Manhattan. Christo and Jeanne-Claude, The Gates, 1979-2005 Negative Response -This intrusion into Manhattan’s “natural environment” left many visitors uneasy, as in the case of Joanne Landy: “Whoever...wrote about the way the exhibit draws aesthetic attention to the park itself is off the mark, in my experience anyway. The flags just draw attention to themselves, period, and there appears to be no particular relationship to the shapes and colors of the park. That's part of the problem”. The Gates “The Gates” were tied to the paths that meander through the park. -To avoid drilling holes into the soil and harming the root systems of trees -Christo and Jeanne-Claude were inspired by the way the city’s pedestrians navigate its paths. -“The Gates” aligned itself along pre-existing pathways of movement. Critique Sİnce the Park itself is not an untouched natural space; -No starting point and no end point, no favored point from which to view the work. -An installation made for the pedestrian in motion and not a static object that asks us to stand still before it. The Pont Neuf, Wrapped Self- Financed Project The installation was free to the public. Pont Neuf The artists sold preparatory drawings related to The Gates, and other works, before the exhibition opened; they do not accept sponsors The Pont Neuf, Wrapped Art Designed to End Ephemeral Non-collectible An aesthetic decision, a feeling of urgency to be seen, and the love and tenderness brought by the fact that they will not last. The Gates came down the day after the exhibition ended, with most of the materials headed for recycling.