Public Monuments: Art in Political Bondage 1870-1997Public monuments to significant individuals or to political concepts are all too familiar. But the notions underlying them are not so obvious. Sergiusz Michalski traces the history of the public monument from the 1870s, when erecting them became an artistic, political and social pre-occupation, to today when the distinction between public monuments and public sculpture is increasingly blurred. The author shows how, in its golden age – up until 1914 – the public monument served the purpose of both education and legitimization. The French Third Republic, for example, envisaged the monument as a symbol of bourgeois meritocracy. In more recent decades, the public monument has been charged with the task of commemorating and symbolizing one of humankind's most terrible catastrophes - the Holocaust. Today, although the artistic failure of countless European war memorials has signaled the beginning of the demise of the public monument in the West, it continues to flourish elsewhere, commemorating despotic leaders from Kim Il Sung to Saddam Hussein. |
Contents
Preface | 7 |
3 | 58 |
4 | 93 |
In Quest of a New Heroic Form | 154 |
Invisibility and Inversion | 172 |
Public Monuments in the Third World | 190 |
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Common terms and phrases
aesthetic allegorical architectural artistic Baroque Battle of Nations Bismarck cult Boris Iofan bronze Buchenwald busts cemetery centre century ceremonial commemorative Communist concept constituted contrast counter-monument created cultural Dalou decorative democratic Denkmal designed despite Dolet East Berlin East Germany elements erected Etienne Dolet famous figures French German Gerz gigantic granite Hamburg historical Hitler Holocaust iconographic idea ideological illus inscription Iofan Jewish Jochen Gerz Josef Thorak later Lenin Lenin monument medieval memorial complex ments military monu monuments devoted Morice Moscow motif Munich narrative Nazi neo-Baroque Neue Wache Palace of Soviets paradoxical Paris Parisian monuments Parisian statuary pathos photograph political monuments public monuments public sculpture reference reflected Reinhold Begas Republic's Republican République Revolutionary Russian Saddam seems showing socle Stalin stone structure Surrealists symbolic Third Republic tion Tomb tower traditional Unknown Political Prisoner unveiled urban victims victory viewer visual Wilhelm Wilhelm Kreis Wilhelmine
Popular passages
Page 219 - Russian Sculpture and Lenin's Plan of Monumental Propaganda," in HA Millon and L. Nochlin, eds., Art and Architecture in the Sm/iceo/'Po/ir/cs (Cambridge, Mass, and London: MIT Press, 1978), 182-93; and C. Lodder, "Lenin's Plan of Monumental Propaganda,
Page 217 - Thomas Raff, DIE SPRACHE DER MATERIALIEN. ANLEITUNG ZU EINER IKONOLOGIE DER WERKSTOFFE, Munich, 1994, p.