Cathy left an intriguing comment on my post "Toppling Scarlett's Red Dress". Being from Yorkshire, she doesn't have the same emotional reaction to the topic of removing Confederate monuments that I do, an American and a Yankee. She raises a couple interesting points that deserve a fuller response than I could leave in the comments.
TO address her points:
1. I [Cathy] don't think [the statue of Robert E. Lee] should be destroyed, but moved to a corner in a museum that tells the whole story of the war and of slavery, in other keep it but place it in context.
I think something like that is a great idea:
a creative response!
I imagine a series of community meetings---each local community deciding together what to do with these monuments.
That's hard to do, especially when people are already at such loggerheads...
I'm sure there are many examples of how that might work.
Not art related, but NPR reported in 2010:'The international peace-making organization Search for Common Ground is honoring three descendants of Thomas Jefferson for "their work to bridge the divide within their family and heal the legacy of slavery."'
One successful public art-making effort I know personally comes from a neighborhood group here, near me, who modeled how such a thing might work.
In 2012 an all-white group of dog owners proposed the neighborhood alliance use grant money from the city to establish a leash-free dog park in a section of the large Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Park.
Seems harmless, perhaps.
But a group of black neighbors strongly opposed it, saying that to them, dogs are associated with white people's violence against black people (you've seen the famous photos of police dogs attacking black people in the Civil Rights era).
Oh--searching for those images I found this new (2013) monument! a good example of ADDING to the representation of history, adding monuments to tell the full story [via "Obama Designates Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument"]:
Yeah, so, you can imagine tensions ran high in this neighborhood group.
But the leaders set up a series of talks, (with mediators, I think), so everyone could express themselves and to brainstorm a project everyone could get behind.
Eventually they came up with a public art project:
a series of mosaic panels made by volunteers of all ages, to be mounted on the park building incorporating designs from the textile arts of different ethnic groups in the neighborhood.
I wrote about the making of the mosaics in 2013, which look absolutely stunning in place. Image via Sharra Frank, mosaic designer.
2. The statue was for "all the ordinary chaps that fought and gave their lives; the state may have helped the families grieve."
You'd think so, right?
Here's the surprising (to me) thing about these Confederate monuments:
they're not actually from the Confederacy.
Most they were erected during the era of Jim Crow, "the name for official segregation and state-sponsored racism.” [via "Who Was Jim Crow?"
The Confederate battle flag came into popularity even later. According to historian David Goldfield, author of Still Fighting the Civil War:
3. Robert E. Lee was presumably good at his job.
Yes! He was. He was exceptionally good at military things.
But which of his jobs are we talking about?
For most of his career, he was an officer for the army of the United States of America, to whom he swore his loyalty.
And then when his home state of Virginia seceded from the Union, he went with it and became a great military leader for the Confederate States of America. Which makes him a traitor as defined by the Constitution of the USA.
But Northerners don't usually tend to think of him as a traitor, and neither did Lincoln, who said that since the South had no legal right to leave the Union, its attempts to secede was just a failed attempt and let's move on and say no more about that... There were not treason trials after the war, and Lee is still often "revered as a southern gentleman who gave his all to the 'Lost Cause' of the Confederate States of America." [via A Patriot's History]
It's hard to get the emotional tone of another country's symbols right, but maybe Lee is a little like Oliver Cromwell???
Also "good at his job," depending on what you think his job was.
King-killer? Ethnic cleanser of Ireland? Key player in the establishment of Western democracy? All of the above?
Anyway, I was surprised to see there's a statue of Cromwell outside the Houses of Parliament in London.
OK, so--those are my responses this Saturday morning. Now to go take the dog for a walk and clear my head!
Oh, no--wait!
One more example of public art monuments in a literal face-off: The Fearless Girl and the Wall Street Bull!
TO address her points:
1. I [Cathy] don't think [the statue of Robert E. Lee] should be destroyed, but moved to a corner in a museum that tells the whole story of the war and of slavery, in other keep it but place it in context.
I think something like that is a great idea:
a creative response!
I imagine a series of community meetings---each local community deciding together what to do with these monuments.
That's hard to do, especially when people are already at such loggerheads...
I'm sure there are many examples of how that might work.
Not art related, but NPR reported in 2010:'The international peace-making organization Search for Common Ground is honoring three descendants of Thomas Jefferson for "their work to bridge the divide within their family and heal the legacy of slavery."'
One successful public art-making effort I know personally comes from a neighborhood group here, near me, who modeled how such a thing might work.
In 2012 an all-white group of dog owners proposed the neighborhood alliance use grant money from the city to establish a leash-free dog park in a section of the large Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Park.
Seems harmless, perhaps.
But a group of black neighbors strongly opposed it, saying that to them, dogs are associated with white people's violence against black people (you've seen the famous photos of police dogs attacking black people in the Civil Rights era).
Oh--searching for those images I found this new (2013) monument! a good example of ADDING to the representation of history, adding monuments to tell the full story [via "Obama Designates Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument"]:
Yeah, so, you can imagine tensions ran high in this neighborhood group.
But the leaders set up a series of talks, (with mediators, I think), so everyone could express themselves and to brainstorm a project everyone could get behind.
Eventually they came up with a public art project:
a series of mosaic panels made by volunteers of all ages, to be mounted on the park building incorporating designs from the textile arts of different ethnic groups in the neighborhood.
I wrote about the making of the mosaics in 2013, which look absolutely stunning in place. Image via Sharra Frank, mosaic designer.
2. The statue was for "all the ordinary chaps that fought and gave their lives; the state may have helped the families grieve."
You'd think so, right?
Here's the surprising (to me) thing about these Confederate monuments:
they're not actually from the Confederacy.
Most they were erected during the era of Jim Crow, "the name for official segregation and state-sponsored racism.” [via "Who Was Jim Crow?"
According to Karen L. Cox, professor of history at the U of North Carolina, in a recent article in the Atlantic :Cox explains who was behind their erection, raised the money, etc. (the United Daughters of the Confederacy), and she also notes, "The bestselling book of 1936 and 1937, Gone With the Wind, which also became an international film sensation, [was] essentially [a] popular celebration of white supremacy and Southern civilization.
"The vast majority of monuments date to between 1895 and World War I. They were part of a campaign to paint the Southern cause in the Civil War as just and slavery as a benevolent institution, and their installation came against a backdrop of Jim Crow violence and oppression of African Americans. The monuments were put up as explicit symbols of white supremacy."
The Confederate battle flag came into popularity even later. According to historian David Goldfield, author of Still Fighting the Civil War:
"In the 1950s, as the Civil Rights Movement built up steam, you began to see more and more public displays of the Confederate battle flag, to the point where the state of Georgia in 1956 redesigned their state flag to include the Confederate battle flag."Mayor Singer of Charlottesville, Va, today (8/19/17):
"All of a sudden these statues of Civil War generals installed in the Jim Crow era, they became touchstones of terror, the twisted totems that people are clearly drawn to, trying to create a whole architecture of intimidation and hatred around them that was visited around our town. It was evil."I think white southerners who truly want to honor their dead and acknowledge the complexities of our heritage could find a better way than resurrecting symbols of oppression.
3. Robert E. Lee was presumably good at his job.
Yes! He was. He was exceptionally good at military things.
But which of his jobs are we talking about?
For most of his career, he was an officer for the army of the United States of America, to whom he swore his loyalty.
And then when his home state of Virginia seceded from the Union, he went with it and became a great military leader for the Confederate States of America. Which makes him a traitor as defined by the Constitution of the USA.
But Northerners don't usually tend to think of him as a traitor, and neither did Lincoln, who said that since the South had no legal right to leave the Union, its attempts to secede was just a failed attempt and let's move on and say no more about that... There were not treason trials after the war, and Lee is still often "revered as a southern gentleman who gave his all to the 'Lost Cause' of the Confederate States of America." [via A Patriot's History]
It's hard to get the emotional tone of another country's symbols right, but maybe Lee is a little like Oliver Cromwell???
Also "good at his job," depending on what you think his job was.
King-killer? Ethnic cleanser of Ireland? Key player in the establishment of Western democracy? All of the above?
Anyway, I was surprised to see there's a statue of Cromwell outside the Houses of Parliament in London.
OK, so--those are my responses this Saturday morning. Now to go take the dog for a walk and clear my head!
Oh, no--wait!
One more example of public art monuments in a literal face-off: The Fearless Girl and the Wall Street Bull!
7 comments:
Francesca, that sculpture of Pippi Longstocking facing the bull is ineffective propaganda which is well, crap art, compared to the bull, which is actually quite beautiful.
Why am I being so very obnoxious? Trying to force art to be the perfect instructor is like trying to stab someone to death with a rubber knife - both ineffective and frustrating.
The mosaic design project you mention, which spins out a vague connection to textile arts, is something for community members to enjoy and as such the best kind of community art, as opposed to bureaucrats deciding how the common people would be best instructed. We have a hideous sculpture here in Oakland, a sort of plum pudding in dark bronze with various social justice leaders boiling up out of it. The eople whose heads and upper torsos are emerging were all important reformers, instruction on their importance is best taught in school for actual information, though.
Chicano Park, in San Diego, is an example of residents doing their own art (murals), which helpfully, served the aim of securing the land in question for the community in Barrio Logan. This was public art, however, made BY the public rather than FOR the public, which tends to be condescending and/or pandering.
Well, I ranted about the little girl statue in an incorrect place, so I won't go into that here.
No, no, not "an incorrect place at all!
Thanks for saying--in fact, I'd just commented on your previous comment that was in an incorrect place, i.e. on the wrong post :), asking for your opinion.
I'm not keen on the fearless girl:
It is, in fact, STUPID, not fearless, to stand in front of a charging bull, so I think there are many things wrong with it---also I don't like how "cute" she is.
but am very interested in the conversations it's started.
Yes, the bull is magnificent! Massive, yet fluid.
I felt bad for its sculptor who intended it to be all that, and not to represent something threatening, which now it does, since it looks like it's charging a child.
I still hold it up as an example of a kind of communication---or an ATTEMPT at communication---that I prefer to punching people or running cars into them.
I want to see more art that sparks conversations---even if sometimes, sadly, it fails as art.
Yes, the mosaic project was awesome: It truly came out of real people in the neighborhood talking about their grandmother's quilts and stuff ("stuff" as in "fabric"), talking about that after having talked very angrily about hating/loving dogs!
(I was shocked to hear that at one meeting, and old black man said, "if you build a dog park, people will kill the dogs".
And yet they could come from that to making something alive.
And then 100s of people put it together----just all around a great example.
AND it's beautiful!!!
P.S. GOod point that Fearless Girl isn't exactly "public art"---it's corporate sponsored propaganda.
Still, I leave it as an example. It definitely has sparked debate!
P.P.S.
I also would say Fearless Girl is a great example of changing the original intent of a piece of art---she totally changed the meaning of the bull.
While I may not LIKE that, in this case, it does work.
What, I was thinking, what might one add to a Confederate monument?
Is there any way to actually redeem one?
Or can it only be mocked???
Adding a red clown nose, perhaps?
Or cutting Lee off the horse and leaving just the horse (it is a beautiful horse)?
Or putting a different rider on? With Lee, or instead of?
I think of the silhouette art of Kara Walker, so delicate and pretty, like Scarlett's clothes---yet illustrating the ugly reality of slavery.
she has one called "Gone"---would like to see it et side by side with images from Gone with the Wind.
Walker said, "I think really the whole problem with racism and its continuing legacy in this country is that we simply love it. Who would we be without the 'struggle'?""
I see some of that on all sides in this latest ugliness.
P.P.P.S. Oh, no! That sounded like Trump, as if I'm blaming "all sides"!
No.
And now I'm stopping commenting! :)
Oh I lied about stopping...anyway...love the idea of shaving Lee off his horse (although I didn't know the man. and possibly there is no reason to single him out for opprobrium, just, you know, the statue). But what I meant to say was that this image goes so beautifully with my favorite Barry Hannah stories, "knowing he was not my kind yet I followed him", about status, race and how silly it is (particularly when you have fallen off your horse).
"love the idea of shaving Lee off his horse"
Done! (Badly, but done) and posted.
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