After the last post, a friend wanted to talk about the subject in person. It took him a little while to articulate what it was that bothered him about the removal of the monuments, since he concurs that keeping them to “remember” a white-washed version of history is not sensible. Finally, though, he admitted that he feels sorry for the artists. He is an artist himself, so his sentiment is understandable, but I believe it still overlooks two salient points: the artists who create for a shameful cause don’t deserve reverence any more than their subjects do and, in the case of most monuments in question, the artists are dead. Additionally, the removal of the monuments creates an opportunity for living artists to craft pieces in their place.
While making a living producing original art is always a bit fraught, and some might argue that surviving often means accepting work from questionable sources, it does not follow that the commissions that result are exempt from censure. As discussed in the previously referenced piece, the Confederate monuments do represent part of our history, but not a part that should hold a place of reverence on public land. We should not want to forget the nefarious intentions of the United Daughters of the Confederacy as they sprinkled statues around the country, and perhaps the artistic merit of the statues they erected bears remembering as well. In both cases, though, the remembrance is best done in a museum, where proper context can be given, rather than in communal parks, where the mere physical presence of the monument sustains the sense that all views of history are equally worthy of respect.
That my friend worries about the feelings of dead artists is intriguing to me, since the dead do not feel anything. However, I believe he is actually thinking that destroying any art is an affront. In that case, if the art is good enough to deserve honor, a museum is certainly a fitting place for it. It is a subject too broad for this post, though, to discern whether all art should be preserved, regardless of provenance. Almost everyone shudders when they consider the Taliban’s destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, but preserving all art requires resources that might be more urgently needed elsewhere.
Instead, the best way to incorporate homage to the art of our past, especially as represented by the monuments currently under discussion, is to harness the opportunity to create work for the community of artists living and working today. Art is not stagnant – indeed, some artists such as Jean-Claude and Christo believe art should always be transitory – and it is interpreted in the context of its viewers’ environment, knowledge, and beliefs. We should seize this opportunity to reinvigorate our public spaces with art that reflects us as we are now, in the 21st century. Perhaps the biggest lesson of the furor over the monuments is that our public art should not be viewed as immutable but should be seen as a way to periodically renew our communities and incorporate into our communal psyche the idea that the creation of art is as much to be valued as its preservation…perhaps even more so in the world of our future.
*Note: The featured image is of Christo and Jean-Claude’s temporary installation “The Gates” in New York City’s Central Park in the winter of 2005.